Storms ripped through the metro area again last night. When the tornado sirens went off, the folks on the television said that a storm with 75 to 80 mph straight-line winds were 7 miles away and traveling at 55 mph. I wrapped Boris in a fluffy bath towel and we sat in the basement for 15 minutes listening to the wind.
Yep Boris. Boris is still with me. He tempted the fates then pushed them back. I am not sure that I am sitting hospice any more. I know that I am the one who named it hospice. I am the one who was sure that the end, the state so prominent in the definition, was within hours or days. Armed with needles, syringes, medicines, tuna laced water, I tended and grieved and exhausted myself. I lived the definition of hospice. Boris, not quite. At least not in the time line I had assumed.
I have heard that the definition of hospice does not imply an end. It implies the beginning of another state. It has no time line, no time limit. It circles, it holds still. I know this. I knew this before, but this time, I was so sure.
Although the grieving has lifted with his spirits and his ability to eat and drink and walk and sleep in his bed on the radiator in front of the picture window, all of this defining goes back to the issue of how labeling something can subtly or drastically change how we live in the moment.
Through the past few weeks, I tried my damnedest to live in the moment. I will never know how much the labeling of hospice brought up the stories and traumas that have taken place over the last 20 years. How maybe working through my past trauma may have been the perfect activity for the moment. How this moment of clarity and this morning of sleeping in may be perfect.
