And it Was Good

 

On March 4, 2023, three days before Gerardo took his last breath on earth, an ambulance brought him back to our home from UCLA hospital.

Gerardo's sister Lily and I raced home to beat the ambulance and to be ready to receive Gerardo and help him shift into hospice care. Everyone on that ambulance who brought him into the house did so with so much love and care that I still get welled up thinking about how beautifully they transported him.

As soon as he was placed in bed and before the hospice staff arrived, a parched Gerardo asked me for his usual beverage of choice: a cold Topo Chico with cranberry juice. I brought it for him and watched him take an unforgettable swig. His face lit up with a gigantic smile and he said "ahhh ... that's good."

He said it not necessarily to me or to Lily. His gaze was somewhere beyond the room. He loved how the cold drink made him feel and he was giving thanks. Thanks for its existence. Thanks for having tasted it. So simple. 

Lily urged me to get my phone to video record him but I didn't. Maybe I would love seeing that moment on video today. But even if I had reached for my phone, he didn't repeat that extraordinary swig and he didn't repeat what he said. It happened. And then it was gone. And his transition almost immediately started to happen. 

I am grateful that my memory bank has played that moment for me almost every day for the past three years. It remains vivid.

Recently, I was discussing the book Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin with my book group and my good friend Crisynda pointed out a passage when the character Marx is dying. That passage masterfully toggles back and forth from past and present and at one point takes us to a time when Marx and his friends are eating peaches so delicious that it is impossible to describe how delicious they are. Marx says of the peaches: "I'll probably never have to do a single other thing in my life, because I tasted this peach (304)."

Crisynda is a retired nurse who has been able to witness beautiful and simple moments of people letting go. No fanfare. No melodrama. Just a simple goodbye with a recognition that they have tasted the peach. And it was good.