An Early Frost
Once again they’re alone,
like in the beginning,
only now it’s winter and
the backseat of their car
rides emptied, a painful
reminder of an early frost,
her last breath still resting
warm on their icy cheeks.
And now, but for the rattle
of a loose tailpipe
that always gripes over
the last frozen mile home,
there remains no hint
of a previous season,
though the animals
seem to know, bowing
their heads each time
the tailpipe announces
its return.
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines loss as “the failure to keep or to continue to have something.” It also defines loss as “the experience of having something taken from you or destroyed”. Clearly, loss is not only defined in different ways between individuals, but between diverse cultures, and it can vary greatly over vast stretches of time. And how we each respond to loss is distinctly unique from individual to individual.
For me, loss has always been a phenomenon that is both simultaneously real and ethereal. There is this mystifying duality I must confess I’ve never understood very well. In my world there is the abstract, and then there is the concrete, where boundaries of loss are simultaneously sharp and porous, delineated and amorphous, here and there. It reminds me of floating bubbles – in your hand one moment and gone the next.
The last half of the twentieth century has slowly changed how we perceive and experience loss. Loss through death has been made less visible, less personal and less accessible for family members. New medical technologies, combined with society’s demand for cure and medicine’s promise to extend life, have collectively, perhaps even unwittingly, conspired to push loss into the remotest corners of our lives. We find it much harder to touch, talk about, and have some measure of control over what is an everyday possibility and occurrence. Loss as one of the most defining moment in our lives, and yet we are left chained to a culture of silence. This new reality does not represent the historical reality of our society, of any society. The chains are contemporary, and they are of our own making. My best guess is that we must all work together to discover the key that will unlock this silence.
In her final moments, my mother was a floating bubble. I knew it was a matter of time before she would simply disappear before my eyes. I could see it coming, yet I couldn’t wrap my grieving brain around it. I trailed her every move, I tracked her every breath. I kept talking to her and combing her hair while my brother sang ever so tenderly into her ear. I knew her bubble would not last much longer, yet I kept chasing it around the room. I also knew the world would fracture and swallow me up once she drew her last breath, and it did for a while, a long while. Knowing I could not continue to hold onto someone I loved more than life, I slowly realized that loss is not always bad thing to experience, or even a bad feeling to sustain. Loss has its own complex beauty, and it allows me to fill the void that once inhabited my mother’s beautiful bubble. In my heart, she still floats.
Some say the best way to avoid a difficult conversation (like end-of-life care planning) is to ignore it until it goes away (my mother was brilliant at this strategy). My personal experience has taught me that if we ignore the end-of-life conversation long enough, it will indeed go away, and with little help from us. After a lifetime of observation, I feel fairly confident in saying that many of us expend a great deal of energy trying to avoid the topic of death, and the preparation required for the final act of our lives. It’s not an easy conversation for most of us to have, not even for those of us who work, study and write about it. We occupy our minds with everything but that which needs to come to us more naturally, more easily. We push hard conversations and challenging thoughts to the remotest corners of our minds, then quickly rush out the door and lock it away from our consciousness.
But end-of-life challenges always come knocking on locked doors, even if we trash the key. Both of my parents struggled to talk about end-of-life issues, particularly my father. Death and dying were things that happened to other people, not our family, and the thought of preparing for the eventuality of death signaled defeat. It took many trips and conversations with my father before he would finalize his advanced care directives. He had always been very uneasy with the idea of dying because he knew it was not something he could control (I should add that I seldom drove the car when Dad was in it, because he was not in control). But the one thing my father did know, and was quite successful at achieving, was dying in his own home with the support of Hospice, with his family by his side. If he had to go, by golly, it was going to be in an environment he loved and was familiar with. He left rehab after a severe illness with the rehab team to decide what would be needed in the home for support once his rehab was finished. He sat down in his favorite chair and refused to go back to rehab. He never left his home again after his personal “sit-down”. He had grown accustomed to the difficult conversations and had finally made up his mind – the final and most important act of power he had left in his rapidly weakening body. I applaud my father for knowing, when the time came, exactly where he wanted to be when it was his turn to go.
May we all fear less the difficult conversations.
Every family has at least one poet. My great-grandmother, Inez Lea Hannah, was our family’s poet. Between the ages of 12 and 13, she began writing poetry focused on the rural landscapes of the Ozarks. By the time she was eighteen, her poems were being picked up by the local papers. Unfortunately, very few of her writings remain. Mostly stuffed into drawers, old shoeboxes and now fragile books through the years, I still managed to slowly piece together a small collection of her work. This is the part of her legacy I know she would want our family to enjoy, and enjoy I do. My great-grandmother was great admirer of Robert Frost, and I often imagine her as a young girl longing to write in his rural, New England voice, though her tradition was distinctly rural, Midwestern. A book of Frost’s poetry sat next to her Bible on the old nightstand her entire life. I have often wondered what happened to those two treasured books when she was finally moved into the nursing home. Outliving most of her children, my great-grandmother not only had great genes, but was more perceptive than most; I could see it in her piercing blue eyes every time I lied to her about walking along the railroad tracks in town. She had her own spies during our summers at the farm. She also could sense controversy in the family long before it erupted, yet she often remained hesitant to interfere in the business of others (though I do think she secretly enjoyed, a little too much, her neighbor’s daily rounds of gossip).
