Rethinking Beryle's Final Days

Last week I graduated hospice training. Soon I will set off on my first volunteer assignment. I hope I can remember to shut my mouth and just listen.

I’ve been reading “Final Gifts – Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying,” a book the hospice people recommended. I wish I’d read it before my dad died, before my friend Beryle died, before my father-in-law died under our care last summer. I thought I knew so much about dying, but the book’s making me remember, and I might have done better.

I think of the day Beryle called and said that little Russian men in uniforms had put her apartment on wheels and were taking her to some far-off land. She was 80-something. As she spoke on the phone, she looked out her window and described the men in uniforms, the platform on which they’d set her apartment, and the landscape going past as she was being taken away.

My reaction was to assure her that she was hallucinating, that it was not possible to put an entire apartment on wheels, and that there were no little Russian men in uniforms taking her away. She was insistent and annoyed with me.

“Just stay in your apartment,” I told her, “I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

My fear was she might share her hallucination with other residents or the apartment manager. She had already been evicted from two homes due to “Beryle eccentricities” and refusal to follow rules, I didn’t want her causing problems yet again.

At her apartment, I realized why I hadn’t heard from her for over a week and felt guilty for not checking in. She had apparently been staying in bed, not feeling well, and not eating or drinking because she couldn’t make it to the bathroom. It was apparent she’d been having accidents and was too sick to deal with the aftermath.

I explained I’d be calling an ambulance, getting her to a hospital.

“No, no,” she insisted. “I’m going with the little Russians. I can stay right here in my own bed, and they’ll take me where I need to go.”

Her bedding was very, very soiled and when she saw that I noticed, she said it was intentional and warned that things not be disturbed.

“I’m not changing these sheets until they get George Bush out of the Whitehouse!” she said. “This is my protest, my way of showing disapproval of his presidency, and that’s the way it’s going to be!” The look on her face convinced me to stay out of it.

She handed me her cheap plastic purse, straps repaired with clothesline, and asked me to keep it safe. “My life’s savings is in here. I don’t want them to find it.”

That was Beryle’s last day in her apartment. She hadn’t wanted to move from her bed, but in my effort to rescue her, she ended up first in a hospital, then in a nursing home. She hated both places. She died on the eve of the 2004 election, soon after she learned she wasn’t allowed to vote due to mental status. She was convinced Bush would remain in the Whitehouse without her vote and she’d had enough of him.

I look back now and wonder if I should have simply stayed with her that day while the little Russian men in uniforms transported her to that far-away land she talked about. I thought I knew what Beryle needed, but I might see it differently now.