Something more than silence

Every sound shall end in silence, but the silence never dies.
-Samuel Miller Hageman

I didn’t know what lay beyond silence, beyond peace, beyond tranquility, until the Christmas night my mother died.

My brothers and I had been taking turns helping care for her while she went through the last stages of a disease that over a few long years robbed her of her coordination, her strength and, worst of all, her speech. Then she had an unexplained fall when no one was around that set her on a course to imminent death.

Then we took shifts staying with her all hours of the day on the recliner next to her in an assisted living facility near the family farm in Idaho. Her unit had a room with a living area on one end, a kitchenette on the other; a bedroom and bathroom. It had a door to a small plaza outside with planters filled with flowers dead from the first frosts. A bird feeder outside her window attracted not much more than pigeons and sometimes a house finch.

We were her voice when she became agitated and needed medication. We played soft music from her niece to ease her back into sleep. We told stories even when we weren’t sure she heard us. We coordinated visits. We watched for the slightest signs that the end was near and thought so many times, and over and over she kept going.

Cousins from Alaska drove hours to help their mother — mom’s sister — fly in to say goodbye. My brother rushed out of his last emergency room shift of the holiday to help out. The people at the assisted living center figured out over and over again how to take care of mom as her condition changed. Their delight every time mom smiled was infectious, and luckily smiling was the last thing mom lost. Hospice staff quietly helped mom understand she was in control, and helped wean her off water and food to help her with her wish to die.

I don’t see how we can know what someone needs in the last few days of life. We got advice from hospice, from assisted living. My brother, who dealt with the prospect of death in emergency medicine his whole life, helped us. My wife, whose circle of nurses rallied around her too, gave us words of wisdom. We read brochures from hospice.

And still, we really don’t know what to do.
We panic to do more for them,
And especially when it's your father,
And his eyes are far away, and your tears
Are all down your face and clothes,
And he doesn't see them now, but smiles
Perhaps, just perhaps because you're there.
How little he needs. Just love. More Love.
-Bedside Manners, Christopher Wiseman

The last thing I heard mom say was “I love you” over the phone to my brother in Olympia. She became quiet enough that I began watching for signs of life. I worried I would miss it or guess wrong.

The artery on one side of her neck would pulse just a little and I watched it closely. One of the folds on her blanket would fold and unfold a little bit with her shallow breath and I watched it.

Eventually, medication was changed to a regular schedule and I would take a nap after each dosage. The room became quieter and quieter.

“I think that the dying pray at the last not ‘please,’ but ‘thank you,’ as a guest thanks his host at the door. … Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest but in solemn incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet.”
Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

I didn’t pay attention at first but came to love silence when I was young. It was the silence of the mountain sunset, temperature dropping fast, that did it first. And the silence of the desert skies, stars wrapped over a sleeping bag laid out in the open. It was peace I needed, away from the bustle of growing up. But oh I had so much to learn still.

Assisted living facilities have a rhythm to their days. Residents gather in daytime to play games, eat, listen to entertainment, watch movies. Walking the halls, you’ll catch glimpses of residents watching television in a unit that was decorated with the help of some family member to create comfort.

Mom’s apartment had mementos, too. There was Slim, a slightly kitschy metal statue of a cowboy from some family adventure who was, of course, slim and about waist high. Pictures of the family. A painting that reminded her of a place in the mountains where she and dad went to a lot in retirement. A Bible. Some books.

Toward nighttime, the residents leave the halls and lobbies and close their doors. Sometimes a television plays quietly for a while.

On Christmas Eve 2022, it seemed to get quieter sooner. Just before midnight, a staff member came to give mom her medications. Usually, I’d grab some sleep until the next dosage.

I turned the recliner around and faced mom beside her hospital bed, leaned back, watched her close her eyes, and we dozed off.

Some time later, I woke with a start but not startled. Something was different. Sure, the facility was quiet. Sure, the room was quiet. It wasn’t that I didn’t hear anything. There was something more. I looked at mom and knew I didn’t need to look at the artery in her neck, or whether a fold in her blanket moved.

I don’t remember feeling so peaceful, so unhurried before.

This was something beyond quiet, beyond peace, beyond worry.

I got up, went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face and walked back to mom. I could feel no pulse, no breath. I don’t know why, but it seemed the right thing to do was to tidy up the unit and make sure the kitchenette was clean; to just bide our time, perhaps give the next journey a quiet untroubled start. So I did. I could hear the caregivers coming down the hall with her medications. I let them know.

Then I called the hospice nurse practitioner to come and make the official diagnosis and my brother to start arranging the funeral home visit. While waiting, I stepped into the small courtyard by her room and looked up at the desert stars, breathed in the crisp air.

Later that morning, we exchanged gifts with family members from near and from Alaska, quickly purchased during the hurried visit. Being a farm family, we matter-of-factly organized the cleaning out of mom’s unit the next day or so.

Looking back, I realized I was given a precious look into what we think are the darkest woods and learned there there is nothing to fear there. The rest of my journey is less burdensome.

I hope you all can find the same peace some day.

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening