be still

hear it in the stairwell: U2- joshua Tree
Last night I worked with a girl I know from college. We took an art therapy class together about two years ago and although the amount of time we spent together wouldn't warrant "good friend" status, the level of intensity and depth of that class brought everyone in it instantly closer on a fairly intimate level. I hadn't seen Jamie really since that class but when we saw each other at work again it was like talking to a very close and important old friend. Somehow we both remembered the life decisions/issues the other had discussed in the class years before and we were quickly refreshed into that friendship with depth. Last night we were forced to become even closer.
When I got to work at 11p.m. Jamie had already been there for a couple of hours. She quickly updated me on the declining status of a resident who was very near death. We made our way to the room and immediately I recognized it. Outside of reading about "the death rattle" in an anatomy book and faintly remembering a curious line in Fight Club where Marla questions whether or not her death rattle could possibly heard through the telephone, I wasn't familiar with the actuality of the term. But I heard it. The medical reason for it is body fluid slowly filling the lungs as the person dies. This definition is so sterile compared to actually witnessing it. The sound is a very low "rattle" from the person's chest. We stood by this woman's bed and watched as she stopped breathing for several minutes at a time- the only sign that she was still living came from the pulse we could see on her neck. And after a few breathless minutes her chest would heave and the death rattle could be heard- low and eerie-like a warning. There's nothing quiet and peaceful about it.
Throughout the night we would check on her, trying to spend as much time as we could in the room hoping that she wouldn't die alone. And she didn't. Jamie and I were both in the room. We watched her chest rise and fall in several slow and labored movements and then it stopped. Nothing in the room moved-complete stillness and silence. Eventually I had to remind myself to breath again, I had stopped along with her. Apparently Jamie had, too because after a few moments I heard the quiet studder of her breath as she filled her empty lungs. This was nothing like seeing a deceased relative in their casket looking painted and pretty in the room full of funeral bouquets. This was painfully real. One minute I was her living and the next minute her life was gone-it was a spiritless body. A few quiet minutes passed and Jamie superstitiously opened the window and methodically began the duties of the nurses aide in the case of a dead resident. I just watched her, both of us silent. I saw a life (that is this life as I know it) end this morning.