Below is a response to #2, What does silence look like? in SECTION FOUR, “Resilience,” of the Writing From Within: A Journey of Healing and Empowerment e-workbook
Walking into a room, family gathered around. Stillness. Heads hanging. A child of only six years lays pale and gaunt in the bed. The sheets mirror her pale white skin. A few hairs sprout from her head, the ones that struggled against the chemotherapy and were the only winners in this long battle. Her mom sits beside her on the bed, stroking these soft little hairs. Her gaze says so much. Grief, fear, desperation, solace, love. She and others know that the long years of suffering are coming to an end. There is a strange relief in that. They don't know how they will manage life without her, but the suffering is too much to bear.
Gently and quietly, I walk up behind her mother, placing my hand softly on her shoulder. I am here. I am with you. Her head tilts to the side and her ear lightly lays upon my hand. I hear and feel her take a deep and ragged breath. A tear runs down and gravity takes it to the top of my hand, my cue to reach for a tissue. Handing it to her, she takes it but saves it for the time when more will come. No words are spoken. Only space is held. The waiting is always the hardest. It's that in-between space. Not really here, not really there.
The young girl's breath changes and there is an audible gasp in the room. Eyes are wide in anticipation. It is happening. I glance around the room, making sure to pause and connect with each pair of eyes I see, waiting for them to breathe. My eyes telling them that everything is okay. She is transitioning and this is the body's way of telling us that we have reached a new phase. The agonal breathing looks like she is struggling to breathe, mouth gaping wide and her head lifting up and to the right with every attempt to fill her lungs. The brain has taken over and this is just mechanical, I assure them. I gesture above her body with my hand. This is where she is now, with us, but not inside her body.
At six years old, although riddled with disease, her heart is strong. The body is designed to do everything it can to stay alive, so it fights on, even as her light dims. There are sounds of sniffs, sighs, weeps, and the monitor that sits above her bed, that monitor taunting us with its beeps and haunting glow. Her parents stare at the screen as the numbers dip lower and lower. Their eyes dart from it to me and back again. Her oxygen is dropping, 82%, 78%, 72%. Panicked, they ask, should we give her more oxygen? Is she suffocating? I reassure them that she is not experiencing this and again, I slowly wave my hand a foot above her body and I say she is here. The breaths are now punctuated with long periods of apnea, every one of them threatening to be the last. Everyone in the room holding their breath along with her until they hear her gasp. They exhale.
Her jaw softens, her eyelids lift just enough to see that beautiful blue that surrounds her lifeless pupils. Sobs fill the room, her parents kiss her face and lay their heads on her still and silent chest. There has never been a more deafening silence. But inside that silence...finality, surrender, relief, heartbreak, and love.
