Some Thoughts

by Mila Tamminga

What does goodbye look like in this story? When there are no funerals, no hospice, no wakes, not even final words. Just patients robbed of half their self-story, robbed of speech, gasping for air, intubated, paralyzed, proned, alone in an isolation room. Maybe it’s loved ones crying goodbye on the blurry screen of a doctor’s phone. Maybe it’s “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” played over tinny speakers when she chose death over intubation. Maybe it’s nothing. Just gone. Is that the way this story is supposed to end?