I want to tell you about this part of Brock dying, because I don’t think many people know about it. I didn’t, before I read Maggie Callanan’s Final Gifts.
When we get close to death, that line between being awake (conscious) and being asleep (un/sub-conscious) starts to break down. A common metaphor is having a foot in both worlds at the same time.
I knew about this stage, having read Final Gifts and some helpful books from Cowichan Hospice, but still didn’t recognize it as a sign that Brock was close to death when I saw him entering the stage. That’s probably thanks to denial. Denial is an amazing thing.
Anyhoo, Brock told me about the weird things he started to think, feel and even taste in the month before he died. Anyone who knew him well will know that he was a very scientific, practical guy, and was not a poet or abstract. But the first “weird” thing he told me was that he had started to feel like he was (sometimes) three people.
For example: he said he knew he’d have a good sleep if all three of him were ready to go to bed. If one or two of him were missing, he’d have a hard time falling asleep or wouldn’t sleep well.
Knowing Brock, this was crazy pants talk.
And he wasn’t half-asleep or drunk when he told me this. He was just normal Brock, trying to explain something he experienced that was hard to explain. And yet . . . he wasn’t old-version-of-Brock enough for me to feel okay saying, “That’s crazy pants talk,” even though old-version-of-Brock would have thought being three people at once was ridiculous.
This three-people phenomenon happened a lot.
I once brought him a glass of chocolate milk, because he’d asked for it, and he said: “Phew. I can drink that. I thought I’d have to drink all three glasses.”
Or when he made a physically strenuous journey to the washroom at the hospital, with help from me and a nurse, and he said: “Oh, that wasn’t as hard as I expected. I didn’t have to do it three times.”
At one point, Brock and I brainstormed where his three people came from. The father, the son and the holy ghost. Ego, super-ego and Id. Okay, a lot of cultural patterns occur in threes. Maybe there’s a reason, given Brock’s experience of being three people at once.
I want to share some of the Brock quotes I wrote down in the weeks before he died. I’m going to do this not to make fun of the crazy-pants things he said, but because I want you to understand how surreal this time was, and maybe to prepare you for when you witness your own dying loved ones approach their deaths.
I wrote these quotes down because I thought I’d be able to share them with Brock someday, when he was all better, and we’d laugh about how funny he’d been. I thought this knowing full well that he was never going to get better.
Here we go:
“I was about to offer you whatever I was eating in my head.”
“I think we’re done with the bread, if you want to put that away. And, as I’m saying this, I’m realizing there is no bread.”
(Said while I gave Brock a back massage.)
“I was going to ask you for another spanokopita. And then I realized I hadn’t just eaten a spanokopita.”
“Is that the smallest letter?”
(Said September 10, ten days before Brock died.)
“What’s that noise? A bug zapper?”
(Said while battling an infection in the hospital, about the noise from his IV drip.)
“Where’s the car parked?”
(While half asleep on the toilet. Travel is a common theme among the dying, apparently. I assured him that it was parked nearby, and I knew where it was.)
“People have been saying that it’s a good time to invest, looking back.”
(Said while falling asleep sitting up. Brock was always nervous about my money management skills.)
Final Gifts emphasizes how important it is to simply listen to these statements from people when they’re close to death. Disagreeing or trying to correct them can cause anxiety and self-doubt and embarrassment, and discourage them from sharing more of their experience.
I feel lucky that Brock told me about his three-people feelings, and that I got to witness this amazing, strange stage of his dying. I wanted to share it with you too.