Room 408

that’s where you died

 I remember an angry, stubborn and fiercely secretive woman brooding in the corner of a 4-bed hospital room like a storm does on a  thick, sweltering, and close summer evening. Secretive, because you insisted on keeping your terminal illness  from your ex-husband, and forbade your children from telling their father their mother was dying. Peevish, sullen, volatile- you had a mood and general countenance I could only describe as gunmetal grey. I don’t blame you, a 51- year old woman set to embrace the prime of her life, hijacked by an unruly disease and now forced to spend her long days and even longer nights lingering, in a hospital ward, waiting for Thyroid Cancer to finally kill her. Though it sure made nursing you a challenge at times. Even though the rapidly growing malignancy on your thyroid gland, and the tracheostomy it eventually necessitated, had silenced you – taken your voice away – your outbursts could be extremely vitriolic just the same. 

In those early days of your admission you lashed out at us all. Dr. C had just terminated your chemotherapy protocol, telling you in his blunt way that all hope had gone: your case is terminal. You did not accept the news graciously. Soon after, a  series of crises led to the need for a tracheostomy. It took your physical voice away, still you spoke to us, though. You did not intend on going gently into that good night. I remember your denial. How, at one point, you decided that the oncologist made a mistake. The reason your head was swelling so severely that it made your eyes close, you announced, was because of an undiagnosed heart condition, not terminal thyroid cancer.  I cannot imagine the  journey, battling this cancer alone. Honestly, even after all these years, whenever my thoughts turn to you, I can’t even.

 We watched you lose each tiny battle with the cancer. Day by day, week by week. Eventually, silent, sad resignation crossed your face like a shadow, and rested there. So much living and mothering left to do, just one course to complete  your PhD, and cancer, that cruel and miserly grinch, had come and stolen it all away from you, from your children. You hung on, for as long as you could. Maybe for too long? Some days, the most difficult of days, we all just wanted it to end. For you, for your children. And yes, for us, also. You hung on. It fucking hurt. You’d think it wouldn’t. You’d think we’d sequester our feelings into some locked partition of our hearts, and that clinical coldness easily presented itself like a blanket, with which we could wrap ourselves. Hear me when I whisper quietly,  I am not a machine. 

I remember trying really hard not to let the other patients see me cry whenever the harpist would come and play for you. Music Therapy provided a small, simple pleasure, a beautiful one that drew a smile upon your face, a beautiful smile. We marvelled that you could still smile, we would move mountains to make it happen as often as we could. I went home and sobbed one evening after a phone call you had with your mother, who lived in Montreal and could not travel to see you one last time before your death.  You had no voice:  you could not even talk to your own mother on the phone. You could not even tell your mother you loved and missed her. You could only listen as she spoke to you. I can’t even. 

I remember marvelling at how you could write out what you wanted to say on the paper so neatly, so legibly. Even with your eyes swollen shut, your handwriting looked like schoolmarm script – perfectly formed and readable. I’ll always remember your reply to my declaration of your strength and bravery:  don’t make me brave, make it easy. In that moment,  a shattering feeling ripped through me- imagine a torrent of glass shards focussed on a single point of a  soft, over-ripened fruit.

I watched, over a period of eight months, as  your body withered, then began to fail,  and your spirit continued to resist and fight. Each and everyday I worked with you, you took my breath away. When I think of you now, well, you still do. You challenged us – my colleagues and me – every day, you made us feel it. You taught us courage, hope, compassion, patience, and mostly, humility. Thank you. I feel so privileged to have shared these raw and intimate moments of your life and to have made a difference in how you travelled the road to your death. 

I’ll never forget how you said goodbye to your children. On mother’s day they came to visit, spent the afternoon with you, pinned their artwork to your hospital room walls. Then they said their goodbyes – that was the last time they saw you alive. Two long and lonely weeks later, you died, alone, in the hours before dawn, in your private and dark room, room 408. I remember. Four oh eight. How could I ever forget?