Life as I had known it since 1981 ended for me September 24, 2009. My husband was 49 years and 1 month old. He was no longer able to fight off the cancer. First it had invaded his prostate and lymph nodes, so that by the time it was diagnosed it had metastasized. Surgery no longer provided a chance for a cure. Later the cancer invaded his kidney, and his bones, causing excruciating pain. Morphine became our much appreciated friend. Radiation, chemotherapy, hormone suppression, and experimental trials each had their turn, but in the end they all let us down. Towards the end the cancer had replaced the bones in his vertebrae. They told us prostate cancer was not supposed to spread to the kidneys or the brain, but it did both.
He didn’t understand that he was too weak to stand. I tried to catch him as he struggled to raise from his wheel chair. We pivoted and fell in a slow spiral to the floor. Neither of us had the strength to lift him up again. The EMTs came, and listened to my words of caution: “He has cancer in his arm bones and his thigh bones. There is cancer in his vertebrae. Can you please pick him up without hurting him?" What compassionate experts they were. They slipped a folded sheet beneath him and causing no trauma, they lifted him back into his wheel chair. Later he again forgot that he was too weak to walk. He wanted to get out of the hospital bed. He told me as sweetly as possible, “I know you want me here, but I just need to be free.”
The night Brian left this earth, his Hospice nurse told me that he might not make it through the night. I am so grateful that she told me this. Otherwise I might have missed his passing even though I was sleeping on the sofa right next to his hospital bed.
We called Brian’s parents, sister and brother-in-law and asked if they wanted to be there. They had been there earlier in the day, but came right back over. If there is anything sadder than watching an 85 year old father and 84 year old mother say good-bye to their son, it is watching 24 year old and 22 year old daughters who did not have nearly enough time with their Dad.
Before Brian’s parents, sister, and brother-in-law returned, I crawled up in the hospital bed with Brian. He was laying on his side and I spooned my body against his. I matched my breathing to his breathing and was able to relax for the first time in a long while. Why hadn’t I been doing this during the week he’d been in this hospital bed? I know the answer. I was afraid of damaging the fragile broken skin on his legs so bloated with edema. I was afraid of causing him pain. For that moment though, it felt so right. So right that I wish I could have this much now, even if I could have nothing else of Brian. Lying next to him, feeling his warmth, listening to him breathe was wonderful!
Brian’s parents, his sister and brother-in-law returned. We gathered around Brian’s bed holding his hands and praying. I was thinking that he probably had several more hours, but suddenly his breathing turned to a death rattle and I was sure he was getting ready to go. I knelt on the head of his bed, caressing Brian’s head and face, prayed that God would ease his transition from earth to heaven and thanked Jesus for welcoming Brian. Brian breathed his last and I began to cry, “Oh Brian! I’m going to miss you! I ‘m going to miss you so much!”
It took three hours for the mortuary to get there. We went into the kitchen, because watching Brian become paler and more dead looking was too hard. There was only one man there from the funeral home, so our brother-in-law, Dwain, and our hospice nurse, Linda, helped the mortician place Brian in a body bag. They offered us one last look, but we declined. None of us wanted pictures in our heads of Brian dead. We have so many better pictures of him laughing.
