I’m a little creepy.

 

She died in a little cottage in my backyard.  I spent every minute of her last week with her.  I miss her every day.  

I went over to the cottage this morning and turned the camera back on to watch her little dog while I’m away. There’s no recordings stored, but there are a few still shots captured when movement was detected.  I scrolled through some moments of the night she died. There they were; the moment I got up to go to the bathroom and everything was fine. The moment she breathed her last and I sat up in bed next to her. The moment her son arrived, the hospice nurse, her daughters, everyone who loves her most. 

It felt a little creepy looking back through those moments. I'll never forget that night but these images were different than my memories.  This was seeing myself and surroundings from just a little bit of a distance.  How cramped I was from sleeping next to her so I could be close.  How just fine things were one moment and how sad they were the next.  It was odd to see myself going to get a cloth to wipe her face, putting my arm around my husband, and then standing at a little more distance with everyone who was a little creeped out by a dead body just beginning to grow cold.  All of that was loving and good.  So much so that I've decided to go into Hospice.  

I want to be there with people who get to hear that last breath, then have to go on living without the one that's been their every minute.  That probably makes me a little creepy.