Nine months

Nine months ago tonight, at just about this time, Sandy started breathing in the way that people describe as a death rattle.

For days I'd been watching her die. Nearly two full weeks before, we'd agreed not to try to treat the cancer any further, not to try to save her life. It is not in my nature to stop trying, but I did. I turned my focus to Sandy's comfort and her ability to spend meaningful time with the people she loved. I stayed in the present as much as possible, not daring to think about the time that came after. When thoughts of that time did intrude — usually when I was not in the room with Sandy, having wandered out for a few minutes — I broke down. But by living in the present as much as possible, I could keep that horrible reality at bay just a little longer. And I didn't have to face the thought that I was just letting her die. That we were all complicit in the cancer's destruction, somehow.

And then, late on the evening of July 18, I told her I wished the doctors had been right on June 16, and that it really had just been a complicated migraine after her first radiation treatment. She squeezed my hand, practically pumping it. I think she moved her head up and down a little too. She agreed. Knowing she was paying attention to my words, then, I continued talking and I'm not sure exactly what I said. But somehow I felt her communicate that she hadn't intended to stop eating and drinking, that she was holding on because she thought there was still a chance she could recover, and because she wanted to live.

I've revisited those moments repeatedly in the past nine months, trying to make sense of them. She couldn't speak. Her eyes had clouded over. I don't even remember my own exact words to her, let alone know how it was I felt her communicate with me. And no one else got the message from her. I've wondered if I made it up, imagined it in my disorientation after days of little sleep and little food and the nightmare of watching her lose all of her strength and energy. But I believe — no, I know — that there was some communication from her, and I wonder now whether she'd already started sending thoughts into my head, as she has now several times since her death. Whatever it was, I was primed for it. I'd been holding back my natural urge to fight for her life, and what I heard was permission to jump back in and try.

I must have seemed insane, certainly desperate, as I tried to moisten her tongue with water droplets from a straw and then from my finger. I wanted to try giving her some of the Boost she'd liked five days before, and her best friend wisely suggested we talk to the nurse first to make sure that wouldn't hurt her.

Meanwhile, I told Sandy that if she wanted to fight, I'd fight with her. But I also told her that she was so far gone, I didn't know whether she could come back now. That I didn't know if she'd ever be able to see again, or to walk; that I'd love her and take care of her no matter what, but it might be too late. It was the most intense, complicated confusion of hope and despair and regret and excitement that I ever remember feeling. After days of helplessness, I was eager to craft a plan and to join with Sandy in another effort to heal.

That's about when she started her death breathing. At first, we thought she might have choked on the water on her tongue. It was only after the nurse identified the breath for us, and then affirmed that she was also having seizures and brought back medication to alleviate those, that I began to realize that what I'd experienced — what had given me a last gasp of hope — was Sandy's version of the final adrenaline rush that others had talked about. I hadn't recognized it. She hadn't leaped from the bed to go to the bathroom or asked for a meal. What had transpired had been so personal, had felt so strongly like a conversation between us (and again, I keep trying to make sense of that and I can't quite). Her strong will was there again, and she was emphatic that she wanted to live. And since I so desperately wanted to turn the whole thing around, to believe that there was a way back to our lives, I snapped to attention and became fully engaged.

A couple of hours later, after she'd stopped breathing abruptly and the nurse confirmed that her heart had stopped (just typing those words still sends me into spasms of grief and keening — how could I let her heart stop? How could I just let her die?), at that point, I felt foolish, like a sucker, like that final interaction hadn't been Sandy but some alien creature who had invaded her emptying shell and mocked me.

I don't feel like a fool anymore, most of the time. I'd have done anything for Sandy, and what she needed from me those last weeks was to let her die. That was so much harder than fighting for her life would have been, but it was the right thing to do. And it wasn't like she gave up. She fought as long as fighting made sense, and she turned her attention to the process of dying when that was the appropriate thing for her to do for herself and for all of us. But it was so hard for me. And that last bit of drama, which felt like a cheap trick in the immediate aftermath, has become a memory I've cherished.

Forty-eight hours before, she'd been ready to go. She was exhausted and she felt okay about leaving her life. She kept telling me we'd had fifteen and a half good years, wanting me to be grateful for that. That was real. But the final desire to live, wanting to stay, that was real, too. I've heard and read enough to know now that it's the body's final hurrah, that it's separate from any real circumstances. But when she squeezed my hand, that was Sandy. She was still there.

A few days later, when I talked about Sandy's death with one of the social workers, she said she thought that last interaction may have been Sandy's gift to me. At the time, it was hard to see it that way. But I have come to consider it a gift, or at least a message. At the very least, it seems an acknowledgment of how hard it was for me not to keep trying to save her, and how terribly painful it was for me to let her go.

It's hard to believe that it's been nine months, and my heart hasn't yet stopped. My breath hasn't become a rattle. I still seek out sustenance. Despite my suspicions that the world would become a dark void if she died, the opposite has been alarmingly true. I'm different, but I'm still here, and gradually I'm becoming more engaged in the activity that swirls around me. And any fears I had of Sandy fading for me or others have proved unwarranted; she remains very much a part of those who were lucky enough to know her.