You Never Know

A personal essay by Debra Kennedy about her final moments with her stepfather

I perch on a vinyl chair, hands clasped, beside a hospital bed on which an old man lies, propped up and wheezing softly. Gingerly, I pull my phone from the purse tucked beside me and text my sisters: “Hasn’t woken. Shallow breathing,” then slip the device back into its place. If I were sitting in an airport or a clinic waiting room, I would be checking emails, playing games, or surfing the web. But not now. I am not killing time. I am witnessing time doing its work, witnessing a person dying for the first time in my life.

Some people are good with death. They sweep into a room, arms laden with food which they deposit on a surface and then embrace the weeping survivors. They pat backs, know what to do with the dead or dying person, make phone calls, say things like, “So sorry for your loss, she was wonderful, you were lucky to have her as long as you did, she’s in a better place.” And then they put the kettle on for tea.

I am not one of these people. It is not that I don’t commiserate. In fact, I am usually so crushed with grief that I am unable to speak without letting loose a wail. I freeze, incapable of communication. I run away, knowing that the stupid, blubbering comments I can force out will only make things worse. But today is different. Somehow, I feel it is a duty I cannot run from. My sisters and I have agreed to take turns sitting with our dying stepfather. Otherwise, he will die alone. 

The room is dim, its lone window on the other side of the bed illuminating his shrunken form. A chair on either side of the bed, a wardrobe and small chest of drawers against the wall complete the furnishings. A wheeled overbed table is parked in the shadows near the closed door to the common room of the “cottage.”

My stepfather has been a prisoner in this care home for the past five years, escaping occasionally only to be found lost and wandering around the care home. This is a man who only a few years previous, at the age of 80, climbed the soaring cedar tree in his back yard, limbing with his chainsaw as he ascended, and felled the giant into the few feet of space between his house and the next. A man who left home and school when barely a teenager, travelled and worked all over western Canada and into Alaska, picking fruit, working on oil rigs, falling massive trees. A man who could narrate stories attached to every place he had spent time in his long life, who could navigate the winding ravines and thickly wooded slopes of mountain ranges, hunting for game, mushrooms, huckleberries, and firewood. Now he lies motionless, eyes closed, his breath ragged, uneven, and barely audible under the sound of the Doukhobor choir singing Russian hymns emanating from a small CD player.

Photo by J Shim on Unsplash

Russian was his first language, but I don’t know it. I can only imagine what words the voices are singing. Do they offer the comfort of an eternal and peaceful life in heaven after the sorrows and toil of life on earth? I would like to believe this idea that death is not the end, that we go to a better place, but I have no faith in any religious scripture. I am certain humans have been inventing comforting stories of an afterlife since they first realized that life is finite, that we are born to die.

And there are the personal stories, like my Great Aunt’s assertion that she felt her sister (my grandmother) take her hand at the time of her death, even though they were hundreds of miles apart. Or the dreams in which dead loved ones appear. Once I had a neighbour who claimed to be a medium—a bridge between the living and the dead. I had my doubts, though, and didn’t invest in a session with her. These can be explained as inventions of our minds, generated to give us comfort, the placating belief that death is not the end of us. Of course, we desperately miss our loved ones and desire to be reconnected to them, to know there is another dimension in which we will be reunited. But with no proof, we cannot know. 

The body of my stepfather will stay here, on this earthly plane, reduced to ash. That I know. Some people, I have read, have their body cryogenically preserved, in hopes that they can be revived in a future with more advanced biological technologies—an afterlife of sorts. Some of them have only their heads frozen, believing that the brain contains their essence. But both groups must believe the entirety of our “selves” is encased within our flesh and this is a way to escape death. No soul leaving the body and rising into a cloudy utopia for them. Their faith lies in human ingenuity and the wads of cash it takes to preserve their bodies, neither of which I share. 

This death is not unexpected or tragic. Not a violent accident, or a child taken young. This is a natural progression, the way it works if you’re lucky and avoid the accidents, diseases, and murders that happen to others every day of our lives. A good death.

