Thank you. I love you.

by Sara Flitner

I walked through the hospital entrance, where I saw evidence of care—and of suffering. The tree was cheerful and decorated like one you’d have at home. The wheelchairs near the door looked new and had a softness, to the extent shiny metal can have such a thing. The floors were clean, and no fewer than three sets of eyes from the reception area met mine, holding contact a split second longer than normal, a fleck of a prayer saying, “Let us take a bit of your load.”  

This was the front door of sickness and loss. The entrance did its best to acknowledge this. 

My visit here was to see an 88-year-old woman, flown by air ambulance the day before, such a large contraption to deposit this bird of a woman. Like other small things that are mighty, she led an outsized life: three children, more than three careers, elected office, two marriages, over a dozen grandchildren and great grandchildren, and an incredible sense of style. She held court everywhere she went in older age, firing with wicked sarcasm. “Wish I had her mirror,” she’d say when passing someone not dressed properly. Pajama bottoms in public got the most scathing reviews. 

I came here to see her on borrowed time, after a summer whizzed by without a visit to her rural home 100 miles south. No excuse, I thought to myself as I pushed the button to the 5th floor, expecting to get to squeeze her hand and whisper “Thank you, I love you, thank you, I love you” into her fine, downy hair. Instead, I peeked through the door and found her alert in her bed, managing some rare combination of vulnerability and powerful occupation of her body. Her face lit up in a way that revealed surprise, utter joy, just for a moment. My mother and her sisters do not over-emote. But this gift I tucked in my pocket, something I can easily pull out, the memory that I once delighted someone so deeply that I could see it from across the room. 

The miracle of things is that I got to hold her hand. I got to say, “I love you. Thank you. I love you. Thank you.” She heard these words, and others. She was happy to be alive, holding my hand, here on earth with her children, she said, but not afraid to die. She was at peace, she said, just in this space of thanksgiving. I asked her about the drugs she was on, and she gave me the slightly raised eyebrow that said, “Don’t be ridiculous.” Most things she had decided by now were ridiculous. 

Then she said other things, things that fill books, things that we all know and forget, things that should make you stop and ask, “What things?” 

Two days later, Aunt Betty left the hospital, a miracle, and went to a transitional place with kind nurses. She liked the place, she told her sisters, and had a “good supper.” Then she fell asleep, content. My mother called in the early morning hours to say Betty had died peacefully, of an aneurysm. 

People don’t grieve loudly for an old woman or an old man. “They had a good and long life,” folks will say. “She had a good run.” To live a long life is a gift in death, because there is nothing tragic about dying when you’re old. In the best circumstances, this kind of death is a sacred pause, a moment where the living give thanks for breath, for shared love, and try to recommit to things they want to do better in life. We want to honor the one who has gone, while secretly believing it won’t be us for such a long time. 

“The tear is famous, briefly, to the cheek,” wrote poet Naomi Shyab Nye, and while few of us live with any sort of fame, we are all, in fact, famous to our friends, our routines, our community of loved ones or the walls that surround us at night. We are famous to anyone and anything that loves us and would notice the absence of our footfall on the path. 

Today, let the breath be famous to you. Let it be famous as the simple thing that keeps you here.