This would not be a rough draft. This is an excerpt from a longer piece that has been edited multiple times, but much of the language remains the same from when I put pen to paper on a plane ride and let my emotions unwind onto the lines...
Those last few months as we watched her waste away. She got down to eighty pounds. She couldn’t bend over without fainting or walk without help. My grandfather went to her room three times each night to check on her, give her morphine, and help her to the bathroom. She looked like a small child lying in bed, on her back, with one thin sheet draped over her body, her tiny figure visible underneath, but he didn’t see her frailness.
I tried not to go to that place, watching them—try to read—watching her—try to watch the fish—Every night, before bed, for sixty years Grampa set the kitchen table for their breakfast: two plates, two glasses, two knives, two napkins, bread, grape jelly, the toaster, and her vitamins—so she wouldn’t forget to take them. After her sudden diagnosis and even more rapid decline, he only set one plate, one glass, one knife, and one napkin. After breakfast he went to wake her, and before beginning his routine he kissed her on the cheek and asked how she was feeling. Then he spent two hours meticulously cleaning, wrapping, and changing the dressings and tubes keeping her alive. He counted every medical supply to make sure he had enough to last until the next delivery and called to make sure the nurse was coming on time. The routine became a calculated science, nothing but the best for his sweetheart.
On a Thursday the nurse brought news from the doctor. She informed them that if they chose, they could end it themselves by disconnecting her from the feeding tube, her only source of nourishment. I imagined him sitting on the bed next to her delicate outline. Sixty years of marriage and hardly a day apart. They raised two children and spoiled four grandchildren. After retirement they traveled
They both shed silent tears as they calmly discussed the news from the doctor. I could hear their muffled whispers through paper-thin walls. They agreed that a life not worth living was no life at all and he called the father of their church who came to ease their minds. He assured them that they would not be scorned for disconnecting her from a machine keeping her in a world she was ready to leave. They decided that when she was in unmanageable pain, or when they could no longer enjoy each other’s company, they would take the matter into their own hands. He would do it.
It wasn’t suicide; it wasn’t euthanasia—not that I would have blamed her for either. It was, in a sense, letting nature, life, take its course.
That afternoon, almost a year ago now, while he tended the front garden (a job that has always been hers), she sat me down to talk, knowing I already knew. As she sat across from me in “her chair” in the living room for nearly the last time, I braced myself. The feeding machine next to her maintained a steady drip…drip…drip…beep.
“Now you know I love you,” she said, her eyes tearing up, but not enough to push a full drop to the rim.
I nodded my head yes.
“Now I don’t want you to be sad, okay?”
I nodded again.
“I will always be with you, watching you, and seeing what you do in life…I don’t want to make you cry, but just know that I love you.”
I nodded my head again and hugged her.
That was it. That was how she told me it would be over soon.
As the now well worn memory flashed through my mind for the thousandth time it played like a cliché Lifetime rerun, but that didn’t hamper its potency.
No physical aspects remained, but her mind never wavered and they cherished the moments: talking, watching the birds in the garden, and even completing the daily routine of cleaning, connecting, and disconnecting the tubes and bags. But only a few days later Grampa went to her room and asked how she was feeling. She looked at him with painful eyes, and he knew, and then he did it. He gently removed the feeding tube, and didn’t meticulously clean it. Instead, he placed it in the trashcan and laid by her side for almost a week.
He did it because the one thing he knew was that he wanted what was best for his sweetheart. He now sets one plate, one glass, and one knife for breakfast and after clearing the table she’s not there to wake, but he doesn’t cry because he knows he did what was best, and he still loves her. He let her go gracefully.
