The Balancing Act

 Helping My Patient Die Loved

Ruth, with the left side of her face hanging slack like an empty pillow case, weakly nods she wants a drop of water on her cracked and useless tongue. Carefully, just a dropper-full, but I worry she can’t swallow. Seeing my fear, she finds some humor to mock her end and mumbles “It must be hot where I’m going!”

I doubt there’s space in hell for her; can’t my tears squelch its licking flames?

She’s had a stroke, come to me to die. I have only been an RN a few months and have never seen the dead; my nursing knowledge came from books.

I clasp her hand and nervously try to smooth wrinkled, papery skin. I want to hold her more securely on her tightrope, not let her drop into the deep. In my discomfort I say “My grandmother’s name is Ruth, too.”

“I always hated it,” she barely manages to reply.

My gramma felt the same and she'd ask “Why couldn’t I be a Marie?” Marie is a tender glissando across the tongue, a curling treble cleff, unlike the spitball that is Ruth.

With droppers-full to measure out the cooling water and long, lonely night, I tried to hold tautly onto her fraying ends; but, by morning the balancing-act was over for this Ruth so like my grandmother.