Farewell, My Lovely

Helen Klein Ross

I pressed my ear wet with tears to your warm, bony chest. Your eyes were vacant, but I felt you were there. Don’t go, I kept saying.

“The last breath is often the hardest to hear,” said a nurse, later. “He spared you that.” But I didn’t feel spared.

I heard our daughters in the hallway and jumped to the door to prepare them, but they knew from my face.

I shouldn’t have left you. I should have stayed overnight in the room next door, which a nurse had made up so I could nap.

“When are the kids coming?” the night nurse kept asking, warning of bears in the parking lot. M.'s flight was delayed. The long hours of vigil, sitting by your bed, trying to soothe you when you woke, operatic.

“The girls are coming,” I told you over and over, eating triangle sandwiches. I knew you would wait.

When they came, you were sleeping. K. went around to your side of the bed and you opened your eyes. For the first time that day, it seemed that you were trying to speak. But then your eyes closed.

The call came before dawn. “I’m coming,” I said. “I’ll be right there.” But the voice on the call had been tentative. Surely it would have sounded urgent if your time was near.

I took time to shower.

When I got there, a new nurse was coming out of your room, shutting the door behind her.

We spent hours with you, kissing you, stroking your face, prostrating ourselves over you, wetting the sheets with our tears. We held your hands which were finally still. We told you we loved you, over and over, more times, perhaps, than we’d said in our lives.

I called my mother, my siblings—it was six in the morning, but it seemed important that they know right away.

“Put a hand on his chest and open your fingers,” said my sister. “He can feel your heart.”

I opened my hand and pressed my palm to the still-warm skin over your jutting rib-bones, willing the heat of the blood in my hand to bring you back.

Each of us took a turn sitting with you. First, we sat in the room all together, then we each took time alone with you. We repeated this, not wanting to leave.

Once, when M. came out of your room, she asked if one of us had closed your mouth.

“No!” said K., her eyes widening in horror.

In another era, I’d assume we’d misremembered, overcome by grief. But I have the photos. At 6:03, you lie on the pillow, eyes staring, your mouth a dark O as depicted in death scenes in paintings at the Met. A few hours later, at 9:51, your lips make a straight line, the smirk you assumed when you were impatient with us. OK, enough, let’s get on with it.

We asked the nurses if this happened. Rarely.

He knew it wasn't a good look said your best friend who walked K. down the aisle a month later.

Just before leaving you for the last time, I found a scissors and snipped a curl from the side of your head. I hold it in my palm as I write this. The tuft tickles my skin. Your hair contains information about all that was in you: medicines, minerals, vitamin, drugs. Does it also retain knowledge? Does it know that M. stayed with you until you were cold? Does it hold your goodbyes? Your forgiveness?

Hair contains elements. Each strand is half carbon. K. and her husband say they want a girl first, but the embryos tested are always boys. Carbon copy.

Helen Klein Ross is a writer whose work has appeared in Lapham’s Quarterly, The New Yorker and The New York Times. Her novels include “What Was Mine” and “The Latecomers.” She's working on a memoir about life with her late husband, Donald K. Ross, a public interest advocate, philanthropist and one of the original Nader's Raiders. She lives in Manhattan and Lakeville, CT.