♫ writing 6/24/2025

hospice

Chieko was waiting in the lobby of the hospice center. She was waiting for the girl who had gone back with her grandma to see her great aunt’s body. The girl’s grandma, Marguerite, had taken over the proceedings and directions after her great aunt passed away, almost pre-emptively. She shuttled all of the visitors to and from the room, asked if they’d like to say a few words, held their gazes to recognize with them that what was happening was sad, stood with the utmost appropriateness and humility while they had their own thoughts and processed seeing the body. She shed one tear per visitor, as if she had perfected the art of tapering her emotions so that their utility would be maximized. But it didn’t seem hard or forced or sad to her, it was more like this was her job, her time to shine.

Chieko sat hunched with her elbows on her knees, leaning in to watch the birds in their large cage across the room. It was weird to think about birds being the perfect things to put on the wall of the lobby. Real live ones. Because after someone has died, people do a lot of staring off into space. And a TV was too much and too up-to-date, a book was too involved, music was too liminal and spacey, and art was too depressing. What people needed was something just distracting enough to chase the grief with, but not of a subject matter that demanded any engagement or attention. And the birds were alive and real but in the most unoppressive way. She scoffed. Only someone truly miserable would appreciate the idea of death birds trapped in a wall. But she did work at a hospice center, after all.

She wondered what the patients thought of the birds. Obviously the friends and family loved them, but she wondered if the patients even noticed them at all. She hoped they were all too out of their minds on morphine to think too hard about them, or about this place at all really. She watched an especially beige bird hop along the floor of the cage.

Then, from down the hall, a door closed. Marguerite was good at this part too, she led the girl gently out of the room and down the hall and slowly changed the subject back to mundane reality so that by the time they reached the sliding glass doors of the lobby exit they were talking about the fourth of July menu for the upcoming weekend. Chieko watched her hug the girl again and wave goodbye, the whoosh of the anti-fly fan kicking on as the doors slid open and shut again. She expected to see Marguerite’s smile drop as soon as she turned around, the whole situation jarringly resembling a customer service mode she remebered from her time at the last restaurant she worked at. But the grandma turned around, still smiling, and said “alright Chieko, she was the last one! The room is all yours now, thank you for waiting on us!”

“Are you sure?” Chieko asked, her voice a bit rough from not having spoken for so long.

“Oh yes, all yours” Marguerite replied, “I’m just going to pop down the hall and see if Shelly’s in, I have to tell her about this lovely young person I met today who is interested in volunteering. Her name is Emily, she might go to your school? She’s 17 and she plays the violin!”

She stared at Chieko, waiting for some sign of recognition, then renewed her smile and went on,

“Well I think she would be great and Lord knows we always need the help! great to see young people getting involved. Just like you Chieko!”

Marguerite pinched her cheek and grinned and Chieko grinned back and Marguerite let go and patted her shoulder and turned to walk down to Shelly’s office.

“Keep up the good work Chieko! I’m sure I’ll see you again soon!” She said, as she waved one hand above her head in an extended midwest goodbye, the other hand gripping her large shiny purse.

Chieko smiled and laughed a little to herself as Marguerite receeded into the long hallway. She was kind of a weird lady but she was really good at what she did, and really nice. Chieko liked her. With a little hop in her step she turned and retrieved her mop bucket from beside the lobby chair she had been sitting in, put her headphones in, and turned her art rock all the way up. She pushed the bucket ahead of her down the dark hallway, bobbing her head back and forth to the music, and pushed open the door to the room. Still jamming, she picked up the tissue box mounted just to the right of the doorway to check if it was low. It was not. She peeked into the nitrile glove boxes mounted below it and they were all still full enough too. She swong her mop bucket around by the mop’s handle to face the other side of the room and,

There was a body there. A dead body. And Chieko stood frozen.

The body that had been dead for so long the rigor mortis was setting in and her arms were brought up to her chest but her wrists hung limply down making it look not at all peaceful. Her back was sort of arched and her neck was angled sharply backward and her mouth was wide open, gaping, like her soul had literally just left her body through her mouth in rushing white whoosh of vapor the moment before Chieko opened the door. Her mouth was open so wide. Her eyes were wide open too. Looking straight up. Chieko actually thought she might throw up. She yanked her headphones out by the cord and took a deep breath. But all she could think about was the deep breath or lack thereof it looked like the great aunt’s body was struggling to take.

Then she sighed. She didn’t know this lady, but she was going to have to sit and pray for her for a minute now. Her petrified body looked like it was in too much pain.

“Dear God”, she said.

“What the actual fuck?

I mean, like, goddamn! Do you have to make it look so gruesome??

Amen.”

And then she made the sign of the cross on her body and raised her head to look at the girl’s great aunt. It was sad. Sad that the body that was that lady’s home was done with now. Sad that it was here in front of her even though the lady had passed on. She thought about how much more a body with a soul could do compared to a body without one. She sat with her eyes closed there next to the bed for a long time. Just breathing.

She thought about what weighed on people’s minds when they decided, still alive, whether they’d like to be buried or cremated. Erasing your body seemed entirely fair to her, as in cremation, but personally she wanted her body in case their was an afterlife. Not because she liked it, in fact she would be thrilled to be reborn as a bug or a vase or something like that. But she needed physical things to feel comfort, like her old familiar body, she thought.

But this body in front of her would not be a comfort to her in the afterlife, in fact she would run for the heavens and never look back on Earth if all her own dead body would remind her of is suffering with its mouth wide open in a scream like that.

She hoped the girl’s great aunt had been a fun and witty old lady. With a sense of style and some crusty little animals and a monogramed wine glass that she drank her single glass of red out of every night on the couch with her feet up, thinking about what color she would ask for at her pedicure next week. The kind of old lady that was a little behind the times but genuinely kind and has seen some shit and stopped being anxious about her expressing herself once she hit menopause. But then she opened her eyes and looked at the great aunt’s body and sighed. She probably suffered like this a lot actually. Maybe that’s why her body was in this state now and not peaceful, arms laid to the side, mouth closed, eyes shut. She figured maybe this lady needed a proper scream, and honestly, good for her for doing it.

“You must’ve seen some shit” Chieko said with a chuckle, suddenly much more relaxed in the great aunt’s body’s presence. They were friends now. She paused for a minute, just in case her friend wanted to reply. Then stood up, holding her headphones in her hand, and nodded, throwing her head back and her arms out to her sides:

“Let it out girl, you deserve to be free!!”

She put her headphones back in and pressed play, pointing at the great aunt like a fan in the crowd “This one’s for you!”

Then Chieko proceeded to give the room, not the most thorough clean, but definitely the most animated, cinematic, all out performance of mopping an old great aunt could ever hope for. And then she turned out the lights and waved goodbye and walked back down the hallway and sat herself back down in her lobby chair, pulling her mop bucket up alongside her.