The Waiting Game
by Shauna Checkley
I’m waiting for my chance, as patiently as any cat has lain in wait of a mouse. Yes, my chance!
Through a collection of small apple juice and pudding containers on my end table, past the serpentine IV coiled by my bedside, I wait with slit-eyed determination to make my move.
I hear the usual hustle and bustle in the hallway. Food carts clattering. Footsteps. Loud and casual voices either asking or giving directions. Soft, faraway moans. Then the whispering. Always the whispering right outside my door.
Do they think that I can’t hear them? Do they think that I can’t decipher meaning in the pauses and the cool deliberations? It all can be reduced to the rhythms of shift work, routine passings, the give and take of generality, pleasantries like wilted petals that fall to the floor.
Feeling nausea rise like some new continent, I’m scaling the heights of pain, the tenuous shelf of self that is crumbling visibly away. But that wave soon passes. Regrouping I rest for a while. Then I continue to stare bleary-eyed at the open door.
“Time for your meds,“ a nurse says in a matter-of-fact tone.
She looks neither young nor old. But rather at the age when the certainties of life have set in. Yet, like all of us, she is left nursing secret longings and ambitions of her own.
With a glass of water guided to my mouth, I swallow the chalky-tasting pills. This is the only form of treatment that I’m agreeable to now. Just pain meds. That’s all.
The nurse walks briskly away.
Shifting in bed, I fart loudly and am grateful she wasn’t present for that. Dying is a series of undoings and indignities, a daily renunciation of self and being until that final sliver of awareness crumbles away.
First, the plastic tube up your butt. Then, losing the house. Yes, I got too sick to keep up mortgage payments, haven’t worked in several years, in fact. Guess I was in too far over my head anyways. Trying to keep up with minor repairs and maintenance alone was enough to stymie things.
Next, my circle of cats and acquaintances diminished. Not surprisingly, the less committed slunk away as they would do, leaving me with my good friend Grace and one stalwart tabby who refused to pass away either and that Grace ended up adopting out of kindness.
Yes, all ties came undone, all contacts and contracts severed. Life became a misty backdrop rather than a panoramic playground, a place of veiled meaning and hushed sentiment where I slept and ached, rested and drooled.
I think I’ll wait till the meds kick in before I make my move. I’ll wait for that glorious reprieve from pain and nausea, from a discomfort that rises bowel-deep and tickles down my spine. Yes, I always feel better after the meds. I always do much better as well. Then I can eat and drink a bit. Then I have the strength to roll over.
Closing my eyes, I rest. I wait patiently for the reprieve. Death has taught me patience. Death has taught me to live in the now, sink into the moment as deeply as the bedding I’m bundled under. It’s restful, pleasant. Except for one finger of light that has slipped in through the closed blinds, the room is dim. The room is empty of mirth, devoid of future, a place where certainty has settled like one long, looming judgement ready to drop.
Eventually, the discomfort gives way. Good, the pills are kicking in. I sit up in bed. I feel good enough to drink, and so I do. The ice has melted in the water jug but the water is still cool. I drink lots, several glasses, as one would who was thirsty and lost out in the desert, like one who saw a mirage, a happy vision.
More hushed voices in the hallway: something about “unhooking her soon.” Good, just what I want to hear! I’ve been demanding to be cut off the IV and anything else, for that matter, that may prolong things!
I am pleased. Just as if that finger of light reached over and stroked me with its’ sunny warmth and goodness, I rejoice at those words. For it seems that my plan will soon be set into motion.
Now if only Grace doesn’t come to visit... Now if only random family doesn’t straggle in... Still, I must wait. I must continue to be vigilant. I must be that cat poised at the mouse hole.
But then Dean walks in.
“Vonda,” he says, softly. Dean stands by my bedside. He is holding a small, plush cat. He props it up on the pillow beside me.
“Thanks.“ I say
He is teary and bleary-eyed.
I smile at him. “Bro,“ I say
He smiles faintly.
I can smell a stale odour of tobacco and whiskey and bad breath. Yet it is suggestion that lingers in the air most of all. There is like a dangling question, a damning inference, an unspeakable certainty that hangs with an almost palpable energy of its own. It’s like death has come to curl up in the corner.
Dean looks weary. “Rough night?“ he asks me.
I laugh weakly.
We continue to stare at one another. I marvel at the character that has set into his face. Since when has he become so decidedly middle-aged looking? His decline seems to have come almost over night, a sudden onset much like my own. Yet his were the ravages of living, hard living, adventure by day, misadventure by night.
“How are you feeling?“ Dean asks
“Same,” I reply
He nods in understanding.
