3. Even in Silence I Feel You Near

I have no idea if they discussed this with Koen, but when the hospice said they were switching to a gentle end-of-life care program, Jutta and Sylvia panicked and insisted he be transferred to the hospital. Once there, he was immediately hooked up to all sorts of equipment. The moment I arrived at the hospital, I realised I had made a mistake in coming here. Sylvia kind of forced my hand into coming, so I went that afternoon with them. Koen was not a shadow of the man he once was. If I had not known him before, I would hardly have recognised him. Tube feeding through a tube in his nose, an oxygen mask to help him breathe, a bag of blood dripping slowly. His face was so sunken that it his face was into a grimace. I’ll be honest; it looked more like a death mask. It brought tears to my eyes, and I wished the poor man a quick death that was surely more merciful than this attempt by the doctors to keep him alive. As much as his wives loved him, they too had to see that this unbearable suffering had to stop.

Jutta talked to him to let him know they were there. Sylvia gently touched his hand repeatedly, matching the rhythm of the beeping heart monitor. Sandor’s face was even more closed than before, a stony impassivity settling over his features. A real man. Not showing your emotions at the bedside of your dying dad. A man needs to be strong, and no doubt a ‘master’ double as strong. Men as a species are so dumb.

Perhaps because Jutta and Sylvia came here every day, they did not see the obvious. Koen would die soon. Hopefully, very soon. I felt like an outsider once again, an intruder in this private family moment. Just when I was planning to leave, the alarming beeps from the monitor suddenly stopped, replaced by a monotonous straight line across the screen. Doctors and nurses came running to the room with a crash car, unceremoniously pushing us away to make room. You could see they had done this before because they worked like a well-oiled team. A nurse stripped his pyjama coat from his chest, a doctor was rubbing those things in his hands, placed them on Koen’s body, shouted ‘clear’ and Koen’s body shook from the shock through his dead body. I couldn’t face it any longer. That poor, poor man. Even in this situation, he was not allowed to give up. They would force him to feel more pain. I am sure everybody did this with the best of intentions, but it was inhumane. Sometimes, enough is enough.

I often resolve to write my wishes if I were to end up in a situation like poor Koen, but somehow I never get around to it. That moment always seems so far away, and there is always something that comes in between. Today I firmly resolved to write my wishes clearly tonight. After about five minutes, the doctors and nurses came out again, cart and all. You could tell from their body language that their mission to shock the gentle man back to life had failed. I was torn between going inside to comfort Sylvia or leaving them alone for a while, to allow them to grieve their loss together. I decided on the latter.

Suddenly, all my memories of Johan’s death came flooding back to me. Bombardments of sadness, of missed moments, of loneliness and pain suddenly made me terribly upset. I may have cried for Koen, but also for myself. Sylvia, Jutta, and Sandor certainly didn’t need to see an outsider weeping instead of offering help. The only place that was quiet in the hospital where no one would be upset to see me cry was the ‘quiet room’, a multi-religious room filled with symbols of all faiths. It was ironic that fate led me to that hospital room. None of these symbols had meaning for me. Only silence could comfort me.

When I had drained my cup of self-pity to the last drop, I found a kind of bathroom next to it, containing a large foot basin, clearly intended for washing your feet for whatever reason, with a sink and a mirror so I could wash my face a bit. I went back to Koen’s room. Nurses had removed all the tubes and closed his eyes. He looked tired. Not peaceful. Tired. Poor, poor man. Two months ago full of energy, and now blissfully unaware of the sobs of the girls he left behind. Sandor was trying to comfort both of them. When I came back into the room, Sylvia clung to me as if for dear life. She looked at me with sad eyes. “He’s dead, Zuz. He is dead.” I said all those things you need to say at a moment like this: ‘It’s better this way,’ ‘he is in a place now where there is no pain’, ‘he is at peace now,’ and more of that bullshit. It was useless, I knew, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. How do you comfort the inconsolable?

Sandor went outside to take care of the funeral arrangements. Koen could not stay here and had to be transferred to a funeral home. I tried to convince Jutta and Sylvia that they should go with me now and that they could see him later in the funeral home, where they would lay him out. Jutta remained sitting down next to the bed, gently rocking in her chair. I hugged her from behind. Finally found happiness again, only to lose it again after such a short time. A cruel twist of fate. We stayed there in shared silence, looking at Koen as if he would suddenly open his eyes.