Hospital Rooms
Jake Goodin. May 2005.
He knew that he had wasted his life but knew that it would be easier if everyone just assumed that he felt like it had been fulfilling. You don’t want your father or grandfather (his wife had died four years ago - complications from a car accident) to turn to you on his death bed and tell you that his life has been mostly, if not almost all a waste, because what does that say about you? He would then have to explain that, no, that part was the other part, the part that wasn’t a waste. But everything else…
People like endings that are nice and don’t want to hear about all the remorse and regret for a life mis-lived as the mis-liver is preparing to die. So what do you do? You lie. You lie and you are honest with yourself about the lie. You know that it might be better for them in the long run if they know the truth as maybe there are things about their respective lives that they might want to change. But in that moment where you are looking into their watering eyes (sincerely wishing you could water yours and try and match them in emotion) you know that you can’t tell them the truth.
“It’s okay. It’s time. I think that I’m ready to go.”
His daughter’s eyes - so very like her mothers - reminded him of her mother, and what she had said right before they turned the life support machines off.
“It’s okay. It’s time. I’m ready to go. I am.”
Had she been lying too? “Oh god (if there is a god - I’ll find out soon!), what a terrifying thought,” he thought. What if she too had looked back on her life, on their life together, and thought about all the wasted moments, the times at which they held back from each other and rationed out the little nuggets of good upon which all of us live? What if she too was filled with anger and resentment about all of the times she said no to things because she was tired, or because she felt she might be tired in the middle of doing them, or because they were just plain inconvenient? What if she died feeling this same level of terror at the unknown? If that’s how she had felt, why hadn’t she said anything?
If you ever find yourself in a hospital room waiting for the results of a potentially life altering (or life ending) test you might consider asking your family, friends and loved ones to leave the room. They will balk at this request, of course: “We drove 500 miles to be here and now you’re asking us to leave?!?! What the fuck, Dale!” This is for everyone’s benefit, as they don’t need to act strong and resilient when they find out the news, and you can choose which parts of the diagnosis to tell them and which parts to keep a secret. (God bless HIPPA.) I can’t, in these few words here, detail what you should disclose in each and every instance, but it is generally advisable to tell them the headline, and omit (you can say that you just “forgot”) the gory, suffering details. They don’t need to know those things. They’ll find out soon enough. Or, if they have the internet, they can find out when the get home.
The fundamental problem with being a dying person (apart from the really, really big problem we don’t need to talk about because it’s too terrifying) is that you can’t imagine any of the healthy people around you dying. “I mean, they seem so healthy. So why burden them,” he thought. And then he thought, “I think I’m getting close, is this what the end feels like? Maybe. Maybe I should tell them. Maybe I should tell them to not worry about their jobs, or what other people think about them, and just focus on loving the people who are around them. Maybe I should tell them that most of the people you think are friends won’t amount to much, but there are a few who will, and you should focus on those. Maybe if I tell them these things then my life won’t have been a waste. Maybe…”
“What is it, dad?”
“Maybe…” he thought.
“Dad?”
“Nope. Never mind.”
“Dad? Dad? What’s wrong?”
“He’s gone,” said the nurse. “I’m sorry.”
