rest in peace

In the room, about to help Walter to the toilet. In walks the new girl. Never worked here before. From House Pool. I've been training her on the other wing. She got Rosa up in her wheelchair and took her to the toilet. Rosa doesn't use the toilet at night. Too much effort and strain. Diapers. Rosa fell asleep in her chair? Can't get her back into bed? Okay. I'll come take care of it when I'm finished here. Rosa and I understand each other. We really get along.

Walter's taking his time. Lonely. He asks about my boyfriend in the army. Walter's a WWII veteran. You heard from that boyfriend of yers? That's good, I guess. Do they get supplies? Me? Oh, we always got supplies. We were with Patten. What was it like? Well, we'd sit around in a circle counting. COUNTING, I said COUNTING. Yeah. We'd get past a thousand, and they just wouldn't know what to do. We'd sit there and one of us would start "thousand..." and then one of them would jump in, "...five!" and we'd all be so excited. It was a big deal. You can't blame them y'know. No one taught them consecutive numbers, y'see. Later it'd be... "thousand....... six!!" and then that's where it'd stop. At first it was okay, sittin in the circle. counting. but after a while you just got plain bored and you had no patience left for counting. you didnt want to count anymore. And then you'd start callin them dirty names. goddamn arabs. it wasnt their fault, goddamn arabs, nobody taught them to count consecutive numbers like that, but you just didn't have anymore patience. What? What's that? Yeah, Patten. Yeah, that's the very same one. He was one queer duck. But he was a damn good leader. They all feared him cuz he could count thousand-SEVEN. And that's why he was a damn good leader. They all feared him. Action? Oh, boy did we see action. Did we ever see action. Killed those goddamn bastards by the dozens. They could hardly count past thousand-TWO. Oh. Okay. Goodnight.

Walking briskly down the hall to Rosa's room. Already been a good 10 minutes. The light's off. Flip the switch, cooing "Ros-." Stop silent. No need for language. One glance reveals the vacancy. Stillness. Sallow, yellow-green beneath her tan, cuban skin. Slumped ever so slightly. Icy stillness. Maybe it's a mistake. A false alarm. An overreaction. Creep closer and slide fingers across her smooth, cool wrists. Impossibly still. Hand moves to her chest. Still warm there. Is that her moving ever so slightly? or the illusion created by the pounding in my breast. Nothing. Her lungs are deflated, just like her shoulders. CPR? Thought dismissed immediately. She's DNR. Everyone on this wing is DNR. Not that it would have made a difference at this point.

Inform the new girl on your way down the hall to the phones. Her theatrical "NO! Really??" Makes your stomach turn. She already knew. Maybe she couldn't accept it either. She's not dealing with it well, though for very different reasons. Poor girl. What must that have been like. First day, first time she set eyes on this woman, she dies on her watch. She was only unconscious when she left, though... not sleeping... not vacated... Rosa slipped away to the Lord alone in her chair in the dead of the night. There was no blame in her passing. Maybe that's the hardest thing to accept.

Post-mortem care is not as horrifying as I had expected. Unreal would be a better word for it. It's too easy. Caring for someone can only be difficult if the person is there. Rosa was not there. Only something nearly 300 lbs. Deadweight. Dead deadweight. A nurse gives a terse laugh at her own joke. Stare blankly. Six people needed to transfer her from her wheelchair to the bed before she stiffens, and so she can be prepared for her family to come pay their respects. So I can prepare her. Six people. Urgent voice, "NO skin tears, ladies! Caaaareful of the shoulder, there!! NO BROKEN BONES!" Realizing with shock how insanely fragile the human body is when its muscles aren't being used to counteract force applied to it. How excruciatingly fragile is the human body. Gown slipping. Flesh exposed. What is flesh? Her diaper is soiled. Nurse says it's common for the strain of having a BM to kill the elderly. Rosa was already compromised. She didn't have a BM on the toilet, though. She had it after she'd passed. "This is the cacapoopoo that killed her." I thought as I wiped her clean. Strange thought at a time like this... but that's how she always referred to her BM's to me every morning. "Bring extra paper... I made a cacapoopoo!" she'd call from the bathroom as I made her bed. Part of me felt like I ought to save that soiled diaper for her family. Immediately embarrassed by the impulse. It wouldn't have any significance to them.

There was no peace until everyone else had cleared out. I said a rosary with her at her bedside while we waited for her daughter to arrive. She would have liked that. She was Catholic and very religious in an earthy sort of way. She was in the habit of talking to the Lord as I got her ready for the day each morning in spanish. It was endearing.

I was blind sided by Rosa's death. When you walk into as many people's rooms while they're sleeping as often as I do, you come to take for granted that they'll be alive. None of the people I care for are in good health. But I wouldn't have thought that most of them were that close to death, least of all Rosa. Rosa was probably the most together, at least mentally and in some ways physically, of my residents. Now it dawns on me the reality of the situation: I am walking amongst people with one foot already through that door. Funny how you can know these things without KNOWING them.

Rosa's death was a blessing. I can honestly say that praying at her bedside I found true joy at her passing. He life was like a job well done. And now she can rest. Looking at her lying peacefully still in bed, her sheets pulled smooth and tidy, her seemingly translucent skin by the soft light of the bedside lamp, I saw I think for the first time ever that death is not just natural... it's beautiful. Perhaps you need more personal separation from the one who has left in order to be able to appreciate that.

Even so, there is now a subtle urgency behind every kind word, every gentle touch. Nagging in the back of my head is the knowledge that I may very likely be the last human interaction that any of these people come into contact with. It has to count. It's like hanging out with the wrong crowd... while no one can make you sin, they can certainly lead you to it. I am capable of being an occasion for grace to each of these people before their death. I can choose to have positive interactions with them, those productive of joy and hope and goodness. Or I can be short tempered and impatient and brusque, and lead them to despair and contempt and hatred. And that might be the context in which they die. The spiritual state in which they face their Judgment. That is the true burden of my job.

Walking out to the car the even greater burden hits me... the same is true of EVERYONE whose life is in any way intertwined with my own. Nothing can be taken for granted. No one. And in the words of Father Zossimo in the Brothers Karamazov, "We are each responsible for all."