There is no clock in the room. But there doesn’t need to be one, for there is a static sensibility that has washed over the walls and floors like a slow-drying paint.
We stare at each other for what seems like an eternity. Dean licks his lips as if he’s preparing to speak, but he remains silent instead.
Not knowing what else to do, I just smile weakly.
The whole interlude reminds me of a game we used to play as kids. We called it “the Waiting Game.” Sibling rivalry channelled into outlets like who could wait the longest before blinking, moving, breathing and so on. I recall us, brother and sister, getting through long, snowy days together this way, when the Saskatchewan outdoors had become dangerously inclement, too cold to venture into, except for maybe the few eccentric or desperate that did.
As the nurse returns to remove my IV, Dean leaves.
“Bye,” he mumbles
I feel a pinch as she withdraws the tube. “There now,“ she says with more tenderness than usual. She swabs the incision lightly. Then she hauls the apparatus out of the room.
The finger of light has expanded overhead. Probably midday, I assume. Exhaling, I can feel the relief from the medication. Soon, I decide. Soon. Everything is falling into place.
I gaze at the clothes folded neatly on the chair beside my bed. Good. Ready to go. Although they had tried numerous times to place them in storage, I wouldn’t let them. I even argued with that hulking nurse’s aide over it, the one with a slightly twisted spine and that dragged her one leg when she walked. But I persevered. Just like that cat parked by the mouse hole. And they left my sweats and jacket just where I need them to be: close by.
The visit by my brother Dean has excited memories in me. Home. Mom. Milly. All of it. Everything. Shifting ever so slightly in bed, the cat teddy bear jiggles, nearly falls, reminding me that it’s there. I clutch it. I hold it like a charm or talisman.
So, this is what becomes of a cat lady? A small, somewhat frivolous life and then an unexpected early death. That’s all. It almost sounds like the life and times of any alley cat. I nearly laugh.
Still, it seems as surreal as it is absurd. It almost seems to me like it’s someone else I’m talking about, some other life that I’m reviewing, a page taken from a women’s magazine, the ones frayed and forgotten at the dentist’s office, piled like old pulled teeth. How could it come to this? How could I be lying on hospital linen, cool and flat as a shroud when I believed that I had so much more living to do?
The cat charm is soft in my hand. Almost feels like a real cat, I think. Like Milly. My beloved that has already long since crossed over to the other side. Sure, there have been others since her, but I’m certain that as far as kitty soul-mates go, she was that one special pet that lives on for all eternity. We all have one. At least we cat aficionados do, that very special companion animal that curls in the deepest part of our soul, purring in rhythm to our heartbeat and breath. And I’m no exception to this, of course. Caught in a cloud of memory, I revel in the reverie till it, too, slinks away.
Time to go... Yes, time to go... I am suddenly flooded with an awareness of the very real need to make my move.
I break wind loudly as I slide out of bed. All the medication has given me a violent flatulence as a side effect. It doesn’t matter, though.
Dressing quickly, I feel a profound exhaustion. But I push myself anyhow, straining to fold and conceal the pillow underneath the clothing. Then I hurry out of my room and to the nearest exit. I leave the ward as surely as breath leaves the lungs. I slip into a nearby elevator and press the main floor button. It drops instantly, with a thud.
Emerging from the elevator, I am once more in the general public; the main floor is teeming today, with a swarm of visitors, staff, even one nun in full habit. I limp along. With that initial burst of energy gone, I aim only to maintain a steady stride to the main entrance. The slippers on my feet are a dead giveaway, though, bright pink Hello Kitty ones that softly pat the linoleum as I walk. Still, I lower my gaze and try to appear as inconspicuous as possible.
I exit the hospital. The outdoor air hits me like a slap. I suck in my breath. I stagger along. Continuing through the parkade, I drag myself over concrete and asphalt, certain reminders of the outer world.
Yet it occurs to me that I left society long ago, both in living and in dying, the former as an exile from conformity, a comic pause in post-modern times and the latter as a lost soul risen and fallen simultaneously. What of it? I muse. The truth is that I’m here dragging myself right out of the hospital grounds and the only truth ever lies in the now. That’s it.
I stare ahead. Then crunching down on a wreath of leaves — the first fall of autumn lies everywhere — I head for the neighborhood park a block away.
Walking along, I remember a notion that I had cherished in my youth — a thought both naïve and savage, inexplicably so even — that someday I might go feral. It had been a pet fancy in my twenties that I’d become a stray.
I wasn’t aiming to be homeless like the pan handlers and park dwellers that punctuate the inner city. Rather, I had some romantic idea of becoming a naked self, lost in the wilderness, a flight. It was dreamy and far-flung, absurdly so. Yet I allowed it to exist in my field of vision and my range of awareness for quite some time.
