Blog for One

Caroline died last night. I don’t know if she ever regained consciousness.In typical Caroline fashion, she wanted no funeral, no wake, no headstone, nada. I learned last week that she planned to donate her body to science, but complications from her C. Diff. may make that impossible.

Family and friends are currently working on a plan B that would meet Caroline’s wishes.

I noticed from my blog entries that I first re-connected with Caroline in May. Since then I became the unofficial “twice weekly lunch guy” and I would pick up a couple of lunches twice a week and go see her in the hospital.

She seemed to really like the lunches and we enjoyed each others’ company. After a while, it became easy to think that “Palliative Care” was just another place where people go, not a place where people go to die. We talked about politics, we talked about technology, we talked about just about everything except her illness, unless it somehow intruded. “Oh, I have to go for X-Rays today because the docs are concerned about my spine..”, you know, that kind of thing.

I think Caroline was genuinely surprised at the love and affection she got from her extended family of friends. I am positive this was a small shock to her. I feel privileged to have been with her on this last leg of her journey through life.

I had mentioned to her on one of my last visits before she stopped eating that it had been way too long since the last time we spoke. She didn’t really say anything, but later as I was preparing to leave she looked at me and said “You are right, it has been too long”.

After that things got worse and we never spoke again. Thursday night, I was at the hospital holding her hand for a few minutes but she was unconscious and evidently getting ready to check out.

I came upon this quotation, and I think it is somehow fitting:

“When the body sinks into death, the essence of man is revealed. Man is a knot, a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied. Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crock that nobody will miss. I have never known a man to think of himself when dying. Never.
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery”