Observations from Death's Doorstep by Terryl Warnock

When someone was recovering from a serious illness, my mother would say that they had been to death’s doorstep and back. I thought about that mom-ism a lot while the Coronavirus and I spent two desperate, miserable weeks camped out on Death’s doorstep. I lay there, beached. Stuck on the threshold between this world and the next, gasping for air. Too sick to live, surely, but apparently not sick enough for the Grim Reaper to grant me the quick, merciful passage I prayed for.

His Elusive Majesty’s doorstep reeks of bad breath and body odor, of vomit and terror. This is no portal to the fragrant shimmering garden beyond; it is a place to be waylaid by despair. A place to die alone and unnoticed.

~ ~ ~

I wake in the smallest, meanest hours of the early October night, breathless. I am dizzy and my heart rate is hummingbird fast. More of a buzz than a beat. I am coughing so hard I fear my body will turn itself inside out, so hard I retch bile. I have never been this sick before. I am desperate for air and can’t get it. I try Yogic breathing to deepen my breath, center my awareness, and calm my frantic heart, but it does not help. This is what it’s like to suffocate. To drown. To hang by the neck until dead.

I tell myself it can’t be Coronavirus. I’ve been so careful. I’ve been so good, but a part of me knows, even before diagnosis, it is Coronavirus that has reduced my world four steps in size. I can go no further than that without having to stop and catch what breath I can. My sister brings a walker with a seat so I can go my four steps, sit down to recover, and then go four more.

The first few days I sleep fitfully round the clock. During brief semi-lucid moments of consciousness, I pray to the Grim Reaper for release. I bargain with Him. I beg Him to review my lifetime and be reasonable. “I am not afraid of you!” I shout as I pound his door, “I am not the stuff of which martyrs are made! I do not deserve to suffer like this!” He remains mute and withholds His favor. The prick.

By the fourth day, I am delirious. I needed to bathe. I can no longer stand the sticky, greasy clothes clinging to me like a funeral shroud, or the stench of my own body. Mine is an acrid, falsetto reek and although I can’t manage even a spit bath, my sister helps me into clean jammies. I have never been so grateful and happy for clean skivvies and socks. It is a whole new lesson in powerlessness.

On the fifth day,
I call my sister and beg for permission to die at home.

People come and go. Even when my eyes are open my brain doesn’t have enough oxygen to process information. I must be nagging and pestering about care of my critters because I am reassured over and over they’re being taken care of. Short of the death I pray for, it is enough.

Someone presses a glass of orange juice into my hand. It doesn’t taste good but my body responds so I am thankful for it. When asked, I can’t say how long it’s been since I ate real food. My niece goes to the grocery store and comes home with a mountain of canned soups and protein shakes.

Time stretches long and the nights last an eternity.

I spend inordinate amounts of time staring into space, just trying to breathe. I’ve always spent time staring into space, but these are not the gentle daydreams of yore, soft with warmth and curiosity. I glare into the Great Beyond, fists clenched, sucking at air I can’t get like a beached fish. My reptilian brain mandates the continuation of the autonomic effort. This is primal, savage survival mode. It is an exercise in futility, but so powerful is the reptile’s mandate to breathe, so complete and undeniable is the ancient brain’s sovereignty, that I reach for it anyway. I stare into infinity at the distant past of my species, glassy-eyed and helpless, unwashed and stinking, as I wait on Death’s doorstep, and strain and pant.

I reach out to my inner reptile to inform her that she is keeping me alive against my wishes. When she answers, I come to understand whence came the mythic fire-breathing dragon. She is lizard greenish-brown, but her tongue is bright red, licking my fevered mind like flame as she says, “I am sub even to your subconscious. Your precious mind is not in charge here now. It was I who allowed—commanded—your ancestors to survive, to reproduce preferentially. To take over the world. Now. You. BREATHE. And you reach for it with everything you’ve got.”

I counter weakly “You remember we’re post-menopausal, right?” but, having no choice, I reach for it with everything I’ve got.

By late October, I gradually begin to realize I’m not quite so pissed off that the sun is coming up and that His Elusive Majesty has disappointed me again. I begin to remember conversations with people. I see my Dragon Lady less and less. Sometimes I take a couple of steps away from the walker and have to turn back for it.

By the beginning of the new year I am flotsam in the wreckage of the Coronavirus’s wake along with so many others. The disease has taken much from me. It has taken my business, my hair, my beloved book club, my appetite, and my ability to read all but the most superficial of life’s words: signs, labels, instructions, mail. I still get winded after four steps and Doc says the damage to my lungs may be permanent. We won’t know for a year. Meanwhile, this is the new normal. My ability to find healing sleep has vanished. This is the worst of it. I pull all-nighter after all-nighter, jumpy and agitated. There is no relief. Without sleep, I become paranoid and irrational. Angry.

The Coronavirus has cost me dear, but mine is a mild case. It has cost hundreds of thousands so much more. I’m one of the lucky ones and I know it. I grieve with, and for, the dead and their families.

~ ~ ~

For all it took though, there are blessings to be found floating out here amongst the wreckage in the Coronavirus’s wake. My time on Death’s doorstep put me in touch with both my mortality and my immortality. I live on in this world but have a different perspective now that I have spent time on that reeking doorstep pondering the Great Beyond. I have looked into the unimaginably ancient history of my species to touch my inner Dragon Lady. She, at least, is not willing to give up without a fight. The Coronavirus took much but left me with my life. Life is good, even as a Coronavirus long-hauler. Although I know much more about Him now for camping on His doorstep, the Grim Reaper, having denied my request for passage, remains His Elusive Majesty, aloof and unknown. We are still mere distant acquaintances and for this, for my life, I am truly grateful.