Death Comes When It Will

This morning as I walked to my father's house, nestled in the woods above a creek bank, a red-bellied woodpecker made its insistent whirring cry above me, a pair of mallards flew over the roof, cardinals called, and nuthatches zipped about. 

"She would be sorry to miss this, " I thought to myself.  "The first decent weather in weeks, and sounds of life ringing through the woods."

On Sunday, a series of phone calls indicated that my stepmother had begun a precipitious decline and was probably nearing the end.  Stunned by her mental confusion and physical agitation, my father had called a young relative to put her in the car and driven off to the hospital.  Tests showed that initial fears -- pneumonia or brain bleeds -- were unfounded, and anti-anxiety meds helped to calm her, but I decided to go anyway.  I'm not sure why, but I thought maybe she needed me to help her let go.  She certainly had no intention of leaving, either this life or my father.

I arrived at about 3:00 a.m. after a long drive across a quiet state.  A once vital and elegant woman lay in the hospital bed, breathing roughly but otherwise completely unresponsive.  Since I've always been told that people can hear voices even as everything else is shutting down, I sat down, told her I was there to help take care of her, and began to stoke her hand.  Her jagged breathing began to calm and I told her, my father's intrepid canoeing partner, to lie back in the canoe and let the sun shine on her face. 

Within a few minutes she was gone, quietly and peacefully, my father on one side, I on the other.

I will never know whether she heard me, or whether her breathing was simply the last physical manifestation of someone who hours earlier had moved on.  But I like to think that, as she died, she could hear gentle waves lapping and the loons of the North Woods calling her to journey to a more peaceful place.