Pulling up my phone, I check the time, see that my shift is over. I cannot spend the night here. I rise, move to the CD player and turn off the music. I want nothing more than to get out of here, loosen my jittery muscles, walk out into the fresh air, and rejoin my living family—my son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. But as I look back at my stepfather, so close to death, I feel like I am abandoning him. Another fifteen minutes, I think.

In the silence now, I can hear the space between his breaths stretching out.  A long interval of no sound—I count fifteen seconds—and then a gasping inhale through dry lips. I text my sisters, letting them know it could be soon. I sit and wait, squeezing my fingers together so tightly that the knuckles whiten. A wave of grief wells up within me, and I brace myself, try to contain it, but it crests, spilling out in jerky sobs and tears. I bend my head, try to swallow the sadness, but it refuses to dissipate and the tears drip onto my folded fingers. For whom am I weeping? For my stepfather? My mother who died alone? For my father whom death snatched before I knew him? For myself, looking down the same slippery slope? For my children and grandchildren who, if I am lucky, I will leave behind?

We do not grieve for the dead but for ourselves, our loss, for the gaping hole left in our existence. Oh, how we miss them, even if we ignored or mistreated them in life. What a comfort it would be to believe they wait for us, that death is not a final goodbye.

My stepfather’s breath returns—little puffs of air, weak but rhythmic. Then a click behind me, and an arc of pale-yellow light falls across the floor. I sniff, press a tissue to my nose, and turn to the opened door. A woman with short gray hair, dressed in a smock and apron, enters the room. She checks the wastebin and begins to wipe the wheeled table near the door. I am surprised that a cleaner would venture in here now. She doesn’t look at me, says nothing, so I clear my throat and say hello, thinking that when she notices me and the figure in bed, she will realize the situation and leave. She looks up from her swabbing and says, quickly with a little intake of air, “Oh, you never know, you never know.” She resumes her work, her hand going round and round, pushing the table slowly forward as she does.

I rise from the chair, along with my suspicion that she is not a worker, but a resident of the cottage. “Can I help you?” I ask. “I think you’re in the wrong room.”

She looks up wide-eyed and points to the chest of drawers against the wall. “Oh, do you see that bridge over there?” Again, that little enervating intake of breath with the words, and a sparkle in her eyes. 

I look at the chest, shake my head slowly, and then slide to the open doorway, poke my head into the common room, searching for a worker. It is quiet and dim, the dining area unoccupied, the easy chairs empty.

“Oh, it’s right over there. A bridge.” She wheels the table deeper into the room toward the chest of drawers. 

My fingers tingle as I realize I am alone with a demented woman and a dying man. But when she turns to me with a winsome face, I feel the corners of my lips tug.

I walk over to her, and say, “Maybe we should take this table out where there’s more light, so you can see better to clean it.”

She allows me to help steer the table, and we head toward the door. As she shuffles along, she looks over at me, her eyes bright, and says again, “Oh, you never know, you never know.”

After I find the care aid, who smiles and tells me that, yes, indeed, the woman is a curious one, I return to the room, casting glances at the chest of drawers as I push my arms into my jacket and pick up my purse.

My stepfather does not re-awaken but lasts through the night. The next morning, I receive a message from my sister that he has passed away, in her presence. Predictably, I blubber and run out to my car. I drive to the care home, go through the locked doors and into the room one more time, so that I can say goodbye. Reluctantly, I touch his hand, which is cool, gaze at his drawn face. There is something gone, missing. Is it just his breath? Or did his spirit rise from him, cross a bridge into another dimension? Is he high on a mountain slope, sitting on a tree stump, picking huckleberries?

You never know.

Debra Kennedy is a mother, grandmother, and retired teacher living in the Kootenay region of British Columbia. She has been writing and painting for most of her life when she could fit it between work and family. Her stories have been published online in Persimmon Tree, Quagmire, and Dreamers magazine. When not writing, she enjoys reading, cooking, and gardening, as well as walking, biking, and Nordic skiing on the trails near her home.

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