In Anne Lamott’s book Bird by Bird she says; “Dying people can teach us this most directly. Often the attributes that define them drop away—the hair, the shape, the skills, the cleverness. And then it turns out that the packaging is not who that person has really been all along. Without the package, another sort of beauty shines through.” Although we see this in our work daily, I did not quite understand it on this level until it was so eloquently expressed.
Over the past ten days we had three patients that passed away at SRL. They were all beautiful, graceful deaths, and all expected. We know this is our work, but we love these people, so each death has an effect on us and a sorrow settles in us despite our logic telling us it shouldn’t.
On Monday I experienced another death. This time, it was a close friend, Harriet, and it feels to me as if my heart has been ripped out of my throat at times. A life without her in it seems grey and empty; a world I don’t really want to navigate.
Harriet’s illness was not new to any of us and for the past years it almost morphed in to another individual in our friendship group. Will the illness allow the dinner to take place tonight? Will the illness let us all travel the long distance together? It was the butt of many jokes on a whatsapp group, mainly from Harriet herself. It always lingered, reminding us all that at any moment, Harriet’s life could change, like it did before. On a Saturday 11 February she was supposed to come to us for dinner. By the Monday 13 February, she was in ICU.
A year ago on Harriet’s Insta feed she posted: “the trouble is, you think you have time.” It is a quote by Siddharth Guatama, later known as the Buddha. I think she, like all those who deal with chronic or terminal illness, know better than the rest of us that time is precious, and so she lived passionately, abundantly and with her whole heart.
This blog is not a eulogy for her, but I want to unpack how to mourn her loss and find the beauty that still shines through her even now. We knew each other a long, long time, but our friendship only deepened in the last five years. We shared an understanding of mortality and a love of inappropriate humour. Her last weeks in ICU entrenched that relationship even more. There was a shift in her which I am only realising now. I always think people know that they are dying without knowing that they know. There is a kind of acceptance and transition which starts to take place, even if they still plan for the future or worry about loadshedding.
After her admission this time, I had the privilege of going to see her every morning. It was our little ritual. We never spoke of deep things or death or fear. That we did when we were sitting on the beach in Mozambique last year. There in ICU, we both hung on to the mundane; the things that make us human. Almost daily, we looked through her bedsheets for her phone she’d lost, or we tried to get her comfortable around all the damn tubes. She lost her glasses and air-pods a few times too, and keeping her phone charged and safe was also on our little daily to-do list. Every second day, we did the hairdressing-dance (Poor Harriet was stuck with me who has the worst skills when it comes to anything like that). I brushed the knots out of her hair and washed it. We gossiped about the nasty night nurse. She rolled her eyes dramatically and told me she has a 100 beautiful toiletry bags, but her husband brought her toiletries in a ugly Woolies bag. She worried that her daughter had a cold. She was frustrated to be stuck in ICU and at one time, we even tried to convince the surgeon that she should come to the Recovery Lodge for a weekend, just so she could have some fresh air, have her dogs visit her and feel human. It was not an option. She was sicker than we had hoped.
Harri got sicker and sicker and after slipping in to a coma was ventilated. Each day there were more pipes and drains in her and we could see how hard she had to fight to stay alive. On one of the last days I was there, I tried to brush her hair again. I had to carefully traverse the equipment around her so that I could get behind the bed and start brushing. By now I knew her head and hair so well, but soon realised this was not going to work. I put the dry shampoo and brush back in the much joked-about black woollies bag, splattered with tears. I admitted defeat. There was now absolutely nothing I could do for my friend anymore. I kept going to the hospital though, talking to her lovely face, praying for her, assuring her of how we loved her and how we promise to be her family’s soft landing if she dies.
In those weeks, nothing much mattered: not her beautiful clothes, her gorgeous home, her horses, her orchids, her plans. It was Harriet 101, the essential Harriet, and it was perfect. I am filled with gratitude that this glorious being was in my life and I am already seeing what is shining through even just four days after she died.
Her friends, although reeling from this loss, are rising up and wanting to make her memorial something so beautiful and true to her. Love and emotion are being poured out on various platforms even by people who are super uncomfortable with emotion. Her daughter, although incredibly heartbroken is still walking up straight and gracefully accept condolences. She is strong, she had a beautiful example in her mother. We see light shine through in the way we can see how her dear, dear husband mourns her loss, but has his sense of humour wonderfully intact, and courageously tackles each revolting day without her. She leaves behind the most beautiful art, which she loved, but did not worship. A lovely Degas-type ballerina sculpture stood casually next to the cat food. Such beauty, just hanging out in the middle of a chaotic kitchen island. I loved that about her. I have now stopped even trying to keep an orchid, but she could make them flourish and her lounge always reminded us of our “ungreen” fingers. Her dogs, that on Wednesday night, kept sitting on her close friend Cathy’s feet., miss her too. Her social media feeds are filled with her family, her husband, her friends and her horses, but mostly her daughter; over and over and over. Her love for her daughter is transcendent.
As the shock settles and we start trying to live a life where her wicked sense of humour, her glamour, her beautiful accent, her brilliant mind, her love of hats and horses and parties are no longer a part of this realm, I know that we will find other beauty she has left behind for us. As we search it out, how do we manage each day?
Anne Lamott’s book is about writing and about how it is overwhelming to take on the enormous task of writing a book, and so, you have to take it bit by bit. It’s a great metaphor not just for writing, but also for grief and for life in general. When her brother was young, he had to do a school project about birds, and left it far too late. When he finally had to stop procrastinating and sit down and write the essay, he was surrounded by bird books and information and was paralysed by the enormity of the task, but his father wisely said, “Buddy, just take it bird by bird.”
Bird by bird, day by day, memory by memory, love by love.