but more, so much more. The great love that we come from is the same love that catches us at the end. It’s so beautiful.’
Karen’s words were like fragments of truth landing clickety-click into exactly the right place, the only possible configuration. She had always said spirit is the ubiquitous substance out of which each life arises and passes away; she called this substance consciousness and said it was benevolent and eternal, like love. Some people might name this loving substance God. She didn’t. She believed that when the body dies, the energy that animated the physical form merges with consciousness.
I have often wondered whether believing in the continuity of the spirit helps us to feel more at peace about dying. When dying is purely hypothetical, a concept in the mind, believing in an afterlife often reassures people. In my view, when the body is dying, the visceral experience can be frightening, painful and intolerable, or peaceful, comfortable and manageable. Beliefs about the afterlife aren’t what make the difference between a difficult or an easeful death, more the degree to which the body’s symptoms can be effectively managed, and the more a person has made peace with the emotional experiences of his or her life.
Karen had been unconscious for a couple of hours when I sensed another change. Her breath was shallower and the breaks between breaths lasted several seconds. Her hands and feet were cool and mottled and her lips pale. Death had been lingering in the house for days, but had now moved closer.
‘What’s happening?’ Kathy asked, feeling the shift too.
‘We’ll stay right here with her,’ I replied. Karen’s eyelids fluttered, as if dreaming.
‘Should we say goodbye?’ Kathy asked.
‘Do you want some time alone with Karen?’
‘No, I just wondered if I should give her permission to go, tell her I’ll be okay.’ Kathy’s face crumpled at the pain of imminent separation.
I moved from the foot of the bed to the head, where Kathy sat, and put my arm around her shoulder.
‘We’ve been saying goodbye to Karen ever since we knew she was going to die,’ I said, stroking Kathy’s tousled hair. She hadn’t slept much, lying on a mattress on the floor by Karen’s bed the last two nights.
There’s not one moment to say goodbye, but a series of moments through which the ending slowly unfolds.
Kathy leaned her body sideways onto the bed, her head resting on Karen’s chest. ‘I don’t want to say goodbye. We’ve had such an amazing life together.’
Karen’s breath was like a whisper, the out-breath slightly more audible than the in-breath.
‘I can’t imagine Karen needs permission to go, do you?’ I said. ‘She always was the boss.’
At this we both laughed, surrendering our attempts to move the situation along.
A dog barked a few houses away. The room was quiet except for every so often when one of us said, ‘I love you.’ No other words made any sense.
Then the screen door banged against the side of the house and a rush of cold air pushed in on us. The wind had prised open the latch. We had opened the glass door earlier that afternoon so that Karen could feel the fresh air on her skin.
Tears flooded our eyes as we understood that the end was near. Ten seconds of stillness between breaths felt like forever. Another long exhalation, followed by silence – twenty seconds, thirty seconds. I knew to wait. Even after a minute there might be a final breath. And there it was. Karen breathed one more breath in and out, and then her life was over.
I didn’t want to move a muscle, as though the stillness in the room told me to wait, not to interfere with a cycle that was still completing in the room. My eyes were magnetised to the stand of poplars outside the window as they responded to a crescendo of wind and the sky that was turning deep pink as the sun dipped below the horizon. Then I noticed Karen’s face was softening in tiny increments, the frown line between her eyebrows slowly dissolving and the shape of her mouth shifting. My attention was pulled back and forth between these two happenings: to the elemental world outside the window and to Karen’s body, made up of elements too, which were shifting and dissolving in front of our eyes, in what seemed like a necessary dynamic interplay. About an hour later, the momentum in the room had ceased and I noticed a tiny smile had appeared on one side of Karen’s mouth, as if to say, ‘Yup, it’s just as I thought.’
2
DANIEL: Memory Box
Daniel stood in the doorway of my counselling room, hand-in-hand with his seven-year-old daughter, Emily.
‘Sorry for the surprise, Janie,’ he said, glancing towards his daughter. ‘Can Em entertain herself in the waiting room while I talk to you?’ He looked at me from inside dark circles of fatigue. ‘Lin came down with a migraine and stayed in bed this morning, and when Emily insisted on coming with me, I didn’t have the heart to say no.’
Preventing the little disappointments was something he could do. He had no control over the big loss that lay ahead for her.
‘My girls don’t know how sick I am,’ Daniel had told me on the phone the week before. ‘It’s better that way, don’t you think?’
He’d decided not to tell them the latest news from the doctor, that his cancer had come back with a vengeance and he likely had only a few more months to live. Being the father of two daughters aged seven and nine was Daniel’s proudest accomplishment.
‘We need to have a longer chat about this in person, don’t you think? Can you come in for a session?’ I had asked.
Two days later he knocked on my door, Emily in tow.
She looked me straight in the eye, with a big smile. She exuded self-confidence, a sign of resilience, a character trait that makes all the difference in the aftermath of a tragedy.
‘I’m so happy to finally meet you, Emily. I’ve heard lots about you.’ I stooped down to her height and held out my hand. She took it briefly.
Emily’s dark brown hair was cut into a bob with a fringe that fell shy of her wide hazel eyes. She was dressed in multiple shades of pink. Her sneakers were well-worn and the strobe lights in the heels flickered faintly as she headed for one of the comfy chairs. She pulled a colouring book and a zip-lock bag of crayons out of her backpack.
‘If you need us, just knock on this door, okay?’ I pointed to the door of my counselling room. ‘Your daddy and I will be in there talking.’
She nodded without looking up. She was already colouring the dress of Princess Aurora bright purple.
Daniel took his usual seat on the overstuffed couch with its back to the window. His baldness seemed to highlight the ashen complexion of a man losing his life force, and his baggy sweatsuit attempted to obscure his weight loss.
A large maple tree against a backdrop of blue sky filled my office window behind where Daniel sat. The tree steadied me for conversations that were not often easy.
‘My wife and her parents are relying on me to get better. When I talk about dying, they tell me to stop being so negative. They don’t want to talk about death and believe that talking
