Lake of fire

Nirvana - Lake of Fire.

I'm only sleeping

Confined to her bed in the hospice, my Grandma mostly sleeps.  Her weight has dropped strikingly with diminished food intake, and I watch for ever more subtle signs that she is still breathing; Her frail chest cavity struggles to rise, the blankets covering her climbing slowly with effort, and then plunging quickly from the exertion.  On good days, she has a deep slumber, her breathing soft and gentle.  On worse days, it is a fitful sleep, punctuated by gurgles from the bile building in her lungs that a machine rhythmically pumps out.

In my life, I have viewed people near death.  I have witnessed the aftermath of death.  I have even observed the act of dying in execution, soul and energy dissipating in its final moments, and the hollowed body slumped from its newfound emptiness.  I have trouble accurately placing what state this is, the line between live and death so thin and its limbo marked only by sleep.  I suppose I could insert Shakespeare here, and talk about death and sleep, and the calamity of so long life.  However, the topic being well tread, I will move on, and offer only the observation that I am myself quite frequently sleepy in the hospice.  

When I do doze off on the couch, the hospice staff often wake me.  Every two hours, my Grandma needs to be shifted to prevent bedsores, and there are blood pressure measurements, morphine dosages, filling and emptying of equipment in the room I am only vaguely aware of.  The staff is all black, mostly Caribbean, and I find comfort in their patois:

“G’wan sleeping, I’m only here fa her blood pre-shure…”   

The words remind me of Jamaican stew, thick, tender and deeply seasoned, so I allow myself to be enveloped in its comforting notes before drifting back off to sleep.

“Have you eaten?” is a common greeting in Cantonese, a substitute for hello.  Long after my Grandma could no longer walk, when I visited her, she would ask if I have eaten.  Now when I think back, I rarely saw her eat.  I sometimes think that her hunger was satiated through solely feeding us.  And so this greeting became problematic with her aging - in our family’s collective worry, we always responded affirmatively, such that I was always coming from a big meal or heading to one, regardless of whether I’d actually eaten.  Our fear stemmed from her forgetfulness; Not remembering that she was immobile, she would still attempt to whip up a quick snack and risk falling out of her wheelchair.  I think with losing family members, you always have some regrets centered around food – recipes are lost, dishes made with love (vehicles of communicating love, really) that will never make its way to you as a recipient any more.  I spend a fair amount of time in Chinatown, trying to rediscover one dish or another, but the flavors are never the same.  I think it is common and easy to discount the preparer in lieu of the ingredients, the flavors drawn from watching the cook make combinatorial magic.  The flavors of her food reflect the small saucer she used to wet her fingertips to pry off wonton wrappers, the worn tea towel she wiped residue the spoon used to scoop up her pork and scallion filling, the wallpaper in the kitchen, worn and coated with cooking grease.  These are ingredients I can never hope to replace or dream of substituting in my only desolate kitchen.          

And here in the hospice, we come full circle.  I make poor attempts to feed her and ask if she has eaten, but mostly we share a small measure of sleep together.

Rosanne Cash - I'm only sleeping (Beatles cover).