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REFLECTIONS BEYOND THERAPY
To be or to not-be, is that the question?
Bridget Tardivel
It is late and I should be sleeping. But your words are grumbling around in my head, ā āShe told me I had two months to live. Well, that was over six months ago now ā¦ and Iām still here. Since then I feel like Iāve just been waiting ā¦ Iām still waiting ā¦ā ā I can see him clearly in my mind; furrowed brow, heavy-lidded eyes searching some distant middle ground ahead, his words falling into the space between us, āSo tell me ā¦ what is this ā¦ waiting?ā
Itās such an interesting question. Working as a therapist within a palliative context I have heard these, or similar words many times, and they inevitably linger with me. Itās clear that the āwaitingā ends at death. But when and where does it begin? Surely, on some level, we are all waiting? I know that I am. Hopefully, if we are leading a reasonably sustainable lifestyle, we are doing lots of other things besides. But I have to own, that, just like the gentleman above, there is a quintessential part of me that sits, and waits. Although unlike him, I havenāt experienced the grim reality of being presented with a terminal diagnosis. So to date, my prognosis remains blurry and indistinct.
For me, there is no clear distinction between living and dying. It does not exist in my mind. I find it easier, and more helpful, to see myself living and dying simultaneously; they sit side-by-side on a continuum, not following on one after the other. However, I have come to realise that this mindset is not the norm.
I am interested in the notion of a tipping point beyond which someone is considered to be dying rather than living, in who decides where this tipping point lies, and in how it impacts upon the living/dying experience of those within its clutches. In the Western context in which I live, we tend to regard ourselves as either living or dying, but generally not both together. Around me I witness frenetic energy spent attempting to separate and sift death out of life so that dying becomes a carefully segregated process that happens later, immediately prior to death. It is sometimes post-traumatic and short-lived, but more commonly follows the identification of an irreversible and progressive deterioration in health, often topped off with a terminal medical diagnosis. In general, only those in receipt of palliative care can truly call themselves dying, and even then they will probably find themselves surrounded by those who will try to persuade them otherwise. So, immersed in this wider culture, for me to regard myself as dying from the moment I was born, living and dying as I breathe, while mindful that at some future time I will ānot-beā, feels curiously discordant and off-kilter. Populist terminology currently refers to palliative illnesses as ālife-limitingā. But the reality is that all life is limited and death is a part of life, not apart from life, no matter how much we might wish otherwise.
But I am not only a counsellor. Among other roles, I am also a mother, a sister and a daughter. As I stumble through my 57th year, my life is becoming littered with bereavements and loss. At times it feels positively cluttered. It is rare these days to have a conversation with friends or family that will not reference some imminent death or sad āpassingā. Recently I watched my Dad dying in hospital. He was very old, and as I keep trotting out, like a broken record, āhe did lead a full and interesting lifeā. Like that makes it somehow okay. They say hindsight is a wonderful thing, but looking back, I remember it dawning upon me, way before it became apparent to medical and nursing staff, that he really was going to die very soon.
It stole over me as I sat next to his hospital bed in the days before his death; a cold creeping realisation that I was witnessing his life-force trickling away. I had, I realised with crystal clarity, been observing this process for many years. More than I dared to remember. But these were the final dregs of life; those last few drops of blood red wine being drained from the bottom of the bottle. The light was clearly fading from his eyes.
And I think he knew it too. Sitting there I became increasingly baffled that nobody around us in the busy hospital ward seemed to see what I was seeing. The daily routine of propping him up in the chair next to his bed and offering him countless plastic beakers of tea and plates of mushy food continued way past the point at which he was able to politely decline. Iām sure I recall his last coherent words to me: āIām so tired. Please just let me lie down.ā I felt I was dragging the medical team behind me toward the pearly gates of palliative care. āKeep up!ā I wanted to shout at them over my shoulder. āHeās not going to wait for you!ā A few short hours before he drew his last breath, almost as though conceding defeat, they reluctantly wrote the phrase āpalliative careā in his notes so he could be wheeled into a side room to be left in peace to relinquish life, and die with some semblance of dignity. For me and my family, the whole process felt unnecessarily complicated, exhausting, and, for everyone involved, including fellow patients and clinical staff, potentially traumatising.
After he died, I sat holding his still-warm hand, and watched him for a long, long time. I couldnāt tear my eyes, or myself, away. I have never before felt as calm and centred as in those moments of peace and tranquillity, like sitting at the eye of a storm.
Dad had a no-nonsense attitude toward life and death, and he had often talked about dying. It had interested him. I am positive that this was helpful for both of us in so many ways. Proud of his humble French āpeasantā (his word) rootstock, he would occasionally spatter his exchanges with the odd phrase of Breton Patois. One such; āchacun Ć son tour par monter en carrosseā, loosely translates as āeach has his turn to climb into the hearseā. He was definitely waiting. In fact I used to joke that heād had his coat on and bag packed for years before his final departure date.
Back in 1927, German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote: ājust as one who flees death is pursued by it even as one evades it, and just as in turning away from it one has to see it nonethelessā (Heidegger, 1927, p. 404), and I find myself wondering about his words; while intuitively we might busy our lives with much fleeing and evading of death, there will also, for some of us, be those times when we find ourselves stopped in our tracks, waiting for it to catch us up.
Death is interesting though. Or perhaps it is our relationship with it that makes it so? In contemporary Western civilisations we play with it in our imagination, indulging ourselves through fiction and drama. Here, it is always carefully controlled and staged, the impact barely brushing our skin. It feels permissible to watch death unfolding from a distance, on a screen, stage, or in a book, presumably because it is happening to the other, and not to me.
Then there are the ānon-fictionā times too, the death of someone we know, and occasionally, someone very close to us; painful, gut-wrenching, heart-breaking. These are the times we feel ripped apart and hung out to dry, times we have to remind ourselves to keep breathing.
Reflecting here on the page, I feel my mind drifting down deeper into reverie; ghosts begin to creep between the lines (see Ibsen, 1881, Ghosts, Act II), snapshots from a different time of loss, in a different faraway place, a time of yesteryear which yet still feels like yesterday ā¦
