Liminal

She smiled at me yesterday. It was a fleeting moment of consciousness; mostly she’s in a liminal state – not asleep, but not responsive, eyes open but focused elsewhere.

It’s been a long process – a year ago, I wrote "She's barely eating, and sleeping a lot." A year ago, she entered hospice.

Now she’s taking a little water by syringe, and an occasional spoonful of jello.

She’s had full time care, at home, for the past year. In that time, she’s had homecooked meals, and visits from grandchildren, naps on the porch, and car rides for a change of scenery. Until recently, she could be gotten out of bed, and into a wheelchair, to eat fruit and toast and eggs at the kitchen table, the same spot at the kitchen table that she’s occupied for all of the more than 30 years she’s lived in the house.

No longer. Ten days ago, the hospice nurse told me that she seemed "comfortable", a word that somehow sounded like code for "the end is nigh". Last week, the nurse suggested that she’d be more comfortable in bed – she’d begun listing in the wheelchair, too weak to sit up. Now she’s bedbound, not much aware of her surroundings, her visitors.

And I look into her open eyes, gazing off into the distance, and I wonder – what’s going on in there?