Every Breath is a Tiny Prayer

I was told a few years ago that I am private person. I strongly disagreed by saying I blogged all of the time, about all struggles and I felt I was honest. The same person challenged me that I am controlling what the readers hear and they aren’t seeing my broken heart, or tears. That I can edit my words and make them sound pretty. They weren’t taking away from my writing, but saying just because I blog doesn’t mean I’m an open book. Later, they asked where I cried or grieved and when my answer was the shower or in the middle of the night, they said “well those are both very solitary places”. I couldn’t disagree.

I still felt confused about the term private person. I talk to all sorts of people. I laugh with anyone I meet. I cry easily. I swear a lot and share opinions. None of that seems private. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that unless prodded I won’t often share my most inner emotions and thoughts. I’m a 100%, never been any different, internal processor. I have headaches from this. Most times it takes weeks for me to work out thoughts and if left to my own devices I would only journal, isolate myself while hurting, make jokes about my pain, or excuse them away.

The last is my most favorite form of self preservation. I can always find someone who is hurting more than me. I focus on that instead.

So I don’t write much anymore. And what may have been a gift even 5 years ago is now a struggle and something that results in slamming the laptop shut and hating myself. I’m out of practice and every word I write is terrible.

I’m not angry with those people for challenging me on this. It’s taken me a few years to get to what may be the bedrock of that statement and I’m beginning to believe they were right. But in the meantime it felt fake to share emotions on here. It felt counterfeit to write words I knew were polished and edited. A few times I did. And so often people thanked me for my honesty. I’m still working that one out. John says I am the worst at throwing the baby out with the bathwater. [well, he never said those words, but the meaning is exactly what he is getting at] I am extreme and terrible at balance and quitting writing, he says, was a disservice to all, but that I’m the one who suffered most.

My sister almost died the other night. In the most true sense of the word. People say that all the time. So do I. Evangeline is gonna kill me. I almost died of humiliation. This task will be the death of me. I won’t stop saying it and neither will you. It’s a figure of speech and that’s cool. But this is not a figure of speech. This was the real deal.

Due to terrible communication and bad timing, John and I only received a text saying It’s bad, can you come up? and then one hour later when we were still 30 minutes away John asked how she was and we got another text saying It doesn’t look good. Will talk to you when you get here.

In those moments, I believed the last time I would see my sister alive had already passed before me. I thought about the last hug, the last texts, the last words. I hope they were good, I hope I squeezed her tight and whispered I love you, Mary Moo with as much affection as I usually do. I hoped any thoughts of me before she passed from this world to the next adventure made her smile.

When we got there she was alive. But all of the nurses kept relaying she is a DNR over and over to their co-workers. I must have heard it 20 times. They had given her Narcan, a drug that immediately stops the effects of narcotics. It is the drug they give overdose patients. I asked. Which is what had happened to her. Her kidneys began to fail and all of the pain medication they gave her weren’t filtered and had built up in her body. She was in a lot of pain.

Her moaning, saying please, was what John and I walked into.

“I’m here Mary.” I grabbed her fingers. She slowly opened her eyes.

“Seester. It hurts so much. I thought I was dying. Where were you?”

“I didn’t know” It was the truth. “But I’m here now. I love you, Mary moo.”

They told us the next 24 hours were critical and would give us a lot of answers. We didn’t know if she would live through the night.

They gave her more narcotics and after 20 minutes of waiting for that to take effect she fell asleep.

My brother in law is a machine. His eternal encouragement and steadfastness is astonishing. Tears brimmed the edges of his red, tired eyes. When John hugged him he allowed to let those tears come.

Hours later, in the dark of the early morning, I was sitting by her bed. She woke up and saw me. She smiled “Seester?”

I sat up straight. “I’m here. I’m so sorry you feel so bad.”

“I thought I was dying. I told Travis I loved him and told him thank you so much for taking such good care of me. I told him he did a great job. I said, you’re my most fave of my life. You always will be. I’ll always love you. I noticed he wasn’t answering and I looked up and he was crying. I closed my eyes again and knew he heard me. I knew he heard me. He would always know, now. I said it and he will know. I got a chance to let him know. I got a chance to say goodbye.”

I gave her more ice chips.

