“Patients with severe COVID-19 are hospitalized and left alone in a room where ‘spaceship-dressed’ health professionals visit them, speaking behind their mask and shields, trying to keep their own social distance with the patient,” noted a November 2020 opinion piece in the journal Frontiers in Public Health. Because of visitation restrictions, many died without companionship, surrounded, at best, by the masked faces and gloved hands of medical staff. Patients who died of covid in 2020 were 12 times as likely to die in a medical facility as patients who died of any cause in 2018, a Northwestern University study found. Over the years, I’ve tried to push those thoughts aside, but then covid-19 arrived, and dying alone became one of the pandemic’s many cruelties.
I assume she died quickly, but what if she didn’t? What if she was in pain? What if she was traumatized, terrified, aching for someone, anyone, as she died? She didn’t like living alone, so she surely hated dying alone. Mom suffered from anxiety and depression. Why can’t more straight men say ‘I love you’ to each other? To ensure that she won’t feel alone and, most important, that she won’t die alone. To make certain someone is here if she needs something. To provide family members - in this case the woman’s devoted daughter - with a break from their vigil. The dying can feel our presence, I’ve been told.
Should I shout proverbs over the sitcom zingers and Geico ads? And what if she opens her eyes? What if her last image on Earth is a strange man in a mask? A pastor friend recommended some Scripture (I’m not religious), but the woman’s roommate, who’s quite alive, asks a nurse to turn on the TV, and an episode of “Martin” blares. Should I talk to her? Should I not talk? Should I hold her hand? Some volunteers sing. This is my second time working alone as a vigil volunteer, and despite weeks of training, I’m nervous. I’ve been volunteering for about a month with Capital Caring Health, a hospice and advanced home-care organization that works throughout the Washington region. “I’m a volunteer, and I’m going to be staying with you for a bit. She may not survive the night, but her breathing seems surprisingly strong. Six days ago, she stopped eating, drinking and interacting. I lean toward her closed eyes to introduce myself.
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