There’s a heaviness of my grief that I haven’t talked much about and that grows closer to the end of watching someone die. You know it’s coming. You know it’s soon. For a long time you pray you get to keep them for as much time as possible but near the end my mind changed. Every day I was wondering if that day was the last day. Each day I’d see Clayton fade further and yet keep holding on.
We had a few conversations while he was sick. We talked about his wishes, his fears, his regrets of the things he’d never get to do but it was his loss of dignity that bothered him the most. Clayton was a very independent man who now couldn’t make it to the restroom himself and needed me to bathe him. When he lost that independence, his eyes changed and said he was ready to go.
Every evening I asked to keep him just one more day until, that is, I saw the glimmer fade in his eyes. He was accepting of his fate and ready to die so it felt selfish to keep hoping that I keep him longer. It hurt to think about it and, at first, I felt terrible guilt when I asked the stars to stop his suffering and finally take him. Those conflicting conversations battling it out in my heart.
“Can he just stay a bit longer?” felt selfish while “He’s tired. Can this just finally be over so he will be at peace?” filled me with extreme guilt. Either way we knew the end was near but the hardest part of watching someone you love slowly die is the weight of the wait…
