by Leslie Brody
A few days later, he was back in the chair.
“So this is what it means to ‘succumb to the complications of cancer’,” he said, quoting the obituary cliché.
“Oh, Sweetie,” I said. I kneeled on the floor, put my head in his lap and put my arms around him. “I love you.”
I didn’t want to say “you’ll beat this” or “we’ll get through this,” or anything patently false. I didn’t want lies between us.
“I’m here with you” was all I could think to say.
I just couldn’t bear to confine him upstairs in that chair, or in bed, like an invalid. That would surely sink him into the deepest depression. But it was becoming harder for him to get around.
One night Elliot wanted to change the TV station. The remote was broken and I was upstairs, so he got down on all fours to try to push the channel button. Then he couldn’t lift himself back on the couch. I couldn’t pull him up either. Helen’s face fell.
I dialed 9-1-1.
“Hi, this is Leslie Brody,” I told the dispatcher. “It’s not an emergency, but my husband is sick and got on the floor and I can’t get him up. Can you please send over two strong men?”
“Is he in any pain?”
“No, he’s okay, he just can’t get up.”
Within minutes a volunteer ambulance unit arrived, Siren screaming.
“How are you doing Sir?” one of the men asked kindly.
“I’m okay,” Elliot said. “I’m just stuck.”
“Are you in any pain?”
“No. I just got down here like a schmuck and can’t get up again.”
One said don’t worry, they did this all the time. It’s called a lift-assist. Who knew?
The two men linked arms behind Elliot’s back, under his armpits, and in one deft motion they hoisted him up straight. They escorted him to a chair at the dining table. Elliot accepted their help so humbly it was touching. I could see a lesser man fuming.
“You’re looking a little jaundiced, Sir,” one volunteer said, checking his vitals. I had gotten so used to Elliot’s yellow complexion I barely noticed anymore.
“Yeah, well, it’s been that way for a while,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“He has pancreatic cancer,” I added.
“Ah, I see. Well, take care, Sir. If you need us again, don’t hesitate.”
As soon as they left I put a fifty dollar check in the mail to the volunteer ambulance corps. I thought back in shame over all the times I’d thrown their fundraising letters into the trash.
I was a wreck. I was also trying to spend some time with Alex after he got home from school. I’d been so consumed with Elliot, I was afraid Alex was feeling neglected. Every single time I sat down on the couch to hear about Alex’s day at school, or sign his homework, or watch a bit of baseball with him, Helen kept butting in.
“Elliot says he needs his pain medicine,” she said.
“Okay, fine, just a minute, I’ll get it.”
Then a little later, “Elliot’s still sleeping,” she said. “It’s been a long time.”
“It’s okay. Let him rest.”
Then a little later, “Elliot wants some of that strawberry milk. I don’t know where it is. Can you make some?”
“Sure.”
Alex rolled his eyes. He was polite to Helen but getting sick of the interruptions too. He grumbled when I said I better get started on dinner, maybe he could hang in the kitchen with me? I put pasta on to boil. I didn’t have the energy for anything else.
Of course that’s when Elliot called me because he needed to go upstairs to the bathroom. Alas, we didn’t have one on the first floor. I hadn’t ordered one of those humiliating portable “commodes” because I just couldn’t see Elliot ever agreeing to use one.
So he began the trudge upstairs. We had a method. I crouched behind him, my head by his legs. As he swung his left foot back off a step, I’d catch it and push it up onto the next step. Then he swung his right foot back, I’d catch it and hoist it to the next step. He leaned so hard on the banister I was afraid it would break.
Elliot dragged himself up, step by tedious step, until he got to the landing. It took almost twenty minutes.
“I have to sit,” he gasped. “I’m out of gas.”
He was stuck.
So I dialed 9-1-1 again. I couldn’t believe we needed another hand so soon, just two days after our last call. Within minutes a young policeman built like a football player was at our door. He had a shiny black gun in his holster. Alex’s eyes grew wide as he came to see, then he backed away to play at the computer. Maybe he was timid. Maybe he didn’t want to seem morbidly curious, like a rubbernecker at a car crash.
