March 25th, 2012 - Last Night

I woke up on the sofa-bed to a heavy silence and I knew that Peter had gone. It was 3AM and a grey indigo hung around in the air before the dawn. In the faint glow of the lap-top, in front of the desk, I saw Sam’s silhouette and called softly, “Sam, can you go see if Peter’s still breathing?” a weight to ask of my youngest son. But he was in tune with the universe we now lived in. Paul and I revolved around Peter’s daily needs to the point where he asked Paul when he’d learned to be a nurse.  We were all in orbit or in alignment with the changes in our home living in a state of limbo between life and death, hoping to prolong what little time we’d been given.

 Last night, as I sat reading to Peter from a memoir on dying, the author writing his thoughts on the process he had come to accept, I now wished I’d read something less relevant. Peter didn’t want to die now that his life was just beginning. My brother, the artist, the painter, the traveler. Self-educated, cultured and well-read and could have suggested something far greater. Something with a sense of intelligent humor. He would have scoffed at the mundanity, or what we called ‘social worker jargon’. Anyway, he didn’t need to hear someone else’s reality rant. Last night, he couldn’t complain about that or anything else - he was already on his way.

Sam rose and walked quietly into his grandmother’s room, but returned a minute later. “I think he’s not breathing but it’s hard to be sure.”  I got up and shuffled into the dark room. My mother gently snoring from her bed in the window. I envied the oblivion, though temporary. It would be beautiful, I thought, if he had died hearing his mother’s rhythmic breath, like returning to the womb. I was scared to know what I already knew as I approached the hospital bed in the center of the room. I leaned close to his face, listening for a sound of life so I could return to bed, to wake up with the sun and make another hopeful breakfast.

“Please remove all those wires,” I said to the Hospice nurse after she had confirmed the time and cause of death. She removed the fentanyl pad, the needle in his wrist for the saline drip, the remains of the morphine and left us alone with our person.  At least his last journey had been painless.

“He’s so beautiful. He looks like a saint,” my mother wept. “Can you draw him, Consi?”

There certainly was something peaceful, and yes, saintly and Renaissance emanating from his gaunt, fine features. Almost other worldly. I thought his soul was still there and I couldn’t disturb the moment. Outside, birds sang a requiem and the rising sun reflected frosty light sparkling on the spirit house.

We all sat for a long while around Peter’s bed. The remains of our family, with a few missing parts.  “What is family?” he had asked me a few weeks back. I wondered if he really needed to feel it, I know I did, so I told him that family were the people who would always be there for you, related or not.  “Mmm,” he nodded as I passed him his take-out Thai green curry. Was he agreeing with me or was he still dreaming of the woman he had left behind? Still hoping to return to Bangkok and Chiang Mai. He was done with drug abuse, free from the four years spent in prison waiting and waiting to get home which as it turned out was with us, but his body wouldn’t let him get away with it. Stress and hard times.

Nadia called from Paris. She told Jonathan she’d had a dream last night, that Peter was swimming out into the ocean. He turned to wave goodbye, then continued to swim away.

We couldn’t watch when the undertaker wheeled our brother away. Along the brick path, past the workshop, down the tree-lined driveway where the forsythia swayed and daffodils shone their bright yellow faces.