In reply to below

Linda I'm so sorry for your loss. There are parts of what you say that remind me of my dad's death, a little over a year ago. The part about birth and death being similar, maybe that should be obvious but it still came as a surprise. And the finality of it is so crushing. Like a cruel joke where you wait for the 'just kidding' part that never comes.

My dad experienced such horrific amounts of pain to his back muscles from metastasized bladder cancer. It was undescribable really to watch someone you love experience so much pain and not be able to do anything about it. He was on superhuman doses of morphine and still in a strange distant twilight of consciousness altho he couldn't communicate with us. Like being buried alive. S., who was 2, brought us tissues as we cried and made the social workers cry too.

The doctors were so stingy with the morphine. They were so fearful of any dose that might be construed as euthanasia. But the point is moot; you can't really overdose, and when you're at the very end you're only providing relief. Or not. We had to call the doctors several times at 4:00 a.m., the i.v. pump had a lock code that allowed only a hospice nurse to access it. But it was a new model of pump and my sister and I ended up showing the nurses how to use it. We knew the code and thought many times to change it ourselves but we were afraid we'd run out before the next timed delivery.

The pain doctor we had was not well suited to his job. Our last time in the hospital when it became clear all the assurances of a pain-free end were empty, I remember him rolling my dad, who was completely conscious and otherwise normal, over on his side to listen with his stethoscope. It was such a subtle gesture but he only touched him with his fingertips, as you would touch something distasteful. I wanted to smack him. I still hate him.

He came home to die, in his own bedroom. Once he realized they could nothing for him, he deteriorated quickly. It showed not only how much he was staying alive by sheer will power, but also how incredibly powerful it was. The last thing he said was, "Good night, S." in response to "Good night, Grampa."

A couple of weeks later, several days after the gruesome death rattle started, the hospice nurse called us out of our beds for the end, she had seen it so many times it was a clinical process, like knowing when to change an oil filter. I got the distinct feeling that whatever he had been wasn't there anymore. It had already left and this was the machine shutting down. A few last breaths with longer pauses between, and then you wait for one more and it doesn't come. Except your brain doesn't want to accept it and you can swear that you still see the chest rising and falling. You're completely and utterly helpless there's nothing that you can do that will change it.

Garrett and I slept in that room for the next couple of days and I know what you mean about that wanting traces to cling; I was hoping there'd be some energy imprint in the physical space, I was hoping it would be 'haunted'. Except for an occasional waft of Nurse Lily's perfume, there was nothing.

The police came and made sure the massive amounts of opiates that the hospice nurse had flushed down the toilet were well and truly gone. The corpse seemed to be almost an afterthought. A hearse came and took the body away. S. watched the Wizard of Oz incessantly it was the most tv she'd ever been allowed to watch and no one cared. The Munchkins sang over and over: "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead."

A couple of months later I had an intensely real dream that he was fixing this old lavender refrigerator I used to have. We were sitting side by side on the floor in T-shirts, jeans. His smell was so authentic, so organic. We both knew the refrigerator was a pretext; this was a last opportunity to be together. I remember feeling grateful toward whatever power that had made it happen. The next night I had another intense dream that I was standing at the window of my living room except I was a small child; he was out in the driveway; a little pudgy alot more hair, much younger. He was leaving in his Triumph convertible (the car they had when I was very small). He was laughing that I was crying; I was so sad he was going. Somewhere the adult me was watching the whole thing and feeling sorry for the little girl. He waved and got in the car and drove off. And that's the end of it. Occasionally I'll have a dream that it was all a mistake and when i wake up I'm actually convinced for a few minutes. That sounds so cliche but hope is a funny, stubborn thing. I still can't really look at photos or listen to their answering machine. I don't think it gets better with time. You just learn to live with it, like a chronic sore, like colors that have become washed out.