“I heard him say ‘You aren’t gonna die, babe, I’m gonna see you soon, ok? I love you and you’re welcome.’ Emily, he believed even in that moment I wasn’t going to die. How does he do that?”

She licked her lips and asked for more ice.

“It’s nothing like I thought it would be, in the moments before dying. Maybe that’s because I didn’t die. But I thought I was. I thought this was it. And I think I was close.”

“You were.”

The sun was just starting to glow on the horizon. “The sun is coming up, Moo. It’s another day.”

She strained her neck and looked out the window. “Oh wow. How pretty. So simple and so pretty.”

I moved her hair from her face and she went on.

“When they wheeled me away from Travis I thought of Elaine.”

I felt an ache in my heart when I heard her name. The sharpness of the wound has dulled over time. But I still hear her laugh in my dreams.

“I thought I was gonna see her again today.”

“That would have been a happy reunion.”

She smiled and I think she was hearing Elaine’s laugh, too.

“I thought, I’m gonna beat Suanne to see her. And I was happy for a moment to think this pain would be gone. I was so sad when I thought of all of you, but I was happy for me. To know I was done. I don’t want to die, but it hurts so much.”

I wiped tears away. I looked up at Suanne, Elaine’s mom, asleep in the chair by the window. Mary’s eyes were closed and she continued on.

“I was regretting I didn’t agree to the DNR. I wanted to tell them I changed my mind but I couldn’t speak. So I just hoped I would die. But right before I fell asleep, or right before I don’t remember anything else, I said to Jesus am I about to meet you? Will I see your face now, instead of my family’s? I couldn’t believe it when I woke up in pain. I didn’t die.”

The sunrise was an orange, gauzy glow and slowly lighting up the room. The ice in her cup was almost gone. The sun shone on her hair and lit it up the tiniest bit. I could tell she was getting tired. I didn’t think I’d hear her voice again. And here I was listening to her. It is one of the most surreal moments of my life.

John walked in and smiled at me. He moved the monitors so Mary could watch the rest of the sunrise. People began to quietly stir and just like that, the curtain closed on this story. The timing was perfect. It was just enough.

I had been made privy to the thoughts of a person who almost died. Thoughts that would never have been known. And I was amazed she had so many of them. Fluid, concrete, precise.

I heard a story once of a woman and man snorkeling in Hawaii. They had been many times and this particular time the tide got her, took her out and she was never found. He saw her as a speck far away, but despite all of their efforts they never even found a trace of her. What haunted me about that story was no one ever knew what her last moments were like. No one will ever know her last thoughts or if she died with peace and warmth surrounding her. She never got to say goodbye or thank you for such a beautiful life together.

I was grateful Mary got to say goodbye to Travis. I was grateful I got to hear her thoughts before what she thought was truly the end. There is a gift in death like this that sudden death doesn’t afford. I can see that all these years into this journey of cancer.

At this moment she is doing as well as can be expected and recovering. She and Travis are still in the hospital, eight days later. At this point in the game there is never a full sigh of relief, because the battle is ongoing. The disease stays there. The stress keeps me up at night. The grooves in my heart run deeper.

Years ago a woman with much publicity during her battle with breast cancer, died, and when we found out, we were together and my sister simply said she did it, with a far away look on her face. I will never forget that moment when I realized that only someone who is going through a chronic illness that is one day expected to take your life, can see death as a part of the story that has to be lived through, not just endured. There are steps you have to take. Because so often death isn’t swift. And the process takes time.

I would have said she did it if Mary’s time to go was on Wednesday. There would have been an inexplicable amount of tears, but also much relief. I would have been so so proud. Of getting there. Making it. Finishing it.

Why do I write about a skin-of-our-teeth experience? Why don’t I just bask in the greatness of modern medicine and life?

I don’t know. Why do 3 little words change my perspective on death? Why are the thoughts of a dying person so precious? Why was that sunrise and glow in the room like something of a movie? That’s the stuff that shapes us.

I cried my whole way through writing this. My heart physically aches. You couldn’t see my tears, so I’m telling you they were there. I edited a little. Mostly misspelled words.

I know it’s ok to edit. I know it’s ok to write these words without saying how I’m feeling in the moment. That’s the art of writing. I know those people didn’t mean it in that way.

But today, I want you to know. Behind these words was a hurting sister who cried her whole way through.