The early November air is cold. On the water, a flock of Canada geese has stopped to restore their energy for their long flight south. I wonder if they’ll get there before you die. November 28: the date is lodged in my bones and sinews like a time bomb.

Walking the path along the river, my hands shoved deep in my coat pockets, I remember our late-night medical assistance in dying talks. Medically assisted death: it sounds so…helpful. That was a few years ago, when Mom lived with us. She had dementia, so she wasn’t eligible, but I doubt she would have chosen it anyway. Even seventy years later, she still remembered how, as a student nurse, she’d given a patient his final dose of morphine.

You and I did not have such reservations. As a very young child, you’d spent a year (maybe more) in the hospital on the edge of death until streptomycin was discovered and saved your life. The last thing you want now, you tell me, is to end your life the way you began it: in a hospital bed. For years, before the Parkinson’s diagnosis and the congestive heart failure, you talked about saving up pills.

Not so long ago, you rode your scooter into the village every day, stopping for coffee and chatting with acquaintances at the local coffee shop. You read detective novels and played online Scrabble with me. You wrote short stories about your childhood. You no longer do these things. You are dependent on me for almost everything. You wear what the woman at the pharmacy calls incontinence briefs and what you call diapers. We used to be peers and partners. Now I am your caregiver.

Sometimes we watch a movie in the middle of the afternoon. Last week it was The Bucket List with Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. Afterward, I asked if there was anything left on your bucket list. You said you’d already achieved the things that mattered most to you: had a good marriage, beat some personal demons, reconnected with your oldest son. But…“Maybe a steak dinner?”

“Okay, maybe.” I hadn’t eaten red meat for forty years and had no idea where to buy a steak dinner in the Comox Valley, so I called our son-in-law, Bob. He suggested Locals, an upscale riverside restaurant in Courtenay. “Do you and the family want to come?” They did.

Hauling you out of bed and getting you dressed in actual clothes—you couldn’t wear sweats to Locals— then into the wheelchair and down the ramp into the garage was exhausting. But the adventure would make you happy, and every moment of happiness matters intensely when you’re about to say goodbye forever.

Bob, my daughter Alexis, and Andy, our four-year-old grandson, met us in the parking lot at the restaurant. Bob helped me lift you out of the car and into the wheelchair. I pushed you up the sloping sidewalk into the restaurant. (No need to go to the gym when you’re the caregiver for your 180-pound husband.) Inside, we got settled at our table and took a few photos. The server brought menus. Oh. They didn’t serve steak. There’s probably a moral to the story, but it’s beyond me.

The path along the river is two kilometers long. I’m at the halfway point when the geese lift noisily into the sky. Flying away, flying free, squawking incessantly. As my eyes follow them, images from your interview with Dr. R drop into my mind like uninvited guests: the three of us sitting in our living room, sipping English breakfast tea and munching on homemade banana bread with chocolate chips; you looking calm; the soft voice of your daughter, Jane, in Victoria, who joined us by speakerphone. For two hours and fifteen minutes, the doctor who promised to help you die a dignified death, assuming you qualified, asks you life-and-death questions, questions that mine your motivation, your capacity to understand what you’re requesting, and the degree to which family members support your decision. He watches your face intently, listens carefully to your answers, makes a few notes. Sometimes he directs a question to Jane or me.

“Do you see it that way? Are you in agreement?”

Near the end of the interview, he explains that, originally, a person had to give verbal consent for an assisted death immediately before the procedure. (Helping someone die is now “a procedure.”) But in February 2022, Canadian law introduced a “waiver of final consent” if the patient had “lost the capacity to give express consent.” In that case, it would be up to the doctor to decide whether to proceed.

Surprised, I say, “The doctor, not the family?”

“Yes.” Because it’s too much to expect of a loved one.

True. In spite of knowing this is what you want, I would be overcome with guilt if I were the one making the decision that ends your life. Since you’re having ministrokes periodically, each one stealing a few million more brain cells, I am relieved when you sign the document. Finally, Dr. R asks, “David, do you have a date in mind?”

I am not expecting the question. You reply immediately with a date two weeks away. Jane and I are both shaken. “Are you sure?” What about this? What about that?

In the distance, in vee formation, the geese honk sporadically as they head toward their winter home. I should go home too. But there’s a caregiver with you until four o’clock, and I’m not quite ready.

Am I really sitting in a pub, alone, sipping a Crown Royal with Diet Coke at three o’clock in the afternoon? This is completely out of character. I am living in two worlds. There is no bridge. In one, you are my quickly fading but very much alive husband of eighteen years, the funny blue-eyed man I met on April 23, Shakespeare’s birthday, at The Orange Room in New Westminster; the man who overcame his travel reticence, packed his bag and cane, and met me in Paris; the one who turned one of my stories into a play that won a Best Script Award at the Vancouver Island One-Act Play Festival; the one who gave up his office and sacrificed much of his freedom to help me care for my mom in our tiny North Vancouver apartment. You are the man who hovered over my shoulder while I made your sandwich, wanting to make sure I used just the right amount of mayo and Dijon mustard and not too much butter. Every single time. As if I could forget! When I’d shoo you away like an annoying mosquito, you’d laugh and tell me I’d miss your hovering one day. Will I? We still watch Jeopardy! together most nights. I organize your medical appointments, change your dirty pants, lift your fluid-filled tree-trunk legs onto the bed. I listen as you struggle to turn the thoughts in your deteriorating brain into words. I help you write your obituary. And you check the validity of your hallucinations with me: “Is there a little white dog over there?” There never is. I pop white and yellow and pink pills into your mouth; your lips quiver as you suck them in. At night I listen, in my new version of sleep, to your labored and shallow breathing.

