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Dying Well


Because of the blood clots in his lungs, the least physical effort made him short of breath.

After greeting Rad, she sat down next to his bed and asked him whether he was comfortable. He was not in any pain, he said, though sometimes it was hard to breathe. "Do you have any unfinished business?" she asked next. "No," he responded, "I can't think of any." Pause. "Are there any changes you might want to make in your will?" "No, thank you, I have

taken care of that." Long pause. "Rad," she said gently, "I do believe death is drawing near." He opened his eyes wide as if to confirm that what he had just been told was true. Their eyes met, and it was clear Rad understood that he was dying.

She asked how he felt about that. His only comment was, "It will be very hard to leave Sheila." Dr. Palac responded, "Yes, Rad, I know," and he closed his eyes again. She explained that the morphine he was receiving would help with his shortness of breath. She reminded his nurse of this as well.

That afternoon, he was alert and carried on conversations with several friends. Two fellow plastic surgeons stopped in to see him, and a member of the church choir came by to sing a few hymns in her beautiful soprano voice. At suppertime he took only a few mouthfuls of food and a few sips of fluid. Because I had spent the previous night on a cot in his room and had hardly slept, I was now being advised to go home to get some rest. Later in that evening, when the hospital "patient sitter" arrived, I leaned over the bed to give him a good-night kiss. He looked me straight in the eye and held my hand. "I'm so in love with you," he murmured.

When I telephoned early the next morning, I was relieved to hear that he had had a calm night. Arriving at the hospital a little after 7:00 a.m., I found him struggling for breath and glad

to see me. I sat on the bed holding his hand, talking to him, praying for healing on the deepest level, assuring him of a love that would be steadfast through illness and death. Soon he drifted off to sleep, his

face utterly peaceful and his breathing even. Then the gentle breaths began to space out. They came ever further apart until, at last, there were no more. I continued to sit there, not wanting to move, surrounded by the awe of death, that moment of silence when the spirit begins its mysterious journey.

At 8:30, Ann Lawrence, one of the day nurses, came in and gently placed her stethoscope on his chest. "Yes," she said, "I cannot get a heartbeat." I felt numb, as if psychic novocaine had sealed me off from reality. I was watching myself feel gratitude for Rad's peaceful death and for the excellent care that Dr. Merrens, Dr. Palac, and his nurses had given him.

Within a short time, others arrived: two good friends, Nardi Campion and Marie Kirn, and Father Jim Bresnahan, one of the Hospital's chaplains and a member of the palliative-care team. For two hours we kept a vigil around Rad's bed, taking turns reading psalms and prayers.

Then Ann Lawrence returned with another nurse. With tender care, they washed his body and placed it in a white body bag. Soon two members of the transport team arrived. One, who had taken Rad down to get an x-ray a few days before, looked over at us and said, "I'm so sorry." Then they transferred his body to a gurney and as they started to leave the room, we all stood up spontaneously in silent tribute.

In the months that followed Rad's memorial service, an intense longing for his earthly presence was always with me. I recalled words that a French friend had used to describe her husband's death: "C'est une vraie amputation," or "It is just like an amputation." She meant not just

the cutting off of a single limb but rather the severing of a substantial part of our own sense of self. She could have been speaking for me, I believed, not realizing then that by concentrating on my own loss I had entered into a dark labyrinth. It seemed impossible that I'd ever find a path connected to the outside world.

Not long after Rad's proposal in early 1995, I had stopped by his house to bring him a present—a homemade heartshaped cookie. I was touched to notice on later visits that he continued to keep it in the same place, on the table in his kitchen where he ate.

Several weeks later, I stopped to see Rad on my way to the cemetery, explaining that it was the seventh anniversary of my late husband's death. He said he'd like to come along. So we drove out to Pine Knoll together, parked the car, and trudged toward a granite monument with "Harvey" chiseled into it. After we'd stood there in the February snow for several minutes, each of us absorbed in thought, I turned to go. Then he stepped forward, reached into his coat pocket, and placed something on top of the stone. Glancing back, I was startled to realize it was the cookie. "I wanted to leave something for Larry," was all he said as we headed back to the car.

At first the gesture bewildered me. Then I understood. The simple act was one of kindness and selflessness.

On a bitterly cold morning in January of 2004, about six months after Rad's death, I awoke in our bed. Before I'd opened my eyes, an unexpected shift of inner perspective led me out of my confining labyrinth into a clearing—a place where possibility existed once again. Suddenly able to embrace Rad's life as having moved from the seen to the unseen, I became aware of the heart-shaped cookie there before me. Almost transparent, it stayed for a luminous moment, revealing the gifts of an immeasurable love.


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Sheila Tanzer is a poet, teacher, and avid gardener who has lived in Hanover for 50 years. This is her second feature for Dartmouth Medicine. She wrote in the Fall 1995 issue about her first husband, Dartmouth language professor Lawrence Harvey, who died in 1988 after an eight-year struggle with Alzheimer's.

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