What Comes Next and How to Like It A Memoir (N) by Abigail Thomas

Author:Abigail Thomas [Thomas, Abigail]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2015-03-30T21:00:00+00:00

Hospice

I decided to take the training for becoming a hospice volunteer. I need something to make me feel useful. I told Chuck.

“Just in time,” said Chuck.

“Ha ha ha,” I said.

I want to make Death a member of my family. I don’t want it to arrive as a stranger.

The Information

During the last seventy-two hours of a person’s life, there will be a discoloration of toes and kneecaps, a marked coolness of hands and feet. There will be mental confusion, and a mottling of the skin, which will start at the feet and progress up the legs. When mottling reaches the upper thighs, death is imminent. Two minutes after the heart stops beating, the person is still aware. This is what happens during the course of a natural death, an easy death.

There are other scenarios—a bleed-out, for instance. If there is bleeding from the mouth and nose, we are to cover the blood with dark towels. There will be a large quantity of blood, and we want to spare the family the sight of it. If there is an internal bleed-out from a tumor in the esophagus, say, or a tumor in the lungs, there will be no visible blood. The instructor says if this is happening, we hold the patient’s hand and wait. Death will take only a few minutes.

Hold the patient’s hand and wait. The simplicity is so moving. It strikes me that the physical details of the dying body are as intimate and predictable as those of the body making love.

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