Feeling exhausted, I lean against a tree. The park now only a block away, within sight. I feel tired, almost dizzy. But I steady myself up against that great body of nature. I gaze upward at the sky, calm and blue and unassuming. It is as peacefully blank as ever, and it strikes me odd, given the drama occurring underneath it: my impending death; wars and rumours of wars. All of it. Yet it remains as blissfully serene as ever, as if the fire of desire below it has failed to register on its infinite, smiling brow.
My mouth is dry and gluey-tasting. It feels sore, as of it was beginning to crack along the lips and edges. But I don’t care enough to examine it with my finger tip. I’m beyond all that now.
My body is ravaged by time, eaten by cancer. Like those apple pies Mom and I used to work on and bake, my body, too, has ended up cored the same as those apples. The white insides splayed, removed, peeled with the same casual, indifference, everyday whim. But no matter. It will soon be over. That I know. That I can feel.
Once feeling steady again, I resume walking. It is a slow, shuffle to the park. Some passersby look at me curiously. I imagine I look strange. Wraith-like and thin and pale, flopping past in oversized, children’s slippers, I limp alone.
One lady pauses and her mouth opens slightly as if she is going to speak to me, but then her expression shifts to caution, and she moves on.
It is August. Yet as I enter the park, I touch down into a verdant wonderland. Autumn has not quite given its death touch to the foliage, the trees and lawns are still green, although the occasional faded patch suggests that change is soon coming, the reaper’s reach not that far away.
I walk past a dog hunched over and defecating. The owner looks guiltily to and fro as if she doesn’t wish to be caught in the act, found out. I make a bee-line for the opposite end of the park, towards a small grove of bushes and trees there.
Some children run past me and out of the park, laughing, calling. They are a blur of life and colour and movement. Once again, I’m struck by how the moment can be both final and free-floating, surreal and paradoxical as ever. Oh well, I think, it doesn’t matter anymore. The moment can be whatever it wants to be now.
I reach the cluster of trees and bushes and disappear within. Spying a flat spot on the ground near one tree, I claim it as mine. My plot. Spreading out the pillow and blanket, I lie down. I’m glad of it as exhaustion envelops me once again and, if I don’t lie down soon, I will fall.
I feel for a moment as if I’m falling, dissolving as I experience such a dizzying head rush. My tongue darts over my lips. It feels hard and leathery and unnatural. Yet I know my whole body has begun to feel like that, from fingertips to toes, a drying husk like a cob of corn that has petrified. But I close my eyes, and soon I settle in.
The air is warm but not oppressively so. The park is lightly fragrant, with the peppermint smell of cut grass, flowers in the near distance. It’s the right setting for me, I decide. Just as good as any other really, and one that I know that any cat or cat lady would choose.
I have decided to die cat style. I have decided just to wander off with the knowledge that I am passing, that my time has come, just as some of mine and my late mother’s cats have done, just as is traditional for many pets, in fact, cats included.
There is nothing odd about my choice. Not really. Though some may view it as eccentric or extreme, my decision to wander off and die, the same as any sickly cat would do, is quite natural, in fact. It represents that instinctual drive found in the cat to separate when ill, to pass in privacy and seclusion, to return to Mother Nature. I have decided to do the same. It is a reasonable response for any cat lady such as myself. God knows, I refuse to go in some old institution.
So, I lie there and wait. My breathing is laboured. Perspiration dampens my brow. Yet I’m content and settle in for the last leg of my journey. With my eyes pasted shut, I’m amazed at the life still under them. The proverbial life flashing before one’s eyes actually exists and has already begun for me.
I see myself as a little girl: wee Vonda. With Momma. With Milly. All of it. Everyone. All of them have a cameo in my consciousness, popping up non-stop, hopping across my inner screen, dropping memories as easy as Easter eggs. It’s the twilight of my life and times, of my being and mind, a misty recall like no other, of father and mother, sister and brother. Everyone. Everything. Like the final moment is soon here and there is a necessary accounting, a cautionary and beleaguered tribute.
I hear voices in the distance. Songbirds too. Something is buzzing about my head, weaving through loose tendrils of hair. I consider brushing it away. But I don’t have the strength to do it, so I don’t bother.
Instead, I wait. For it has all come down to waiting. That’s all. So, I patiently await my departure from this plane of existence. I await my reunion with loved ones, with family, dear Milly and that sweet gang of kitties acquired over the years. I await my reunion with the beautiful source. I await the end of this world. But most of all, I’m awaiting the end of time, when I’m plunged into infinity.
Copyright © 2021 by Shauna Checkley
