free to be

On any given day, I do the same routine assessment on each of my patients. We go over each body system...making our list of things that are in need of some tweaking with regards to meds, etc. We also spend a great deal of time talking with patients about their psychosocial/emotional/spiritual needs. Most of the time, our patients or their families could talk for hours about how they feel; in fact, often this is the part of the assessment that takes the most time. It is rare that people have little or nothing to say-which is why sometimes our experiences with the latter, can be the most profound.

A few weeks ago--or maybe even longer then that--I asked a man if he was hurting...to which he told me,'no'.
We went through each body system:
Are you eating? Having difficulty sleeping? Problems eliminating?
Again and again, he replied a simple, but profound, 'no'.
We then moved to the psychosocial/emotional/spiritual questions.
Are you anxious? fearful? sad? hopeful?
No...no...no...and, no.

Believing him to be a man of very few words and not in the mood for such an assessment, I began gathering up my things to leave him in peace. It was then, at the last minute that he whispered, with his eyes closed,
'I'm a bundle of nothing'.

I wasn't sure, at that moment, what to do or say--or even if a response on my part, was necessary. In some ways it was as if his silent thought just slipped out, unaware of the echo it would make in the small room. His few whispered words took the breath right out of me. I sat down and stared at his rising chest; his pink cheeks flushed with life. He exists; barely, but with his mind fully intact. He is existing in that lonely place where he no longer feels human: no purpose; no joy; no pain; no eating or drinking to sustain a body that will not function.
A bundle of nothing.
Or, so he states.
What, I wonder, would that be like?

No one has ever used those words before to describe this phase of life & maybe that's why his words struck me so.
There was a profound sort of truth in his simple statement and yet I wanted to tell him, 'no'. I wanted him to open his eyes. To feel. To breathe in life. I wanted to use my words to convince him-nothing, he is not.

But something told me he didn't want my words or any other feeble attempt to convince him otherwise. It might have made me feel better but my words would have likely sounded desperate and empty to him.

And so we sat, quietly, in silence. Me, lost in my thoughts about what it must be like to be him. Him, existing between breaths; between the pulsing beats of his heart; hovering above the bed yet still confined to it. Waiting for his release; unaware of how great his living presence filled the room.