Tamara Zujewskyj, R.N., M.Sc.N., on an enduring love

Helen and Jim

Jim woke with a start in between dreams suddenly halted by the ringing of the phone. “I would like to speak with Mr. Jones.” It sounded so ominous. Gradually, the message arrived sending a wave of hot, burning lava through his ears reaching his chest and arms. He fought the message with disbelief. Helen was dying.

They were husband and wife, a union like no other. A simple life filled with blessings of children and passion. There were challenges which they overcame – always together. How would they overcome this one? Helen was dying, leaving him. He would be alone. Other family members had died – why did it have to be Helen this time. Just as they started enjoying their grandchildren it would all come to an end.

She had a bad cold that turned into pneumonia. She would get over it. The doctors would know how to treat her – he tried to convince himself. He heard Helen’s words imprinted in his memory “I have no regrets. We have done what we wanted and I am happy with that.” When she said those words he felt a distancing, a separating – as if she knew something he did not. He felt her power and his powerlessness in those words. It was only yesterday that she had said that to him. Now, she was lying there, fighting for breath, unable to say a word. Those words penetrated him now. Why had he not asked her more? Why did they not talk more, embrace more? Maybe if they did, he would have more to hold onto now, when his heart was being ripped apart.

Jim phoned his daughter and son. He knew he had to tell them that their mother was dying, but how? They too hoped that she would get better. “Mother is dying we need to go there, be with her, so that she is not alone.”

The drive to the hospital transpired in slow motion. Everything around him continued its normal pattern. The early morning traffic was the same. He felt like shouting, yelling at the top of his voice – his Helen lay dying, his life was changing and nothing around him was tuned into his pain. He was angry, but at who or what? He could not drive fast enough to get to Helen, who was there alone. He did not want to lose her too soon. He kept praying – praying that God would get them there on time.

The hospital seemed dark when they arrived; everyone was sleeping. Might the nurse have been mistaken? Was Helen only sleeping? When he entered her room, there was no doubt. Helen’s body was working so hard to breathe. It was painful to see her this way. He could not help her. She knew he and the children were there in the way her body responded. “You know we are here,” he said to Helen. He noticed a change in her face. That area around her eyes, her mouth; he wondered if she might say a word to them. There were words last night.

There was such sadness in his heart. She was leaving him. Memories – that is all that would be left. He was fighting with himself. She was still here and he was already sending her away. How to be here in this moment? Do I hold onto her – holding on means hope – and she is dying, so there is no hope. Just ‘being’ without any direction was so different. He wanted to do. There was nothing he could do. Dying – a state of being here and not being here – a state of leaving. It was tearing him apart! He was breathing deeply as if to help Helen breathe. His children gathered around their mother holding her hand, tenderly speaking to her. He spoke to her too – whispered loving words in her ear. He knew she heard them.

He wondered where she was going – what it would be like there. Would he meet her again? Would she see her parents and his brothers who had gone there before? He wondered what he really believed.

When she stopped breathing he knew this was the end of ‘us.’ She was at peace which brought momentary relief and a sense of peace in his body. The depth of his loss welled up inside of him; his tears flowed freely. He did not realize he was crying. Somehow he knew that he could carry on but it would not be an easy path.

Then he thought of their grandchildren and how they would miss her. He made promises to himself to make sure they remembered their grandmother. His future would not be totally without her – he had the grandchildren in whom there was a spark of their grandmother and this knowing lifted his head just a little higher in his moment of grief.

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