On Death Rattles and Dreams

We're going to be okay.

The author and her maternal grandmother, circa 1973.

At some point last night — likely between hazy sleeplessness and full-on, morning-eyeballs-peeled open — I found myself thinking of death rattles in that same way one thinks of a dream they’ve just come out of, aware yet perplexed by “these thoughts” showing up, of all times, now.

The first time I heard a death rattle, I was 22 years old. It was during the summer of 1996, and I was at the hospital bedside of my maternal grandmother after she’d suffered a massive stroke.

In the days leading up to her death, I’d sat vigil, along with my mother and my aunt, holding Nana’s hands, gently touching her feet, and telling her how much I loved her.

At the time, I was 28 years old and eager to become a mother. It was in Nana’s dark and solemn hospital room that I realized she’d never meet the children I might someday bring into the world. This woman who’d helped to care for me since I’d been a baby was now at the very end of her life.

---

Memory is a funny and — I’ve since learned — sometimes very protective thing, because for years after Nana passed away, I couldn’t for the life of me remember what day — or even year — she died. It’s like my mind blocked out the trauma to protect my broken heart. But as I think now about the days leading up to Nana’s death, particularly the days after her stroke, I realized that I was existing in a dream-like state, partly due to the combination of exhaustion, shock, and a suspended sense of reality — but mostly because I was watching my mother watching her own mother die.

And on the evening that Nana would eventually pass away, I now remember wondering, Will I, one day, be in this same, horrendous-yet-beautiful position, saying my final goodbyes to the person who delivered me into this life?

Sorrow and gratitude permeated Nana’s hospital room that evening, and as nurses tiptoed around Mom and Aunt Patti and me, I looked to all their somber faces for guidance. How do I hold space for all these emotions? When will the end finally come? How does anyone prepare for this?

“Don’t be afraid,” one nurse whispered to me in the hall after I’d stepped out of Nana’s room and quietly broke down. I couldn’t speak. I just let the tears course down my cheeks, certain they would never stop.

“She’s comfortable now,” the nurse said, resting her hand on my shoulder. “Let her know you’re going to be okay.”

But I wasn’t okay.

I felt broken and confused and overwhelmed and unprepared. I wanted things to go back to the way they were. With pleading eyes, I tried to express my inner feelings to the nurse, and as we stood in that hallway under the bright fluorescent lights, she, by some miracle, seemed to understand every swirling emotion I felt.

When I returned to Nana’s room, I saw two grown women sitting with their mother, sisters silently holding their mama’s hands in theirs. I fought the instinct to see my mother and aunt as lost, little girls.

We’re going to be okay?

I turned to Nana’s face, her familiar features increasingly unrecognizable, and fought the urge to remember her vibrant appearance just a month before — engaged and bright and alive. My Nana, who’d been a nurse, herself, now lay dying.

We’re going to be okay?

How many times had Nana guided families like ours in times just like this? How often had she floated into a room without a word, tending to the sick while quietly witnessing the slow-motion shock and stillness of families like mine? How on earth had she managed to witness a patient’s death and finish her shift and drive to the grocery store and pick up a jar of Sanka and a loaf of white bread to take home and devour while watching the last fifteen minutes of Johnny Carson?

How was Nana not consumed by the magnitude of a fellow human’s passing? Or, was she?

Regardless, she got somehow got through. She was no longer able to tell us how she did it, but she did it.

We’re going to be okay?

I walked toward the head of Nana’s bed. With one hand on the bedrail and the other on the soft, silky skin of her arm, I leaned down to kiss her forehead, and that’s when I heard the low, nearly imperceptible groan reverberating from deep inside her throat.

The death rattle.

She’s about to cough, I thought, standing up. I didn’t yet know this was the very beginning of the very end.

A nurse appeared next to me. Her hand… was on mine… which was on Nana’s.

“Let her know you’ll be okay,” she whispered. “Because you will.”

I don’t remember what the nurse’s face looked like, but I remember her voice, her tenderness, her confidence. I remember looking into her eyes and nodding. I remember seeing the shadow of her head nodding with me.

“You can tell her now,” the nurse’s soft voice encouraged. “Let her know you love her, and that it’s okay to let go.”

As Nana’s cough intensified, Mom, Aunt Patti, and I took turns hugging her and smoothing her hair and telling her how much we loved her. Through our tears and with our throats clenched tight, we each let Nana know, in our own words, that we’d all be okay, and that she could finally rest … and let go.

---

My grandmother, Edna Jane Farmer died on June 10, 1996.

And we were, indeed — insofar as one can fairly say — all okay.

The next year, I welcomed my first child, a son, followed by my daughter two years later, and my youngest son three years after that.

They never got to see the twinkle in their great-grandmother’s eye. They’ve never known the surreal smoothness of her skin or experienced the overwhelming smell of the Estee Lauder perfume or the Sanka or the goddamned burnt toast that enveloped every atom of Nana’s tiny home.

What my kids do have, however, is a mother who appreciates the sweeping cycle of human existence — a mother who’s witnessed life’s wondrous entries and heart-wrenching departures. They have a mother who’s felt the miracle that is unconditional love. And they have a mother whose dream is to pass that miracle on.