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And then...nothing.

Started by BADGE OF HONOR, May 12, 2010, 06:53:06 AM

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BADGE OF HONOR

It was the end: September 21.

I came home from school to a houseful of anxiety.  My mother, in her usual chair.  My father, sitting nearby.  I could tell something was wrong even before I heard her short, shallow gasps.  She had choked on a cream cheese danish--she often had trouble swallowing food--and had gone into respiratory distress.  Her lungs finally lost the fight, but her body just didn't know it yet.

I think mom knew she was going to die that day.  She insisted that we call my sister, so that she could talk to her one last time with that wasted, wrecked voice.  She bore all of our ministrations with her usual stoicism--or perhaps just trying to breathe took so much concentration that she couldn't complain.  I remember, far into the night, discussing whether to give her more of the morphine that the hospice worker said might help.  "I don't want to kill you," I said.  She just looked at me.

At some point in the night she grew too weak to cough, so we took turns pounding her back.  It must have hurt.  In the morning, she told my dad "Happy birthday."  I don't know but I think those were her last words.

Later in the day.  Everyone else had left.  I was sitting by her bed, holding her hand when the realization slowly penetrated her breathing had changed, transformed from the tortured rasps of a runner to something almost mechanical.  It took me even longer to realize that she was no longer conscious.  I knew she wasn't ever going to wake up.  Just looking at her body heaving with every deep, slow, gurgling breath...I was intimately familiar with it.  I'd been keeping her alive for six months.  I'd known it was coming.  It was almost a relief to see the end...almost.

Still later.  My dad and the hospice lady had returned.  I went to the bathroom.  Perhaps mom had been waiting for me to leave the room, because when I came back her breathing had changed again.  Quiet breaths, with long pauses in between, pauses growing longer and longer.  I remember the sunlight streaming sideways into the room, touching on her beautiful white hair.  I remember crying as quietly as I could.  I remember my dad saying to her, "Shh.  It's okay, you can go now.  It's okay."  Eventually there were no more breaths.

And that was the end.
The Jerk On Bike rolled his eyes and tossed the waffle back over his shoulder--before it struck the ground, a stout, disconcertingly monkey-like dog sprang into the air and snatched it, and began to masticate it--literally--for the sound it made was like a homonculus squatting on the floor muttering "masticate masticate masticate".

Lies

Wow Badge...

I don't know what to say...

It's both beautiful and sad...

*hugs*
- So the New World Order does not actually exist?
- Oh it exists, and how!
Ask the slaves whose labour built the White House;
Ask the slaves of today tied down to sweatshops and brothels to escape hunger;
Ask most women, second class citizens, in a pervasive rape culture;
Ask the non-human creatures who inhabit the planet:
whales, bears, frogs, tuna, bees, slaughtered farm animals;
Ask the natives of the Americas and Australia on whose land
you live today, on whose graves your factories, farms and neighbourhoods stand;
ask any of them this, ask them if the New World Order is true;
they'll tell you plainly: the New World Order... is you!

NotPublished

That really touched me Badge...

Sorry to hear about that
In Soviet Russia, sins died for Jesus.

LMNO

ATTN: Good writers at PD.com.


Stop making my cry at work.  Srsly.


Love,
LMNO

Richter

Sorry to hear, and well done.
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

Jenne

I know that had to be hard to write, it was hard to read.  Brava.

Eater of Clowns

Quote from: Pippa Twiddleton on December 22, 2012, 01:06:36 AM
EoC, you are the bane of my existence.

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on March 07, 2014, 01:18:23 AM
EoC doesn't make creepy.

EoC makes creepy worse.

Quote
the afflicted persons get hold of and consume carrots even in socially quite unacceptable situations.

Cramulus

great writing, badger. And I'm real sorry that it's nonfiction.

:hugs:

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

That was really beautiful and moving.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Adios

You made me cry. This is how my mother died with her hand in mine.

Jasper

I keep trying to think of the right words to respond to this with, but I don't have them.  It made me sad, but it was not 'sad' in the usual maudlin sense.  More a feeling of quiet complexity and...  I don't know.  The feeling you get when life is cruel and you're trying to deal with it gracefully.  The way life makes me feel at times like these, I can't get myself to cry and yet no other emotion would be appropriate.   So I just work through the hurt in my quiet way.  That's how this struck me.

BADGE OF HONOR

Thanks.  It's taken me almost four years to get to the point where I could tell the whole story.
The Jerk On Bike rolled his eyes and tossed the waffle back over his shoulder--before it struck the ground, a stout, disconcertingly monkey-like dog sprang into the air and snatched it, and began to masticate it--literally--for the sound it made was like a homonculus squatting on the floor muttering "masticate masticate masticate".

Adios

Quote from: BADGE OF HONOR on May 12, 2010, 06:37:10 PM
Thanks.  It's taken me almost four years to get to the point where I could tell the whole story.

I admire your courage.

Juana

That last line got me. Wow. :( I'm sorry, Badge.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."