Yes, Wally is Dying

hannah miller
Sep 5, 2018 · 3 min read
“woman wiping her eyes” by Jeremy Wong on Unsplash

Edna is sitting in the chair across from me in my office at the hospital. She says, “Wally is the most wonderful man on earth. We have been married for 60 years and I love him so much. He isn’t going to die yet. He will get better. I don’t want him to die. He is such a wonderful man.”

I let her talk. She is frantic, eyes glittering, summoning super human strength. The force of her strength fills the room. She can stop Wally from dying with her iron clad will. She is manic, speaking in a steely stream, her frail exterior contradicting her fierce will.

I keep her in my office to allow her to rage in private away from Wally’s bedside, away from the team that is now attending to her beloved husband. They are giving him palliative care as Edna speaks, cleansing his body of foul excretions, hydrating his lips and mouth with moisture, arranging him high up on white pillows to ease his beleaguered breaths, combing his hair, shaving his stray white chin hairs.

A Nurse comes into the room and gives him a little morphine and scopalamine to alleviate the death rattle. A little baby powder is sprinkled and rubbed gently into his clavicles so that Edna won’t remember the smell of death as she leans over him to kiss him one last time.

When I know it is time, I take Edna to Wally. It is time to say Goodbye. She drapes her body over Wally willing him to come back. She drops tears of grief like flower petals enough to resurrect his parched body. She would imbue him with the life that she still holds if she could but it is in vain. Wally takes his last breath but he doesn’t take Edna with him which is her tragedy.

I touch her and tell her that he is gone. She cries inconsolably and I leave her to spend her last moments with the great love of her life in private. She spends an hour, give or take. I call her son to notify him of his father’s death. He says he will be here shortly. I tell Edna that her son is on the way . I must leave to go home to my own family. I am already late. How do you leave in this midst?

As I am driving home in the dusk and cross a train track, I see emergency vehicles down the line a bit from my turn off for home. A car is on the tracks.

I learn the next day that Edna was in the car and had turned onto the tracks by mistake blinded by grief. She was not hurt and they extracted her car from the tracks.

I had thought her family would come for her but she must have staggered out between the shift change and got into her car in her ragged state.

The team were engaged with others dying and so it goes. It goes like that…….

As for me, I buried my feelings that next morning for another Wally and Edna here in the hospital.

I write this in memory of Edna and Wally, such great love I will never forget.

The Junction

The Junction is a digital crossroads devoted to stories, culture, and ideas. Our interests are legion.

hannah miller

Written by

Story telling was a part of my history. I grew up on an Island in the Atlantic where oral stories were told for entertainment.

The Junction

The Junction is a digital crossroads devoted to stories, culture, and ideas. Our interests are legion.

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