My husband had cancer ten months when I had the dream. I took care of his needs for almost eleven months, and although some days there seemed to progress, in hindsight I was really a steady progression on a downhill curve.
One night I had a dream I was upstairs in our two-story house and looked out the window, my youngest son, who faces a large field behind. I could see a big machine coming inexorably closer to the house. He made a terrible racket, almost like a sound beating. With fear, I knew he was about to enter the house through the back corner of the kitchen and living room where my husband Sat I tried to call and warn everyone, but I could not speak. I ran downstairs, feeling him get closer and closer.
When I got down in the living room, my husband's chair, where he always sat in the corner, it was completely gone. The car had come through the back of the house, as I had feared and swept him and his chair away. He went around the front of the house and through the side yard.
I heard my youngest son to speak out the side to a friend of my husband, and the conversation was normal, as if nothing had happened. I wanted to scream, but it was useless. When I awoke, I knew with certainty that my husband was dying.
I never spoke of that dream. I could not talk to him about it. I was afraid to admit I knew what it meant. I was doing my best to keep my husband alive, but in my dream state, I knew he was dying.
That day was the first time I recognized the truth of his imminent death. That afternoon, our regular hospice nurse arrived, my husband and asked quietly, without fanfare, how long he thought he had. I just looked at him without saying a word. He said that based on its experience, probably two or three weeks. I went into a state insensitive. I did not expect to face their own death and mortality in this way. Yet, it was natural he would have known the end was near. I was denying myself.
When the nurse left, walked out with her. I told the dream I had. He put his arms around me in my distress. I faced the truth that he was dying.
That week, my husband refused to let me enter any protein rich formula I had prepared for him in enteral pump, his only source of nourishment. I tried to argue with him, but he was quietly adamant. I still see the expression on his face. He simply said: "Not anymore." Exactly. This was his way of telling me this is the end. Two weeks later he died. Has not been discussed, we did not 'tell the boys no longer wanted to receive the support short his stomach could take. It 'just been done. We should have discussed it with children? I do not know. We talked with them about everything else. Above all, his father always said what he loved them.
The last week is a mixed collection of confused memory. My husband has not slept well since and dozing off throughout the day. He developed a bed sore that we were trying to cope, but would be incredibly painful. His focus turned inward. There was little verbal communication, and I was at his side most of the time. At night, would wake up at two or three o'clock in the morning, and had little water cups at a time. It 'was amazing, considering he had not been able to eat or drink in three months or more. It became incredibly weak and I could not help him to raise on the table, even as light as it had become. My heart was crying inside, but there was nothing I could do but love the man who had married twenty years before. I was exhausted, and I knew he could not take anymore. I wanted him to go to bed and asked God to take him. His passing was relatively quiet, but I always wondered if it would be easier if we talked more than him died.
Elaine Williams copyright 2008
No comments:
Post a Comment