There are so many wonderful memories of her I carry forward as a sustaining force in my life. She was the best cinnamon toast maker in the family; she never flinched when I had to give her a B12 injection, and she could be a ferocious worrier (a habit she mysteriously bequeathed to me). I not only keep her poems safely tucked away for the next generation to enjoy, but wear her simple gold wedding band on my hand as a daily reminder of her story, which has now become her legacy, and a part of mine. May she live on, and on, and on…
What we don’t learn at home about the logistics and benefits of self-empowerment through end-of-life care planning, we are even less likely to learn at school, in the workplace or in our house of worship. When it comes to writing the final script of our lives, clearly one of our most important, we are more often than not simply left to our own solitary devices.
But how can this be when we are learning how to write almost every other kind of script, for every other stage in our lives? How does this make sense? Why does one of the most important narratives of our mortal lives receive such neglect by our society?
I think we can all agree that our fierce stubbornness to avoid the end-of-life conversation at all costs is not that unusual, but it is certainly not a very helpful strategy for a successful plan of action. So how does one go about learning the craft of writing their final script? Where does one begin? The task can feel overwhelming, and because of that, it is often postponed until it is too late – another missed opportunity.
There are a few things to remember once an individual decides to author their final script. The first thing to remember (and this is important) is that no one has the right to hijack another person’s story. The script one chooses to write belongs to the person writing it. Exploring options and ideas with family, friends and professionals can be extremely helpful and affirming, but the script is still ultimately owned by the author.
The second important thing to remember is that decisions and conversations are ongoing and can be reversed, respected and reversed again. It is an evolution of dialogue with one’s self, and with those we love. Indecision is normal and does not necessarily signify a lack of desire to build the best path. What works best at one point in time for someone may radically change at another.
The last and most important thing to remember is that there is no right or wrong answer. This is not a test. It is a process of self exploration, clarification and visioning. And it’s helpful to remember that the end-of-life care planning conversation belongs to anyone who wants to have it – family, friends, physicians, nurses, faith leaders and, yes, even children.
One of my most vivid memories of early childhood is that of my ancient great-grandfather. For months on end the wraith-like minister would sit in the same upholstered chair holding onto a battered cane while staring off into a space in the house as empty as my pockets. Great-grandfather finally decided to finish dying when I was almost five years old, but not before he announced to all within earshot that no one can truly know what awaits us beyond our mortal lives. This is where my grandmother (his daughter) stepped in to assure everyone that he was no longer lucid. The mystery of his parting words will forever remain locked away from those of us who were left behind.
It snowed the day of the funeral, the only beautiful thing to happen that day that I can recall. Much to my chagrin, I was left at home with a flatulent aunt from Kansas, whom I had never met. Prone to pneumonia from birth, my mother decided aunt-what’s-her-name’s stench would do far less harm to my lungs than the cold. I felt utterly abandoned. Boxed with anger at being left behind, I refused my aunt’s feeble attempts at conversation. But I was mostly angry with my older brother, who was allowed to attend the funeral while I was left behind with no-name-gassy-aunt from the flatlands. A mere thirteen months older than me, and yet he was allowed to attend my great-grandfather’s funeral. I was infuriated.
After the family returned home, I took advantage of the emotional chaos and cornered my older brother in the kitchen. Never one to miss out on an opportunity to educate an exasperating younger sister, he grabbed my hand and pulled me away from the commotion in the kitchen to explain the facts of death and dying. A child himself, and he’s stuck with the dubious honor of shattering my mutton-headed innocence with all the facts of life and death he could muster. Quite abruptly, my brother said, “You couldn’t go to the funeral because mom said you would get sick, and you would have been bored anyway.” With knowledge comes disappointment.
However, his answer wasn’t good enough, and so I pressed on and asked when great-grandfather would return home. My brother said something traumatic like, “never”. Never?! Madness! How can a person disappear and never return? My brother continued, “Sis, you just die and go away forever.” My brain hurt with confusion. I felt a rage building against an unfamiliar force called the end-of-my-mortality grow inside of me. I didn’t know who or what force to be mad at, but I was definitely angry. I informed my brother that I would never die, that I had always lived, and that no one could ever take that away from me. In his young professorial way (yes, he’s now a physician), he calmly assured me of death’s eventuality and walked away. Shaken, and in emotional free-fall, I sat atop our basement steps and stared into the dark abyss, wondering when death would try to snatch me up and take me away from the people I loved. But over the years, after spending large amounts of time on my grandparent’s farm in the Midwest, I learned to come to terms with the cycles of life. Animals were always coming into and exiting the world, and so were members of our family. And my brain slowly stopped hurting and started accepting.
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