I initially titled this post as “the death bed” but it was too hard for me look at that glaring title as the headline.  However, it truly reflected how I felt about this particular bed, the morbidity of what was ahead.

After David came home from the hospital in November, I requested a hospital bed because I knew it would be more comfortable for him. Once it arrived, I hated it immediately. I knew it will be the “death bed”. David looked so comfortable on the bed and that was the only consolation. He spent most of the time on the bed. The bed irked me, I often wondered how many others had experience a similar fate on the bed. I hated the bed. I was ungrateful to those that brought it into our home. It was a painful reminder of the brutality of the disease progression.

The day David died, my first request was to remove the bed immediately. I wanted it to be out the house before our daughters came home from school. In fact, I wanted everything related to his illness to be removed. They reminded me too much of how much the disease had taken from us.

To the credit of the visiting nurse staff, they ensured that items and medical supply related to the illness was removed within 2 hours. Our home was restored to what it should have been. It would have looked normal but how can it be, it was not because the light of our home was also gone. David’s body had been moved to a funeral home.

When they came to take David, I played a song that we (mostly me) listened to frequently after he was admitted to hospice and gave him a goodbye kiss. It was indeed goodbye since we never used to say goodbye, David never liked the word because it was too final but sadly that was goodbye and it was the last time I saw him.

I never looked at his body again because for me, I knew it will bring more pain.  I wanted to remember David as he should be, not laying motionless in a coffin, not dead but with his usual energy and enthusiasm. I doubt that I will ever regret the decision not to see his body again. I recall seeing my Dad in his coffin and it caused me more pain and trauma for many years.

This is one of several posts that details our experience with bladder cancer. A concise summary of the overall experience can be found in the blog post titled “breaking the silence”.