tell me about it

As I walk down the corridor, my nose wrinkles faintly. The smell is antiseptic, violently clean, with an undercurrent of old age. It’s the scent of grandparents lying in beds, waiting for their turn to die. Eau de hospice. Eau de old. The smell of impending death.

Just the day before, the old lady in the room next door had passed; already a new patient has taken her place. The occupants change constantly, as do the stream of visitors, but we all look the same, wearing an exhausted air of finality, of dogged patience. Everyday, there is someone quietly weeping in the corridors. Their shoulders shake. The plants on the window sills are daily watered with sorrow. All the other visitors avert their eyes and file into their respective rooms silently. There’s no need to say anything - tomorrow, it will be someone else sobbing at the window. It could well be me; it could be you. Everyone takes their turn to cry. Everyone takes their turn to die.

The nurses are kind. They know their patients only leave this place for one reason, that their visitors have all but given up hope by this time. It’s an interminable wait. It’s wondering if, when the time comes, you’ll make it in time to catch their last breath, before it sails up like a prayer into the sky. It’s the elephant in the room that nobody acknowledges - we know death lurks in the corridors, painted an insipid pale pink and scented with Dettol. Every occupant waits their turn. It will come.

I linger hesitantly by the doorway. I’m surprised to see that there’s no one else there. For the first time since he fell sick, I’m alone with him. I’m not sure if I should go in without anyone else with me, even if it is my own grandfather lying quiet underneath the scratchy wool blanket. I venture into the room and look down at his face. His eyes are closed. His mouth hangs slackly open, and his breathing comes so slowly and lightly that I have to place my hand on his chest just to make sure it’s moving. It’s barely perceptible, but it’s there, and I find myself breathing more heavily than usual, as if trying to breathe for him.

It’s quiet. I look at him, and it’s evident that he’s already got one foot in another world. It won’t be long before the nurses will be able to assign this room to someone else, come to wait his turn to die. It breaks my heart. It’s a struggle not to cry - it will be a blessing, it will be relief, I repeat woodenly to myself. He will be free, he will be with God. He won’t be here. It will be a blessing.

I lean over and touch my lips lightly to his cheek, then move to whisper in his ear.

I love you, I say in Cantonese. I’ve never said it to him before. I figure if not now, I’ll never get the chance, and I’m too shy to say it when there are others there. I love you. Do you know that? I repeat. He probably cannot hear me, when his mind drifts the edges of the world, when he can already see the proverbial light waiting at the end of the tunnel. But I say it anyway. He doesn’t move. I search his face, hoping for a sign that he understood me, but I cannot remember now if delusion and hope make me think that he might have heard.

The tears begin to fall. Today, it is my turn to cry, while I await his turn to die.

I don’t know if he heard me.