From the opened abyss
My Death Throes, Pt 2
Flint & Steel Two-Part Writing Challenge
Before I tell you what happened with that night tincture, I want to tell you this:
Five years ago, I had never seen a person die. I’ve written about my grief many times, but in case you missed those writing moments, I’ll just say that almost five years ago, my adult best friend Owen was diagnosed with lung cancer — the proverbial simple cough that wouldn’t go away — and the moment of his diagnosis to his death took almost exactly three weeks. We — my wife and I, and she considered Owen a best friend too — got to the hospital maybe six hours before he passed. We knew that his death was likely, but even when we arrived that Monday afternoon, we didn’t know that death would occur that day.
Two hours before he died, I told my wife,
“I think he’s trying to die,”
after noting his restlessness and the way the failing sun kept finding his eyes as he lay there. He asked me to pull the shades and I did. It was almost his last request of me; the final request I learned the following day when his girl friend told me that Owen had named me executor of his estate.
So, I watched as his eyes closed…almost. One lay half open after he was gone. But at least once he lapsed into unconsciousness, he never regained the clarity of whatever pain and vision awaited him.
I didn’t know until then that when a patient is passing, the attendants describe it as “transitioning,” the same term used in the penultimate phase of labor.
My mother’s passing wasn’t as gentle. She lapsed into a coma on her death day, for her last eight hours. But at the very end, her throes were open-eyed, and though we managed to get some morphine into her mouth, her eyes saw something, and I saw them witness whatever that something was: that yawning abyss.
She died eight months after Owen did.
My mother’s best friend says it’s a “privilege” to witness a loved one’s death. I had never thought about it in those terms before.
If that’s true, however, what word do we use when we witness our own almost-death?
When I have told others what I’m about to describe for you, most have laughed. I don’t know why, except that here must be truth in the old adage, “laughing in the face of death.”
So yes, the answer is C): Put the bottle of CBD-Delta 8 to your lips and down it all.
I knew when it filled my mouth that swallowing was a bad idea (and yes, I know how that sounds). I should have spit it out because it was three times the dosage I normally ingested.
“What could happen?” I semi-consoled myself.
I did fall asleep easily, but after an hour or so, I awoke, and wasn’t certain where I was. I got up, nearly fell, and tried to get to the bathroom for some water. But the only sip I could muster made me cold in a way I’ve rarely felt.
Cold deep within me.
I got back into bed where my dog Max was also sleeping between my wife and me. He was awake, but I was sure that his lower half had become paralyzed (and since he does have a trick patella, there was some motivation for my distortion). I woke my wife and asked her to check him.
“He’s fine,” she said groggily.
And he was.
Clearly, though, I wasn’t.
I was deeply thirsty and colder than the time the Alberta Clipper dropped the temps to -24 in Knoxville, the first year of our marriage. I knew it was the CBD, and I knew I was now in the first stages of a panic attack. I even had the presence to tell my wife these two realities.
“Please talk to me, “ I said. “Please hold me.”
She did both, and began telling me the story of our trip to Ireland back in 1988, with our infant daughter. I could hear everything, but the waves of confusion and distress kept overcoming me.
She got me more water, and this was one of the factors that saved me. I was horribly dehydrated, and most likely, my blood pressure was tanking. Later, my therapist would give me a fancy medical term for what was happening, but I’ve since lost the slip of paper I wrote that description on [found it — orthostatic hypotension], and really, that name couldn’t do justice to what was happening in me: my own death.
Or at least I was convinced of my own death. As my wife held, me, I kept telling her that I was so scared, that I didn’t want to die. She kept assuring me that I wasn’t dying, but for a few minutes (or days it seemed in that experience) I believed she was wrong, and I felt so sad, too. I couldn’t tell her; I didn’t want to leave her; I didn’t want to lose the protection of her strong arms.
How could I die now, I wondered? I just became a grandfather! How very sad, and how very much this would also “kill” my two daughters. It was all such a shame.
I felt myself sinking, and for those moments, I thought I understood how death will feel, a sense of panic, a vacuum of regret. A sinking, sinking.
And then, My wife said,
“Chant with me: OMMMMMMMM.”
It didn’t occur to me to refuse or fight her at all.
OMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM
We chanted together for five minutes or so, and then I knew: the wave was receding. I could still feel it, but those OM’s reduced the panic and the fear. My breathing steadied. I began relaxing again. And finally, I feel asleep once more, still protected in my wife’s understanding arms. She and I, comfortably breathing.
My wife never laughed at me. She described this as a “bad trip,” and though that made me feel like a cliche, it was an apt description.
“Most likely,” my therapist (who didn’t laugh either) told me, “you would have passed out if you hadn’t gotten that water.”
Most likely, he’s right.
I knew in those moments, however, that I needed, wanted, to stay conscious. I didn’t see the abyss as much as I felt it, and I swear: I felt halfway in.
I survived whatever was happening that night, just as in that alternative reality-definition, I “survived” Owen and my mother (I wasn’t with my father when he died — another story — which compounds that grief with guilt).
I also quit taking CBD Delta 8.
Of course I know that one day I will be survived too.
Now I feel like I know what half of that experience will feel like, and yes, maybe that is a privilege, too.
Thanks to everyone at Flint & Steel for publishing and especially to Ellie Jacobson for this stirring survival challenge!
Part One is here: https://readmedium.com/my-death-throes-54e8ff6f4323?sk=5e19aa1d3d721b1463f1213d6386d7e6
