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September, 2006
Her eyebrows, tattooed with a calligraphers studied stroke, perfectly
missed the intended arch. Her nails, filed and painted pink, the
color of Easter, punctuated the delicate strength of her fingers. It
was an illusion, the delicacy, an effect of age and disease. Her
will, I learned was formidable. She asked me for a file. A nail had
chipped. She protested briefly when I offered to buy one in the gift
shop conflicted by accepting help, she gave in. “An ice pop
might taste good.” she said. I filed her nail and between bites
of the ice pop she began to speak.
She grew up in Romania, of German decent. Eighty seven when she died,
WWI was the background of her youth. She spoke in fragments, pieces
fell from her memory, “I cannot get them out of my head,”
she said, “They just keep coming.” They fell like petals,
segments of a larger whole.
There was no food, nobody helped you, 200 people sick, the whole
town, my sister and I, we just started at one end with a bucket and
towels, all the people sick, no food, no medicine, people, children,
everybody, dying. We just worked, no time to cry, no time to laugh,
nothing to eat, 200 people&ldots;My sister was younger, a child, I
did not get sick. She did. There was no food, nothing. I spent 4
years in a Russian concentration camp. We were girls. My mother kept
my children in Romania. We worked all the time, every day, 4 years.
It was so cold. My husband was there too. When we got out, there was
nothing left at home. He went to America. He had sisters there.
Later, I took the children. When I got here, something wrong with his
head. He was in a wheel chair. He died. I worked all the time, pushed
myself. Nobody helped, nobody took care of me. I bought a home, a
three family. I had my garden. I did everything, no one to help me.
What’s the use? It is always suffering. She paused and noticed
me again. I asked her when she got sick. “Three years ago, never
sick in my life, never go to a doctor&ldots;it was hot, I was tarring
the driveway and got so hot&ldots;it was August&ldots;I don’t
feel good after that.”
You don’t push yourself.” she said studying my hands.
“No,” I said, “not like that. I push myself in a
different way.” I asked if she was in pain. She had refused pain
medication.” I don’t want any help, not now, it is too
late, and nobody helped when I needed it, now I don’t care. I
have cancer. I wish that all the guards at the camp, they should have cancer.”
The next time I visited, she was withdrawn, sad. I put my arms around
her. She said nothing. A photograph of a beautiful woman in a floral
dress was on the window sill. I asked her about it. “I made the
dress, silk, for my sister-in-law’s wedding.”
Did you dance? “Yes,” she smiled, ”Oh did I
dance&ldots;at the German American Club.” “Take it
away!” she demanded and lapsed into silence.
The cancer made her nauseous. The nurse told me that after I left,
she vomited. Her teeth flew across the room.
Elizabeth was alone the last day I came to visit. Her open eyes
stared at some distant space, her breathing, rough and irregular. The
nurse had called her family to come. I pulled a chair close to her
bed and took her hand in mine. She was dying. I prayed a string of
Hail Mary’s, watching her, thinking about her life of
unimaginable suffering. I said little. She took her last breath
inward as though surprised. Something soft registered in her eyes,
then, she died.
I stayed with her, not wanting to leave her alone, until her family
arrived. As I sat there, holding her hand. Waves of grief rose up
within me, grief for the loneliness of her suffering, for the
hardness of life turned in upon itself, for the cancerous death.
Sorrow overcame me and I wept. “It is a bitter life.” she
had told me. I wept for the broken heart beneath the bitterness.
The priest came, then her children. “Why does life have to be so
hard?” her son cried. “Did she say anything?” her
daughter asked. No, nothing. At the end the words were swallowed like
the bitter pills she refused.
That night, I had a dream. I am a passenger in a wooden wagon pulled
by a sick and bony horse. The country is unfamiliar. It is cold. A
woman drives the wagon as we slowly make our way down a rough dirt
road. I study her. She is young but so thin and hard that she’s
aged, brittle and haggard. She looks at me and says,”There was
no food from October to April. Hunger draws the life from you and
makes you hard. It takes your spirit away.”
As she spoke these words, I knew what she knew, felt as she felt. The
cold gnawing ache that never stopped, that turned the yearning for
nourishment inside out, eating away at the soul. A hungry ghost
feeding on a bitter root.
I have been a hospital volunteer for over 2 years. I have been
present with many patients on their final journey. She was the first
patient to die in my arms.
Kate DeChard
May 2004
Rhinebeck, NY
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