personal sorrow. The visitor sees May defecating helplessly on the rug before anyone can stop her, and it strikes his identity, his self. It is as though the observer himself stood there, revealed. I have the advantage of knowing May will forget it in an hour; he does not. In breathless confession, waiting for the elevator, the visitor says: “ I pray to God I die before this happens to me.” I am told this again and again. “ I pray to God.” A kind of ego-terror is born, and with unbordered empathy comes flight. Suddenly the sounds and smells oppress, overwhelm. Suddenly it ’s time, more than time, to go. A labor of love, love for fading people who dwell in shadows. I am saved from the need for flight—I am uninjured—because I let them do their own suffering. This is a cold-sounding excuse, I know. Call it compassion instead of love. (I.am surprised, and pleased, just now, to find that Roget’s Thesaurus lists as a synonym for compassion and kindness the less lofty “ disinterestedness.” I have learned not to make personal what I see; not, as it were, to anthropomorphize my patients' experiences. Just as the witness imagines himself, complete, transformed to this place and trapped, so does he grant full imagination to those who are. He assumes Maud is aware of her plight, ruminates on her fate. I grant Maud plenty, without granting full cognizance in her withered brain. Down the hall from Maud is a man in his forties, paralyzed from polio, limited to a respirator, and he is fully cognizant: no pity for him, either. Pity makes distance, creates a separation of witness and participant; by assuming a person is absorbed in suffering, the witness prohibits them from participation in anything else. I close the curtains, keep my voice down, as a point of etiquette as much as sympathy. I have a spring in my step; I can see and hear; I can eat and digest I have learned not to make personal what I see; not, as it were, to anthropomorphize my patients' Sadie screams at me from far down the hall: "Help! It's an emergency!" She leans over and points at the blazing fire under her bed, a fire she sees and hears and smells, raging out of control. I see no fire. I coo to her, hushing; she babbles on. and first is that no one dies when we think they will, always later. Second, if a person long ill and silent suddenly comes to life, he or she will die soon. And last, people die in threes. Within a day or week of one death will follow two more. Just last week, Monte died, days after we’d predicted, and now Mr. H. down the hall is talking again, after months of sleep. Death is anticipated, waited on in suspense. It is like waiting in a very long line that snakes around a corner so you can’t see the end. When the last breath is drawn it is startling; here is a breath, and another, and another. Death is the breath after the last one. Always fresh, always solemn, and not unlike a childbirth: the living let their own held breaths go, and smile, and in the solemnity is an affirmation. Here it is. I stroke the skin so suddenly and mysteriously waxen. I pull out tubes and patch holes. I like dead'bodies: at no other time am I so aware of my own animation. This isn’t because I am lucky and this poor fool is not, but because here before me is the mute, incontrovertible evidence. Some force drives these shells, and it drives me still. I am a witness, an attestant, to a foresworn truth. Still I have my own despair. For me it is the things undone that break my back sometimes, the harried rush with people ca lling , and all those unexplained and get back to work. I have to remember to temper my criticism of the aides, who work at least as hard as I do in a job of numbing repetition and labor. Hardest to remember When so much is left unfinished is what I have managed to do. I think I’ve been of no help at all, and then realize how little help I’d be if I got discouraged and quit. Every task, no matter how late, every kind word, no matter how brief, makes a difference. In my first job as an aide I cared for a Swedish woman named Florence, who Death is the breath after the last one. The living let their own held breaths go, and smile, and in the solemnity is an affirmation. I like dead bodies: at no other time am I so aware of my own animation. I am a witness, an attestant, to a foresworn truth. had only one leg. She was happy and confused, and didn’t know she’d lost her limb. Time and again she would try to walk, and fall. I tied her in her chair, in her bed, and over and over she managed to untie herself and fall, thud, to the hard tile floor. She was always surprised. Exasperated at last, I stood over her and asked, “What am I going to do with you?” And she looked up from where she sprawled and said, “ Don’t stop trying, dear.” Don’t stop trying. This is far from the best nursing home. It isn’t the worst. I rant, jump to complain, go home frustrated. It should be better. But the sheets are changed, people are fed, for the most part each one is treated with kindness— a clumsy, patronizing kindness at times, but many of them don’t discriminate these fine points. Kindness is enough. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of people have joined these ranks, saved. There is no place to go but on, and on. I like dead people and all their apprenticed fellows like Maud, who, slowly, is learning to die. And I like this place, with its cockeyed, terpsichorean logic. I will feed Maud her squirts of puree and a few minutes later Sadie will announce she is the Queen of Germany, and requires royal treatment. Celia will cough up blood, and, as I consider my options, Iwill hear distant bedrails shake, the curses, the rhythmic, pattering singsong. Sometimes the borders shift even further. I sprawl across $ bed, fidd ling with Roberta’s leaking catheter, trying to disentangle her fingers from hair. The tube feeding drips on my leg. Who is keeper, who is kept? This is the Marx Brothers all grown up, slapstick matured, life imitating art imitating life. Down the hall the Greek Chorus begins, explaining the meaning and the mystery as the melodramatic story limps along. experiences. Just as the witness imagines himself, complete, transformed to this place and trapped, so does he grant full imagination to those who are. and control my urine, and I know these for the blessings they are. I am young enough, still, to take care of the old. But these are the most transient of graces, these graces of health, and I might lose them all tomorrow if the brakes fail. Old and sick comes later—but it comes. I I ere everybody dies. We tell black jokes (I laugh and laugh at a cartoon of an old man sitting up in bed, surrounded by impatient doctors: “ These are my last words,” the old man says. “ No, these are my last words. No, no, w a i t . . . . ” ) We have a three-part mythos of death here, events. I wish we could ferret out the meaning in all this chaos, talk it out. No time—sometimes the ice pitchers are dry all night. Last week I had a shift like this, split in the middle by an impatient doctor who snapped his fingers at me and tapped his toe in frustration at my slowness. An hour later another doctor dropped by, and I asked her to see a new patient, with a minor but uncomfortable problem. She refused, and then explained. “ Medicine is the kind of job where you have to be really careful not to let people take advantage of you,” she said. “ Somebody always wants something.” And all I could do was look at her, ern Hospital— McGraw Hill, an excerpt from which appeared as “Triptych” in the Spring ‘86 CSQ. She lives in Portland. Artist Mary Robben is a frequent contributor to CSQ. She lives in Portland. LookingGives Bookstore J IS st. Portland OR. 2.2.7^760 20 Clinton St. "W E ARE AMUSED” C a fe & D e lica tessen 4 0 4 S.W. 10th Po rtland CATERING SPECIALISTS Weddings, Anniversaries and special occasions. I ta l ia n Spec ia lties W ine Bar • Cheeses ■ Sandw iches Desserts • Sa lads • Sundries THE MARTINOTTI FAMILY un be l g io rno 224*9028 ARMAND-DIXIE FRANK-VINCE CECELIA-DIONE EDDIE THE SEW IM CIRCLE Handmade and Fine Old Clothing FOR MEN & WOMEN Vintage Resale Hand Sewn Vintage & Estate Clothing Appraisals 227-7985 1034 S.W. 3rd Mon-Sat 11-6
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