Living with Dying - Fragments of Time
Living with Dying - Fragments of Time
Kevin loved watches… anyone who knew him knew he loved collecting things - Nike trainers, cars, Beckett books, and watches were up there. He loved analogue over digital when it came to watches, so much so that I often struggled to go to sleep with the ticking sound of a second hand in my ear.
In the hours before he died, Catherine, John and I sat with Kevin in his room in the Bon Secours in Cork, and time seemed to slow down. We have often spoken of the energy of the room during that time, late at night, when everything was quiet, and it seemed like the universe had put a protective shield around us, stationed at his door. No-one came in or out bar the 3 of us, and the silence was both peaceful and comforting.
We had an unwritten pact between us - he would never be left alone. And so we took turns keeping vigil, an unscripted but effortless choreography as we moved in and out as we needed to. We talked to him, out loud and in our minds. We reassured him that everything was ok, and everything was done, and he could go whenever he wanted. We played his favourite music - Chopin melodies and the score from Cinema Paradiso. Calmness spread over his face, and occasionally he smiled, or looked off for something or someone in the distance, as if he could see where he was going next.
I became fixated on his watch - even though it seemed like time had stood still, the second hand moved steadily around, always keeping the same time. As those final moments came around, that second hand measured the space between his breaths, each one coming further and further apart. With each breath came the hope that this would be the final one for him and he could be free, and at the same time the hope that he would continue to take one more. I lost count of how many times I thought he had died, only for him to take one more breath. Time became liquid, and yet the second hand moved always at the same pace, measuring breath after breath until the very last one.
At 12:21, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 12th February 2020, Kevin died. We sat there, for how long I have no idea, just letting everything sink in, and sitting in the stillness of that moment. Once I moved, and went to find the medical staff, we knew everything would pick up. So in that moment, suspended in time that seemed to stand still, we just sat. Everything that needed to be done was now done. Everything that was in our hearts that we wanted to gift him had been received.
After a while, I left the room to find a nurse - Aisling. I will always remember her because Kevin thought she was the prettiest nurse in the hospital, and she loved his sense of humour. I will also always remember her when I told her Kevin was gone, her first words were “gone where?”, and then her own shock and sadness kicked in.
And then, as it does in moments of chaos, time sped up. Nurses came in, doctors were paged, and Kevin was officially pronounced dead. The standard Irish shock treatment of cups of tea and sandwiches appeared out of thin air. We stepped in and out to make phone calls, thankfully few, as only a handful of people knew that Kevin was sick. The Night Nurse manager came to visit us - a steadying presence with a matching dark sense of humour to our own - to inform us that Kevin wouldn’t leave the hospital until the morning to go to the mortuary, so we were welcome to stay with him as long as we wanted.
Eventually, time settled. Aisling and one of the other nurses came in to tend to Kevin, and myself and Catherine were welcomed to help. Those moments are some of my most precious in the immediate aftermath. I have rarely seen such kindness and compassion by two strangers, especially given that he could no longer hear us. They removed all his monitoring equipment, all the while speaking to him and explaining what they were doing. We washed him and changed his bed, and settled him back in, all the while laughing about how much he would love 4 women fussing over him. And I took his watch off his left arm, the second hand still marking time, and I put it on my own.
And then we sat again. Michael arrived, and we drank endless tea, and reminisced, and told stories, and eventually we began to plan his funeral, and what we would do and when and where. And in those hours, Kevin’s face returned to utter peace, and to himself. His ultimate marathon was over, and he could rest.
As morning broke, the noise of the outside world began to filter into our little protected space. We could hear patients stirring, breakfast carts in motion, and visitors arriving. It was time to leave, and time for us to rest a while now. The porters arrived to take Kevin to the mortuary, and we made our way to the Bru Columbanus Hostel, and amazing accommodation facility for family of Cork Hospital patients. We phoned the local funeral director’s, and made arrangements to visit them later that day.
And as the world woke up, I went to sleep with the now comforting ticking sound of a second hand in my ear.