The policeman bolted up the stairs. Elliot was slumped against a wall, his legs stuck straight out in front of him like a rag doll in sweat pants.
“Hello, Sir. How are you?”
“Okay, I just couldn’t go any further.”
In one big heave he got Elliot to his feet.
“Where do you want to go Sir?”
“The green chair over there.”
“Sweetie,” I intervened. “Don’t you think you might want to get in bed?” I dreaded having to call 9-1-1 a third time just to get him up from the chair.
“No, I want to go to the chair.”
Mr. Stubborn.
I went downstairs and made a different kind of emergency call. To Aaron.
“Hi, it’s Leslie. I’m sorry, I don’t want to scare you, but I need your muscle here.”
“Is he alright?”
“Well, he’s having a harder time getting around. Especially with the stairs.”
“I could get a flight tomorrow or Sunday.”
“How about tomorrow. Please.”
By this time it was 8:30 p.m.
Helen came downstairs, her forehead furrowed.
“Leslie, Alex hasn’t had dinner yet. Don’t you think he should eat?”
“Helen, I’ve been a little busy. I’m getting there.”
I rushed around the kitchen, throwing red sauce into a pot to heat. I’d boiled the pasta before the police came. It was cold and hard and dried out. I put a bowl of it with butter and a little water in the microwave to warm up for Alex.
As I spooned red sauce on three bowls of pasta for the rest of us – as if Elliot would eat some – Helen walked in.
“But Leslie,” she said. “Alex doesn’t like sauce.”
That did it.
“Helen, I know my own son,” I snapped. I grabbed her face in my hands, one hand on each cheek, shoved my face up close to hers and glowered into her eyes.
“LET ME DO MY DAMN JOB. I am spending all my time and energy taking care of your son. Give me a MINUTE to take care of mine.”
The microwave beeped and I threw the pasta for Alex on the table. It was still hard and dry but I couldn’t manage dealing with one more problem. None of us ate anyway.
In the morning I apologized. Helen waved her hands to shoo the incident away. She understood I was at wit’s end and I didn’t mean to be so harsh. She had been through something like this herself years ago. I admired how she was taking all this in and letting me be in charge. If my child were dying, I’d have an awfully hard time just helping from the sidelines. I’d want to be first in command.
My husband was sitting in that green chair again when he uttered the last slow, lucid words that were meant just for me.
“You. Are. So. Great.” He shook his head in what looked like regret. I imagine he was thinking of all the things he knew he would miss.
“I love you too, Sweetie.”
On Saturday Elliot spent hours dozing in that green chair. We all silently accepted he couldn’t manage the stairs. As we waited for Aaron to arrive from Chicago, Alex rigged up a DVD player so Elliot could watch the Mets game and WALL-E in our bedroom. He didn’t have the attention span to focus much anyway. When Alex noticed that Elliot had trouble drinking from a glass, he ran to the kitchen to get straws. He was so eager to
try to help.
“This is it,” Elliot mumbled. He seemed so far away. “This is the day.”
His mother said later that sometimes people knew. I don’t know how.
That green chair was where Elliot ate his last meal, as Aaron and Kate tried to coax down a few bites of apple pie.
That was where Kate tried to brush her father’s teeth.
That was where I would one day find a half-bitten, red-and-white medicine capsule under the seat cushion. It must have fallen out of his mouth. I saved it in a box, like it was an artifact, a fossil, a relic of another era.
We never really got to say goodbye. Maybe that was a mercy. Because, in the end, what would you say? How could you possibly bear it?
DRIFTING AWAY
December 13, 14 & 15
“I want my fucking medicine!” he cried out on that infernal Saturday night.
“It’s not time yet,” I said, as if keeping a schedule still mattered.
“I want it now!” he shouted, glaring. Those were his last clear words.
