I volunteer on the palliative care floor in a local hospital. Hospice volunteers are trained to to enter the the space of dying person with no personal agenda: no words of wisdom to convery, no advice to impart. Each visit is so unique. For me it is like taking a journey each time where I don’t know the destination, yet I can’t say that I don’t care — in fact I care very much. But I feel a kind of surrender in my interaction with the patient or the relatives sitting by the bedside. Moment by moment I have to figure out next what to say (or not to say) . There is nothing to guide me but my own intuition. Often silence seems the most appropriate action.
Deathbed by Munch
The bed holds her.
She lies stiff and straight,
her eyes closed, mouth
and nose pinched;
they rise like sharp peaks
on the dark knob
which is her head
Her son, all warm flesh,
sits and sighs beside the bed;
his eyes, pools of black ink,
that spill over.
“Who is she?” I ask
“She was everything,” he says
I want to ask questions.
He lifts his palms, exasperated
at this lack of understanding
of a grief too big to talk around.
Tears slip through his eyes,
a sluice he just manages to contain
because drowning in blackness
is a sure possibility
His wife, the daughter-in-law,
struts into the room, her eyes blinking.
She wants to talk.
I hear stories about this old woman
who shared their home,
who set the table each night
who made breakfast the next morning.
Her grandchildren called out for her
when they entered the house.
In family photos
it is the grandmother who
sits in the centre smiling;
the others find their place
around her.
The wife frets and asks
how can they live without her?
The husband puts his face in his hands.
Silence settles on this scene;
becomes an emptiness
then an empty cup, lifted up
not noticed
or defined or filled
where nothing is needed,
or sure
or explained because
words, too heavy,
bring darkness
Yet there is movement here,
barely detectable,
(and only to an outsider)
so subtle, so joyful,
so nimble as it flows
through its body, still breathing,
on this bed, spirals round
this man and his wife;
penetrates the weight here
softens it
A glad spirit who loved much
and rejoices
