Mortal Enemy
James Altena on Looking Death in the Face of a Friend
When my dear friend Jan Coward died of cancer in October 2006, he was not conscious and went peacefully; my hand rested upon his arm as he drew his final breath. It was the first time I had seen someone die.
My father’s death (of colon cancer) had been quite sudden; he died within two days of entering the hospital for the last time, before I could even book a flight to see him. Since he was cremated, I never actually saw him dead. Although I detest the artificiality and tackiness of many “viewings,” I found that not being able to see in death a loved one known in life exacts a great psychological toll, for the death then never seems entirely real. Full closure is not always made; an unhealed wound may remain.
My good friend Greg Randolph was without warning felled by a heart attack at age 38. I came home from a trip out of state to a message on an answering machine with the stunning and brutal news. As he was by that time already buried, I had no chance to see him.
Both my mother and my beloved friend Betty Berbig (a second mother to me for twenty years) died after long and slow declines. With my mother, I was blessed to keep vigil at her bedside in her last few days, but was asleep in a motel room at the actual hour of death. A phone call summoned me; I went to her bedside and kissed her brow, now at peace, one last time, in a genuine and final leave-taking.
With Betty, for several months I had been flying from Philadelphia to Chicago every few weeks for one to three days, to spend several hours each day at her bedside in the nursing home and tend to her affairs as her power of attorney. The few hours between the first phone call summoning me to her bedside and the second telling me of her death did not leave me time even to book a flight. But in her case, with senility afflicting her final months, I had already long prepared for and grieved that moment, and in her final decline I had, in a sense, almost seen her die.
An Awful Honor
But with Jan, I witnessed death directly. Suddenly diagnosed with advanced lung and liver cancer, he chose to take only palliative treatment for pain and immediately entered a hospice.
His decline was shockingly sudden; within a week he could hardly carry on a real conversation, and within five he was dead. At the last visit my wife and I paid to him, he could not speak, but extended his hands for us to help him out of the bed, from whence he tottered over to a chair, sat silently for some minutes, and then beckoned us to return him.
In his last few days, Jan fell unconscious and was moved to a special room for those about to die, where family and friends could stay with him around the clock. Jan had no immediate family in contact with him, and so it fell to me and a few other loyal friends to keep vigil.
The awful honor of the final moments fell to me, to a friend of Jan’s named Alan, and to our church organist (Jan had long been the parish cantor). Alan and I sat on either side of Jan, our hands holding his arms, as the breaths grew ever more short, shallow, and infrequent. Finally, his larynx made a few rapid motions in succession, and the next breath did not come.
James A. Altena is the associate editor of Fanfare magazine, a comprehensive bimonthly periodical for reviews of classical music recordings. He is a member of All Saints Episcopal Church in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in church history at Westminster Theological Seminary in Glenside, Pennsylvania.
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