Belligerence could be part of the final stages, the glossy hospice brochure had said.
“Okay. But then you’ll have to wait a while to have more.”
And so the end began. I tried desperately to get him comfortable. Put a pillow behind his back. Got him water. Helped him get up. Helped him lie down. Woke up my stepson to help carry Elliot to the bathroom. Called the hospice for advice. He wasn’t making sense.
Give him Haldol, the nurse said.
Does that conflict with his Zyprexa? I asked.
I’m not sure, give him Ativan and I’ll get back to you, she said.
She didn’t call back.
I should have called Sloan-Kettering. It was hours after midnight and I wasn’t thinking straight.
I called the hospice back. Give him more Ativan, she said.
He got worse, restless and wild-eyed, babbling incoherently.
Terminal agitation, the brochure said.
Part of me didn’t think this was really it. Not yet. There had been so many setbacks before, and he had come back. Maybe this would go on for days. Part of me knew. He kept lurching forward, acting like he wanted to sit up, so I pulled him up by the arms and stuffed a pillow behind his back. Again and again. There were six pillows behind him. Seven. Not enough. I ran to the hallway closet to find more. His feet dangled off the end of the bed.
I woke Aaron again for more help, then called the hospice back.
Can you send someone to tell us what to do? I asked.
The nurse can come first thing in the morning, she said.
But that’s hours away.
It doesn’t sound urgent, she said.
Fucking bitch.
By 8:00 a.m. Sunday, the nurse still hadn’t come.
I hadn’t slept all night.
I called the hospice again. I wished I’d called Sloan-Kettering.
Brenda will be at your house in forty-five minutes, she said.
That nurse took one look at Elliot and said, “He needs to go to our inpatient unit. He doesn’t know where he is. They will stabilize him. Then he can come home.”
That was a lie. I knew it. She knew I knew.
She called an ambulance.
I called Milo to come get Devon and Alex. They were too young for this.
“Sweetie,” I said to Devon. “We need to take Elliot to the agency’s inpatient place. Would you like to say anything to him? Maybe tell him to feel better?”
She swallowed hard, nodded yes. She came with me to my room. Elliot was lying back, quieter now, spent, silent. His eyes narrowed. He looked at her.
“Feel better, Elliot,” she said. Tears fell down her face. She tugged at her hair. “We’ll see you when you get home.”
He didn’t answer. She knew what was happening.
I hugged her.
“You did a beautiful job,” I said. “I’m sure it means a lot to him.”
Alex was downstairs at the computer.
“Would you like to say ‘feel better’ to Elliot?” I asked. I didn’t want my son to be haunted if he didn’t say goodbye.
Alex shook his head no. Kept staring at the screen. So scared.
Milo picked up the kids.
The ambulance came.
They wrapped Elliot in a sheet like a straitjacket so he wouldn’t flail his arms and hurt himself when they carried him down the stairs.
They strapped him into a stretcher, shoved him in the back of the ambulance.
I climbed in back with him. So did his mother. Aaron would follow in a cab with Kate.
It was freezing cold.
They didn’t have a blanket.
Assholes. How could they not have blankets in an ambulance?
Elliot didn’t even seem to notice. He was murmuring gibberish.
I kissed him but he didn’t kiss back.
So I kissed him again and again.
Maybe this was his last gift, getting so delirious he had to be taken to the inpatient place. As much as I thought I could handle it if he died in our bedroom, that would have been creepy for the kids. He spared us that nightmare.
The inpatient place was dingy, despicable. The worn grey carpet, the token smattering of holiday tinsel, the slim window with a view of a dirty air shaft. The nurse didn’t let me stay with Elliot when they got him settled into bed in a pale blue hospital gown. She combed his hair straight to the side, like a little boy’s at the barber. As soon as I could join him I had to muss it, run my fingers through it, make it wave toward the back like usual.
