Drowning

"Daddy, no!!"

As if I were a five year old. I was next to my mom and her breath was slow and gurgling. When you die of respiratory failure, your lungs fill up with fluid until you drown. I still don't understand why.

I think it was about midnight, or maybe more like 11, when the gurgling started to get bad. With each inhale, it was like ... but there are no similes. It was like she was breathing through water because she was breathing through water. I called the hospice nurse who told me we should turn her on her side so the fluid might drain from her mouth. Slow the process. Okay. But we couldn't make it work. She was too heavy and we couldn't make her move to the right to the right to the right without her rolling back. Her eyes would flutter open--uncertainty, sadness, fear, yellow--but she was totally unable to speak. What words could possibly ... ? And then the foam started spitting from her nostrils. We tried to keep things clean. We tried to make her look comfortable, not knowing if she really was. And then we tried not to look, embarrassed for her, but more embarrassed for ourselves. I snuck a peek, and a longer glance, and then I stared, determined. Who are you? You are my mother. I called the hospice nurse again. "I'll be right over."

And we waited. Crying. Petting. Holding. And then my dad climbed up on the bed with a flashlight. A big, grey flashlight that was still sitting on the night stand the day I left to come back to Seattle. "Let me look inside ..." and "Something is blocking ..." And I cried in that way that was outside of myself. I sounded like a five year old.

Daddy, no. The light. Nothing is blocking. Water. Fluid. The light will be too hard on her eyes. Daddy, no.

You do strange things. We all do strange things. He stopped before he could begin, put the flashlight on the night stand, and stepped away from the bed.

The nurse came. She was quick and no-nonsense and careful and then my mom was on her side with a pillow against her back, propping her in place. The thick fluid oozing from the side of her mouth. Swabs and tissue to clear out the rest. And her breathing eased. The gurgle softened. For now.

I know. The nurse did what you wanted only weren't sure how to do. Are you okay? I asked him and apologized.