And Then There Was Nothing

After weeks of watching and waiting, at the beginning of October, 2010, the process of Sharon's dying began in earnest.

Neither Bonnie nor I had slept much more than a couple of hours a night since the previous May because Sharon had been in and out of hospitals and emergency rooms with all kinds of horrible complications every few weeks. Each time she was admitted, we made sure one or both of us was with her every single day, all day. It was exhausting.

Sharon's final hospitalizations were particularly gruesome. At times, she became quite agitated, disoriented and confused. One day, after spending 9 hours at her bedside, I came home and fell into a deep sleep. I wakened to the phone ringing. It was Sharon calling and she was frantic. "I'm falling off the bed.  I keep ringing for someone to come and help me.  No one comes.  What should I do?" she sounded so frightened.  I told her to hang on to the railing as tight as she could and I would be right there.  I knew she wasn't falling off the bed; but she was so upset.  She was "sundowning" and I knew she needed to see something familiar -- me.

I got in my car and rushed back to the hospital to find my sister covered in blood. It was like a murder scene. Blood covered every surface, everywhere I looked:  the windows, the bed, her nightstand, the telephone, her hair, the walls.  In her panic, she pulled out a blood transfusion and because no one had bothered to answer her buzzer, were it not for my arrival, she would have waited until the change of shift before anyone checked in on her.

As soon as Sharon saw me, she visibly relaxed, but she was still disoriented. I reassured her that she was not going to fall off the bed and that I was going to get help.   

I stormed out looking for a nurse. I was taking no prisoners. "Who is responsible for Sharon?" I bellowed.  "She's my patient," replied a young nurse no more than 25 years old.  "My sister is covered in blood,"   I demanded to know why she did not answer the call buzzer to my sister's room.  The young woman looked so guilt-stricken, I almost felt sorry for her.  Obviously overwhelmed by a responsibility for which she was neither prepared nor capable of handling alone, she probably judged it a waste of her energy to answer the call of someone who was sundowning when she had so many other things to do.


Following me back into Sharon's room, she washed the blood as best as she could, chatted calmly with Sharon and called a technician to redo the IV. No longer distressed, and actually quite talkative, Sharon behaved  as if she and the IV technician were at a cocktail party. "You are so pretty," my sister told the technician.  "You've been so nice, I hope we  meet again under better circumstances," she said smiling.  The absurdity of this made me laugh.  I stayed with my sister a while longer and went home.  Next morning, Sharon had no memory of any of it.  

Because Bonnie's house was closer to the nursing home, once the dying process commenced in earnest, I slept there, not that either Bonnie or I slept much. I cried a lot. Bonnie did too, I think. Sometimes we cried together. My brother-in-law, Bonnie's husband Chris, kept us all going.  

Bonnie and I spent our days and part of our nights by Sharon's bedside at the nursing home.  As Sharon gradually stopped talking, we'd just hold her hand, or whisper I love you, hour after hour. People came to say goodbye or to offer comfort.  

For the first time in all the years of Sharon's tribulations, she began having serious pain.  She would sleep for a while and then wake and when she could speak only one word at a time, she often woke saying "pain." They began morphine. The relief lasted shorter and shorter periods so they began dosing her every few hours.  We were told that the end was very near.

That last day just dragged.  

After a certain point, everyone who had come to sit with us, left.  There was just me, Chris, and Bonnie alone with Sharon. Her breathing, which had been very loud and labored, became very still. And then it stopped. She was gone.

The tension between Bonnie and me which had been simmering for months, just erupted.  We stood there bickering over the exact last breath.  

We kissed our sister and sat with her for a while in case her soul was still hovering somewhere; and then it was time to leave. We took her jewelry, removed her necklaces and her rings. I grabbed a few momentos and stuffed them in my pocket; a basket I made her, a few photos, and we left.

She had lived at the nursing home for six years and had accumulated a lot of things, too many to have carried with us that night.  Sharon had a brand-new computer and printer, an expensive telephone, a tiny microwave, a refrigerator; lots of clothing, a tiny chest from her apartment,  family photographs and paintings. There was also a mirror that used to hang in the foyer of our childhood home.

The morning after she died, I got an email from the nursing home asking whether we wanted to pack her things or should they? We asked them to do it and we'd collect her stuff later.  We asked them to please be extra careful with that mirror because it had great sentimental value to all of us.

The next couple of weeks were a fog. I stayed at Bonnie's. People came. No time to think much except at bedtime. Sharon did not want a funeral.  She said if people didn't come to see her when she was alive, what's the point of doing so after she died. She was cremated and requested  a special place for her ashes to be placed, which Bonnie, Chris and I did one Saturday. There was a lot of activity and with it a sort of relief. Bonnie and I were able to sleep for the first time in months. Our bickering stopped too.

After I returned home, Bonnie and I arranged to go through the boxes of Sharon's things that the home had packed.

There's no easy way to say this.

When Bonnie and Chris went to the nursing home to collect the boxes, just about everything of value was missing, including the mirror.  The only things left were the family photographs, Sharon's paintings and things like her address book.

Bonnie had always made it a point to be much more involved and friendly with the staff at the nursing home than I. It was more important for me to maintain a professional distance. Bonnie and Chris, on the other hand, had each year made generous financial contributions amounting to thousands of dollars, and Bonnie volunteered there one day a week.

Bonnie was now determined to find out where the missing items were.  I wanted to call the police. Discretion is the better part of valor. I let her handle it. She thought of these people as her friends.

The nursing home officials took no responsibility. What they did do is look for someone to blame. Instead of blaming the people actually responsible, they saw fit to blame the people least able to defend themselves. It was a nasty business indeed.

In the end, the refrigerator and yes, the mirror were recovered. Everything else was gone.

It's not the things that mattered so much. We were going to give away most of it anyway. It's the lack of respect for Sharon expressed in the utter disregard of her caretakers. Despite losing so much control over her daily life, and the many indignities she endured as a result of her disease, Sharon was the embodiment of grace.  She went out of her way to show kindness to the very people who thought nothing of picking over her posessions like so many vultures.  

That the nursing home officials went out of their way to place blame, not on the culprits, but on the people least able to defend themselves, made our grieving process even more terrible.  Sharon would have been incensed.

Sharon deserved better.

I still have nightmares about it all but they're happening less often.  I dream about my sister and when I wake and realize she's gone, the ache for her returns.  I don't know if there's life after death.  I sometimes think I feel her around me, talking to me, but I cannot be sure.  That signal we three sisters devised to let the other ones know if there were life after death has already occurred but then I'm not certain it's just a coincidence, because it was so subtle.  Bonnie needs no convincing.  She is certain already. I hope she's right.