Everybody tells you bearing a child can be agony. Nobody warns you about watching a man die. I assumed Elliot would simply slip away in his sleep. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Elliot’s labored breaths were like groans. I strained to find the words in his chatter but couldn’t decipher any syllables that made sense. He stared straight ahead. I kissed him. It was a one-way kiss.
Aaron and Kate came in a taxi. They put on the overhead TV and found a football game in hopes it would make Elliot feel more at home. It sounded tinny and irritating, but I didn’t want to overrule them. In a vain attempt to make things feel normal at dinner time, they brought in Chinese take-out. I got down a few sips of wonton soup. The hours went by. Kate sat reading, holding Elliot’s hand. I kissed his forehead, watched him, kissed him, cried.
I kept asking the nurse if he was really comfortable, he seemed to be grimacing. She said yes. I didn’t believe her. Listening to his raspy moaning was pure torture.
When the night shift nurse came in, her eyes widened.
“It looks like he’s in pain,” she said.
I blew up.
“Your ONLY job is to make him comfortable,” I hissed. “Can’t you people do that ONE thing right?”
He’d had the best doctors in the world when he was sick. And now, in the very last stretch, these incompetents were screwing everything up. He had such a bad cancer. Didn’t he deserve a good death? I loathed these people. I was disgusted with myself for not finding a better hospice, but there was so little time, and I really thought he would die in his sleep at home.
The new nurse upped the morphine, added some other drugs, and he seemed to relax, finally. At midnight Janet arrived with Max, who’d gotten on the first bus from Ithaca. She took Kate and Aaron home for a little sleep. I would let her stay with us when they returned. I understood she wanted to be with her children.
Helen and Max slept in chairs. I tried to squeeze in with Elliot, to sleep with him once more, but his bed was too narrow. There was no room for me. He was going someplace and I couldn’t go with him.
At 5:00 a.m. I started writing, eleven tight pages, so many things I didn’t want to forget. I would find later that the moron social worker had taken notes on me: “She seems more preoccupied with being a record-keeper than being with Elliot.”
What the hell did he know? Not a damn thing. I had given my life to this man, been to every doctor’s appointment, cleaned his bil
e and bruised my knees on the floor to bathe him like a baby. I had done everything I could. And now I was going to be left alone. And this imbecile of a social worker, with an insipid handlebar mustache, was judging me for writing? I wanted to remember everything. I wanted to save our lives, at least on paper.
And yet, in the face of such fury and anguish, there were moments of beauty.
When all of Elliot’s kids were back Monday morning, we took turns sitting in the chair by his head, on his right. Nobody talked about taking turns, it just happened. His head was turned slightly to the side, and even though he wasn’t moving, and his stare seemed vacant, that’s the seat where you felt like you were with him the most. So I sat there for a while, then got up and asked Kate if she’d like a turn, and then after a while she gave up the seat for her grandmother and brothers. We just kept rotating around, in silent, sensitive generosity. That I will always remember, with pride.
It was all coming down to this. This was it, after so much time and care and effort. I had tried to stifle my tears, keep them under control, but I couldn’t any more. I wept. Loud, keening sobs. Kate leaned over and hugged me. It was so sweet to find her wanting to reassure me. I had thought I had to be responsible for everyone else. And here she wanted to give some comfort to me.
At some point my mother called my cell phone. She knew things were getting worse and wondered if I needed help with my kids.
“I hate this place,” I said as I sat in the hallway for a moment. “They under-medicated him and he was so agitated. I’m kicking myself that I didn’t find a better hospice.”
My mother’s voice cracked as she spoke, word by careful word. “I. Will. Not. Let. You. Criticize. Yourself,” she said. “You have done too well.”
After all this time, more than two years of barely a comment about Elliot’s illness or my struggle to take care of him, here she was telling me I had done a good job. I shook my head in disbelief and allowed myself a grain of satisfaction. My mother’s praise let me grant myself a morsel of forgiveness.
Then my dad called. I talked to him from the hallway. “How am I going to do this?” I cried.