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EVERY STORY REACHES
ITS INEVITABLE END

Journal of Healing—Oct. 3, 2007

By Mary Koch

And so. Thirteen years, nine months and 23 days after a stroke that should have killed him but didn’t, it comes down to this.

John enjoys a glorious autumn day doing the thing he loves the most, driving his wheelchair, free-wheeling down the street, soaking in the sunshine’s Vitamin D.

In the evening, there’s a runny nose. I am apprehensive as always.

“Are you getting a cold?” I ask. “Yes,” he signals with resigned eyebrows up.

“Wake me,” I later tell Rosalind, John’s overnight caregiver, “if his breathing is labored or his temperature goes up.”

I have barely fallen asleep when she is at my bedroom door. We have done this drill before; we know how. We get out the oxygen equipment; we force him to breathe. Liquids accumulate in John’s respiratory tract. It sounds as if he is drowning, but the monitors reassure us. He’s doing better.

I don’t go back to bed but briefly lie down close by, listening to that labored, gurgling breath. Suddenly, I somehow know I must get up. I grab the suction; Rosalind is in the bathroom, rinsing a washcloth to cool John’s brow. John—despite his massive paralysis—raises his head, turning toward me and then away. Terrible secretions pour from his mouth.

“Rosalind!” I call. She quickly comes and looks. “Mary!” she whispers. The monitors have flat-lined. Impossible. I know what has happened, but I can’t believe it. “Is he gone?” I whisper. She is not a doctor. She is a Certified Nurses’ Assistant, a CNA. But we both know.

“What do I do now?” I ask.

“Call his son,” she advises. It is 1:30 in the morning. I hesitate. “Call his son,” she insists, and I make the call. John and Becki arrive quickly and call the authorities.

Despair and triumph. Most people don’t die at home, but John wanted to and he succeeded.

“He wasn’t on our ‘expected’ list,” the young police officer objects. I didn’t know police maintained an “expected” list, but even if I had, John wouldn’t have been on it. I knew he would die, some day, but I didn’t “expect” it. Certainly not this day.

The officer calls the paramedics. I get out John’s “do not resuscitate” order. There will be no brutal attempts to force life into his body. Then the officer wants to call the funeral home to have John’s body removed. No, I say. I need time. I have tended and nourished this body for 13 years, nine months and 23 days. It will not leave our home until I am ready.

It is a necessary and sacred thing. Our earthly bodies should not be simply whisked away as if to pretend that death never happens. I caress and stroke the cooling body. Others who have also intimately cared for this body arrive and say their goodbyes.

Finally it is time. John’s body is tenderly transferred to a waiting gurney with more respect than was occasionally shown by hospital aides when he was alive.

And so we move on to celebrate a life that has passed. Nothing will ever be the same for me again.

“Keep writing,” a caller urges. No doubt I shall, but this story has reached its inevitable end. Faithful readers, you contributed much to our healing journey through your prayers and well wishes. Now I leave you with the three words John would whisper to me whenever I had to leave him for a while: “Go with God.”

John E. Andrist was paralyzed by a brain stem stroke Dec. 2, 1993, and died of respiratory failure Sept. 25, 2007. His wife, Mary Koch, may be reached by e-mail at marykoch@marykoch.com or P.O. Box 3346, Omak, WA 98841.

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