In another world, an imaginary one, I am the future me, alone in our house. No more caregiving. No more sleep-deprived nights. No more hovering. No more you. The hospital bed, wheelchair, and walker have been returned to the Red Cross, your commode given away, your stained urinal at the bottom of the big black garbage bin in the garage. What will I do with your computer? With your paintings? With my life? I need to go home.

I watch you sleep. Your jaw is slack, your skin sallow. I try to imagine what it will be like when you take your final breath. And five minutes later. And a month later. I can’t go there. I am here. You are here. This knowing what’s coming and when it’s coming is too much for my seventy-three-year-old brain to process.

Old friends and extended family you haven’t seen in years come to say their goodbyes. You greet them all like long-lost friends, even the ones you were never fond of. I guess being on death’s doorstep changes things.

I cry in the shower, tears mingling with the warm water. Is this anticipatory grief? There’s lots to grieve. Or is it exhaustion? Maybe both.

A week from today, by two-fifteen in the afternoon, your body will be still—if all goes according to plan. Your plan. Me, I am a wreck. Is this the hard part? Am I getting a head start on the real work of grief? Will it be easier after you are gone? (I hold on to this idea, which may be a complete fantasy.) You, on the other hand, are peaceful. You have taken control. You smile a lot, tell jokes. Black humor abounds: “Pull the trigger. D-Day.”

“Stop that!”

It’s the intentionality I’m having trouble with. Death is no stranger to me. I’ve lost four grandparents, Dad, Mom, beloved aunts and uncles, friends. But only Julie’s death was intentional. Heartbroken after her husband died of lung cancer at sixty, she hanged herself. That’s more what this feels like: suicide. Except it’s not a secret and it’s not the result of a broken heart. Plus, there won’t be a body hanging in the closet for some unlucky soul to find two days later.

The morning has come. Everyone take a deep breath. Let it go. Continue to breathe.

The house reverberates with foreboding. I am numb, watching, distanced. The caregiver from Island Health is here with Jane and me. The doctor will arrive in three hours. You say you want to get out of bed to use the commode. Since you have a catheter, this means you have to poop and don’t want to do it in your briefs. The three of us look at each other. Are you strong enough to stand up with our help? I am dubious. But how can we refuse an about-to-die man this final request? We pull the commode up against the side of the bed. Jane brings the top of the hospital bed up. I help you sit on the edge. Jane and I stand on each side of your eighty-three-year-old body, holding you up. The caregiver holds you around the waist, ready to pull down your briefs as soon as you stand. We ease you off the bed. Your legs immediately give way. The three of us together cannot hold you up. Fall number seven. No ambulance this time, though. Eventually we manage to get you back into bed, and I am keenly aware that you will be bedbound going forward. After several date changes, maybe you got the timing right.

Six of us, including little Andy, surround your bed. The sounds of the playlist we created together fill the room: “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “My Sweet Lord,” “Into the Mystic,” “Hallelujah.” You sip a glass of wine, forbidden for months because of the meds, and enjoy some good dark chocolate. Mike, your son, who teaches the philosophy of religion at a college in Quebec, smiles enigmatically and remarks to you, his atheist father, that a lot of the songs on the playlist are rather religious in nature. You grin and say, “I’m covering all my bases.” We tell stories, laugh a lot. It’s like a party in here. Andy climbs up into your hospital bed, snuggles in beside you. Pictures are taken. My heart is full and breaking.

The doorbell rings. It’s Dr. R, right on time. He shakes hands with everyone and says he’s delighted to see our grandson with us. He goes to you, stands at your bedside, and asks the question he will repeat twice before injecting the solution that will stop your beating heart:

“Do you want to proceed with a medically assisted death?”

“I do.” Not I do take this woman to be my lawful wedded wife, but I do want to die now.

A vein is found. A tube is taped onto your arm. Adjustments are made. Eventually, he nods to us.

“It’s time.”

The plan is for everyone but Jane, Mike, and me to wait in the living room. The room for the living. Before they leave the bedroom, Alexis turns to you, leans in, and asks, “How do you feel, David, knowing that these are your last few minutes?”

Your tired gray eyes scan the room before you look back at her and answer. “Joyous.”

Joyous. It’s your dying word. One I’ve never heard you use before.

There are four of us with you in the room now. I am at the foot of the bed. Jane and Mike are on the right side. The doctor is on the left side. The procedure begins. I am here, and not here. I am watching, then turning away. Then watching again. How much time goes by before the doctor signals that your heart has stopped beating? I have no idea.

There are no words for the next half hour. At some point, we leave the room, leave you there, in your bed, alone, and close the door.

In the living room, I serve tea and wine. A large Mexican bowl full of tortilla chips and a smaller one with roasted red pepper dip sit on the counter. The doctor says his goodbyes. I hug him. After he leaves, we begin telling stories. The mood lightens. Eventually, I call the funeral home to come and pick up your body. They say they will arrive in about an hour. That’s when Andy says to me, “Amma, is Grandpa still in the bedroom?”

I look at my grandson’s questioning blue eyes. “Yes.”

“Can I go see him?”

My heart is in my throat. “Yes.” I take his hand. We walk toward the closed bedroom door. I open it, let him go in first. There is a plastic stool near the bed. He pulls it over, climbs up so he can see you better. His right arm stretches toward your face. He runs a finger down your ashen cheek, over and over. The ten seconds that pass feel like a lifetime. Finally, he looks at me, his forehead wrinkling.

“Amma, that’s not my grandpa.” He jumps down from the stool, takes my hand and leads me out of the room, unperturbed, perfectly content.

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