I hadn’t imagined the night to go to the way it did. We got to telling the nursing team that she’d died, around 1:10 am. An hour or so after her last breath.
Even after six weeks and two days on the windowsill, I still needed more time with her.
Early in the illness, I would say to her, “it’s ok to let go.” Gracious, huh?
But the sicker she got, the less I could bring myself to say it. Real close to the end, the best I could manage was “you’ve been a great mum, we will cope without you and I promise to check on my sister once a week (but strictly no more that that 😂).
The nurse, Ursula, asked us to clear out by by 4 am.
I folded a pair of soft, elastic jeans, now four times too big for her, with a touristy T-shirt with the word “oui” printed in the colours of the French flag. Elene was always a fan of t-shirt with a city’s name on it, never costing more than $15 and bought for her as a gift after every holiday. A chest-postcard. I left the clothes, the silk-covered, pink pillow, at the foot of her bed. I’d wanted to give her a sponge bath and dress her but when the time came, I had suffered more than enough. I forgot to ask that she be dressed in these clothes by the funeral directors. Surely they would read my mind?
Elene’s room was a large space with two giant windows facing the rooftops and trees of south Kogarah. The hospice team was very supportive but I always got the feeling they felt there were an “awful lot of loud, ethnic people” hanging around. We were moved to the room, meant for two patients but converted into a large, single room, at the end of the corridor. Room 12 I want to say.
“Do they put their sickest patients at the end of the corridor? Does this mean they are giving up on Elene?” These questions, interpreting data in all the wrong ways, was a way to pass the time. But also trying to see into the dark, unknowable future.
About two weeks earlier we’d moved from a single room on the east side, pitch black at night aside from the street lights of main street (orange), the cranes of Port Botany container terminal and takeoff and landings at Sydney airport. How confusing to hear swirling of the nebulizer, breathing so loud it cracked over 90 decibels, but watching the city continue so, well, uninterrupted. It bothered me.
We’d been so lucky to move to the larger room. It was perfect for our vigil.
But six weeks and two days is a lot of stuff to pack up. New Yorker magazines for recycling, underpants still damp in the shower. Spare plates. A massage gun. Peppermint lip balm. Elene’s perfume. Ear plugs, books, the dog bed from the greyhound’s final visit.
Two trips to the car later, I kissed her still-warm cheek and sat for almost two hours in the silent carpark. The one and a half glasses of red wine (four hours earlier) could put more over the limit.
A guy walks past, wearing a hoodie, “it's autumn now” I think. I draft an email I've not been able or a wanting to send and get it lined up for the morning.
Sleeping isn’t available to me.
I get a lot of fast food on the way home 🍔🍔🍔, eating, but mostly crying, in the pre-dawn car park. I smile at the truckie beside me, “my mum just died” I want to whisper to him through tears, just to have told someone in person. But I know he has his own business on his mind.
Around 5 am, I tiptoe from my front door. It's been a while. The greyhound doesn’t get up but thumps her tail like a distant drum. She knows I’m back for good.
I climb into the youngest’s bed and lie to him when he drowsily asks, “is everything is alright with Nonna?” Nothing is or will be for a while.
I cry at the thought of my older kid waking in the morning to see my bags, all six and a half weeks’ worth, spread out across the doorway.
Bawling reading this. Big healing love to you all xxx
A whole season change, bags of stuff and a dog bed, how discombobulating it must be to be fast tracked to a new point in time by 4am. Your boys bed sounds like a safe place to land after that massive journey. Now, to manage their grief with yours, you are all back together now- sending so much love x