Chariot of Angels

Have you ever sat next to someone as they died? I did. I chose to. Though I’m not sure if it was more out of familial duty or adolescent curiosity, it felt like somewhere I was supposed to be.
Hospices are warm. They’re filled with old people, and old people get cold easily. So even during frigid February, I was sweating. I clasped and unclasped my clammy hands, not sure whether to the moisture on the heat or anxiety in the pit of my stomach. After all, I was sitting in front of someone who only had hours left in her life. Like some ancient meeting of kingdoms, the oldest of almost every family in my great-grandmother’s posterity surrounded her frail frame. Every breath was so labored. It held a kind of raspiness within it like there was something caught in her throat that she couldn’t quite dislodge. But she was asleep. Peaceful. It’s not like the movies. Old people don’t say some courageous last words and then die moments later. They drift into a sleep and stay that way--sometimes for days--before their heart stops beating and their lungs refuse to take in anymore air.

In every room around us, the story was the same. Residents changed every morning. I wondered how many corpses had been in our room over the years. It was a fleeting thought, one shattered by the whisperings of my family members. I don’t know why we whispered. She wasn’t going to wake up.

The strangest thing about the hospice was the smell. It had the same overly sterile scent that hospitals do, but the air was mingled with that sugary musk that clings to old people. It left me feeling like I was wading through a haze of other people’s memories.

I’m honestly surprised I didn’t hear more. I expected the occasional sob to break out in the rooms around us, but the only sound to break through the drawn-out silence was the steady patter of footsteps coming up and down the halls.

The whisperings in the room steadily turned to more casual conversations. We were careful at first, not knowing if my great-grandmother could hear us. But after a while, we stopped caring. Reflections on the past turned to family gossip.

But family gossip always wanes into boredom. The same old stories were told over and over again until they washed over us like waves, drowning us in the past. My great-grandmother’s breath caught in her throat. We watched her motionless chest for a moment before she inhaled and continued plugging along.

It was late in the afternoon, and the sun was pouring in through the only window. We kept adjusting our chairs to get the light out of our eyes. Everyone except my grandma, my great-grandmother’s only living child. As the conversation died down, my grandma stared at her mother, a vision coming to her.

She wasn’t a religious woman, but at that moment, she swore she saw angels standing at the foot of her mother’s bed. Her sister, father, and grandparents standing there as if waiting to greet my great-grandmother the moment she let go. I watched my grandma kneel at the edge of her mother’s bed and grab her hand. She whispered that it was okay to let go, to move on.

But she kept breathing. The rasp in her throat had come back, this time with a bit of a rattle behind it.

My grandma asked my dad to offer a prayer. Other than myself, he was the only person in the room who believed in a higher power. We all stood up around my great-grandmother’s bed, hands linked together. I held one of my grandma’s hands. Her fragile bones and thick veins looked just like her own mother’s... looked just like older versions of mine.

As my dad uttered a prayer, I felt the first chill I had experienced since entering that heat box. I don’t know what he said, but in my mind, I pictured opening my eyes as my great-grandmother took her last breath.

But she kept breathing after the prayer was done.

We sat down and watched her. Something about the room had shifted. There was a tingle in the air. It was the kind of electricity I had only felt once before: in the hospital room when my sister was born.

The breathing stopped within two minutes of the prayer. Hers and ours. We watched her, making sure it wasn’t a false alarm, before accepting she was gone. Hot tears streamed down my face. We embraced each other in the same room where my great-grandmother was surely being embraced by the same chariot of angels my grandma had seen.