Rachele's Passing
The slowly rising sun is blanketing the sky with glowing salmon. The snow is a shimmering blanket shrouding the world. The river, a frozen snake, twines across the valley.
As I sit with the dawn I notice one of the gifts my life experience has given me is I am really good at supporting the dying and their loved ones. I am grateful for that ability. I have attended, in different capacities, 17 people’s dying processes. Seven of them have been family, either chosen or blood, and 10 of them have been paid relationships.
This work is very precious to me, it is a gift I am able to offer people, to ease their journey into death. A gift to offer their family support and information about the dying process…to stay with them, attending at the bedside and giving comfort care during the shifting landscape of this type of transition.
I have been bottling up my grief for the loss of my friend and chosen sister Rachele. I thought if I wrote and shared about our last days…it might help me access the sadness and pain I feel stuck like a giant knot in my chest that I have not been able to access since she died.
She had a particularly brutal form of cancer that had metastasized to her liver and was killing off her blood cells. It was just over 4 months from diagnosis to death. She was a health care provider herself, including working hospice, and very aware of what was happening with her body.
At her funeral, which unfortunately I was not able to attend in person because my family is still in quarantine with covid so we attended online. There was a service with a ‘vigil’ Tuesday and a funeral yesterday. There were lots of people there, she had a good turnout I was happy to see. Her family spoke lovingly about her and the priest quoted from the great article that the San Francisco Chronicle printed about her.
My mind keeps going back to the last three weeks of her life and the vigil I helped hold with her family. The vigil over her dying process. I spent several 24 hour shifts and most of the last five days in attendance at her bedside…giving her sisters a break and then holding her when they all got sick, Covid running through the family. One of her other friends came for that last Saturday afternoon to Sunday afternoon so I could get some rest in the midst of that five day stretch.
The first night I stayed with her it was Christmas Day…she had enough energy that we could talk some. Mostly what she wanted to talk about is the things I was doing. She wanted to hear about my partners and my work in the community. She could hardly keep her eyes open but every time I thought she was done and had fallen asleep they would pop open again and she would ask me another question. We hadn’t seen each other since Covid started. I was happy to see my friend still very present in the middle of the massive battle with cancer she was facing.
We stayed awake talking off and on until about 4am. She apologized several times and I would say, “what for?”...and she would say “for keeping you up.” I would reassure her every time.
“Hey baby this is what we do…stay up all night talking! We have done that for the entire 12+ years I have known you!”
Her face would relax and she would say, “That’s true.”
Part of what was keeping her up was the intense coughing she was continually experiencing. I helped her sit up and spit out the gunk coming from her thickly congested lungs. She thanked me over and over for being there and watching over her. I just kept saying, “I love you girlie and I am happy to be able to be here and help you be a bit more comfortable.”
When her sister thought I must be tired and wondered how I was ok doing these long shifts with her, Miss Rachele all of a sudden opened her eyes and with her familiar strength said, “Kat can handle it! This is what she does for a living. She knows what to do!!”
She asked me to come help her because she knew exactly that about me. She knew the kind of experience I have had doing hospice work. She knew I am very good with doing comfort care with people who are transitioning. That is why she called and asked me to come watch over her…why she told me over and over how safe she felt with me sitting with her…and why she would beg me to stay for just one more nap every time I got close to thinking about leaving.
What I am noticing is the difference between caring for someone I don’t know and caring for someone I love.
The work is not different. The sitting with, close attendance, and careful attention to the details of what they need in the shifting landscape of a transition away from life, all of that is the same. The calm, clear, energy I hold for the person who is dying, their family, and friends who are circling around to help and who are grieving their loved one’s passing is the same.
The personal grief is what is different. My personal grief that I needed to put on a shelf to be there for my friend and her family. She asked me to help her and to help her sisters. Part of that help was to set my own emotions aside. She did not need my pain added to her own pain and neither did her family.
So I set it down. I cried a little when I would leave her, on the drive home, and before I crashed into sleep.
I cried a little during her funeral. I found being online for the funeral and the vigil to be kind of distancing…having it in a Catholic Church didn’t help me let my guard down and feel this loss of my leather sister.
I am not exactly sure how to open what I lock down so tightly to be able to be there for her. I don’t quite know how to access my own sadness, grief, and loss of the amazing, beautiful, loving person that was my first leather sister.
I will miss you forever Miss Rachele…I know you will be with me as an Ancestor…watching over me as you always have. Your candle will continue burning on my Ancestor Altar. I love you.
Rest in Peace.