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| Nanny and Emily and Me by � moon_grace I was in a room. A quiet room with a loud ticking clock on the wall. No one there but me and she. She lay on the bed and she watched me. I walked around and did "things." I think if I'd seen Death before her, I didn't recognize it. I can't remember them all, you know. Funny how faces just slip away and fade. I don't know how, but they do. I remember her. The room was dim. I'm trying to remember if it was dim on purpose but I can't. I was reading Emily Dickinson and some critical person`s opinion of her work. He was talking of my favorite poem by her and how "Watching the deathbed was a POPULAR past time in the 19th century." I wonder who dug him up and thought that quote was worth saving for posterity. "Popular?" Anyway. She was dying. We knew it. Only, they didn't tell HER and I'm wondering what was really told to him. I was straight out of school. I made straight A's. Well, there was that one B. They were so worried I'd get upset. I can still remember the looks on their faces when they called me in for a "consult." They wanted to warn me that my 4.0 had bit the big one. I didn't care. Looking back, I think now how absolutely ludicrous. I think now, they should have dragged me in for a consult to say things like, "Hey, we want you to know you're going to have your whole emotional state and how you view the world turned upside down." If they really wanted to do me a favor, that's what they'd have said. They would have handed me this golden text book and said, "Here, this is how to get over being numb, or how to get numb." Numbness 101...should have been a required course. I called her Nanny. She wasn't very tall. Of course, I never saw her stand but I know these things. Her belly was tall. Too tall. They had opened her up at another hospital. They had looked at her insides at another hospital. They had shook their other hospital heads and put in retention sutures, not bothering to completely close her up, and passed her on. "Thank you for playing....DING!" I can probably hear what they said. "You're cancer is more extensive than we thought and we're sending you to the Medical Center where they have a lot more resources." Fine speech, don't you think? Only, the time they get sent to the Medical Center sometimes is when it's too late and gosh, guess what? The "resources" don't include interchangeable parts. She bled. We had a ritual, the two of us. She bled and I reinforced. Then twice in twelve hours, it was all taken off and thrown away and we started all over. It was like a dress rehearsal over and over and for some reason, even though we did it right, the audience never showed and the applause was never heard and there were no rave reviews. Then, the pads weren't enough. It was the first and only time I can remember, so much blood that I put the dressing on then taped bath towels on top. She was bleeding. So thirsty. Nothing to eat or drink. A few ice chips only. Rules are rules. I can still see eyes that pleaded. So thirsty. Well, of course, I told him he could give her a sip of water. No difference at that point. Then, he went to rest down the hall. Time to change the dressings and towels again. She asked for a drink and I didn't look up. Just handed her the cup. Only a few chips in it anyway. She took it. "God Bless you." I didn`t look up. I changed my gloves and kept on. Skin so slick. Tape wouldn't stick anymore. I smiled and added towels to her sides, too. It was going to be leaking soon. She was all fixed up as much as you can do in that situation. Fresh dressing. Fresh linens. Brushed hair. Box of tissues where she could reach them. I am standing there and she died. She just....died. And I was just out of school in the dim room and she was dead and still I did not really realize what that meant. I went to get him. He was a thin little thing. I call him "Mr. Nanny" and he called me, "Yes mam" and "Thank you, mam" and he was three times my elder and I thought, Please don't call me mam. But silence prevailed. He came into the dim room....the quiet dim room with the loud ticking clock on the wall. And I cannot remember half the faces of those who died. I cannot remember all the hands I held as they went onto that passing, but I remember his words as if I were still there as if they are suspended in time, suspended in me... "She gone?" "Yeah." "Are you sure?" "Yeah" "Are you sure she's not just asleep?" "Not asleep." "Oh Lord! Oh my Lord! WHO is gonna go get groceries with me? WHO is gonna ride on the tractor with me? WHO is gonna go fishin' with me? WHO is gonna pray with me at night?" I was caught off guard. Caught as if someone had punched a way into the core of my being and poured in Death and filled me up with it. I had broken that rule...that stupid thing they tell you...."Don't become emotionally attached." So, I shook my head and wondered at the kind of person who could stand in the dim room with the loud ticking clock and not be moved by so pitiful a plea to the universe as this. I went home. I listened to the rain. I picked up a copy of Emily Dickinson and for the first time, I knew what she was talking about. Emily Dickinson The last Night that She lived It was a Common Night Except the Dying - this to Us Made Nature different We noticed smallest things - Things overlooked before By this great light upon our Minds Italicized - as 'twere. As We went out and in Between Her final Room And Rooms where Those to be alive Tomorrow were, a Blame That Others could exist While She must finish quite A Jealousy for Her arose So nearly infinite - We waited while She passed - It was a narrow time - Too Jostled were Our Souls to speak At length the notice came. She mentioned, and forgot - Then lightly as a Reed Bent to the Water, struggled scarce - Consented, and was dead - And We - We placed the Hair - And drew the Head erect - And then an awful leisure was Belief to regulate - |
