They call it "actively dying", which is strange because, as I'm sitting here, holding Mary's hand, watching her take each labored, ragged breath, I don't feel like I'm "actively living"; I feel more like I'm falling apart. I can't seem to help it, even despite my familiarity with the act of dying--having watched my mother die slowly of cancer, and having had a friend collapse and die in my arms of a brain aneurysm--there's still something utterly devastating and heart breaking about a woman dying alone in a hospital bed.

The room smells heavy with disinfectants and bleach; the smell mingles in the air with the smell of the wild flowers that had been lovingly placed near to the bed by one of the nurses. An utterly melancholy rendition of "Gymnopédie No. 1" is playing on the CD player near to the bed, and each note seems to echo in the cavernous room. There are no relatives, no friends here. The room is vacant and sparse. The sheets pressed and pristine white, the curtains drawn, the door closed and the television turned off. It seems as if death, in all its intimacy and disparity, is the sort of sin we choose to hide from the world in the same way we hide sex--which is interesting, because the one begets the other.

As a volunteer for the NODA (No One Dies Alone) program, I've only just met Mary an hour before. My job, if you can call it that, is to sit quietly with her, play music (on the CD player--they wouldn't let me bring in a guitar), talk, and do whatever I can to let her know that I'm here, and that someone cares. It's a powerful job in its simplicity, and a daunting one in its implications.

Near to the bed, there's a scrapbook that had been put together for Mary some months before she'd fallen so desperately ill. They're commonly created for patients with advanced dementia and Alzheimer's as a way of kickstarting their memory, a sort of therapy that has been shown to improve recall and cognition. Without thinking, I pick up the book and begin turning the pages as I talk to her.

And there she is, right there on the first page, in a scanned copy of a black and white tin photo. She is perhaps two or three, being held by smiling but stern looking Midwestern parents, surrounded by what I presume are her siblings. Her parents look young, probably in their mid-twenties, and I see the look of pride in their eyes. The look of hope and anticipation of a future they could never know. 

"You were such a cute kid." I say to her. She doesn't respond, her eyes are closed, just ragged breathing, but I see just the slightest nod of her head. Mary, for however pained and tired, is still with me. 

I scan through the other photos and can't help but smile sadly at each milestone present in the pages. A picture of her, probably at age fifteen or sixteen, with her father on a hot Summer day sixty years ago. There's an old Chevy parked along a dirt road behind them, and Mary and her father are laughing at something that will never be remembered again once she's gone.

It seems strange to me that a photograph, even in all of its power, even being worth a thousand words, is only a mere ghost of a moment, and a paltry substitute for living. There's so much living that happens between each snapshot, and so little we can really infer about the lives of those they contain.

"Wow Mary, you were a knockout. Your husband was a lucky man." I say, as I turned to the photos of her wedding. She smiles, ever so faintly.

There are more pictures, some of her children, each being cradled in Mary's arms as they were just tiny infants, and then pictures of first days of school, first cars, prom photos, graduations, weddings, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, pictures of Mary standing in front of the Eiffel tower, scaling a pyramid in Mexico, holding up the tower of Pisa, riding a scooter through the streets of Italy, and...

"Mary... you're my hero." I say, as I turn to the last page, to the very last photo in the book, and describe it to her.

It's a photo of her walking, with some assistance, looking defiant, determined, her head bald and smooth but held high, her face long, her eyes sunken, tired, but undeterred, in a cancer awareness event back in 2013; she is also holding a sign that says, "Fuck cancer", and she's smiling a sort of mischievous grin.

After ten or fifteen minutes, another NODA member, Tracy, comes in to relieve me from my position, but in all honesty, I don't want to go. We stand and chat for a few minutes, I explain what I've been doing while I've been sitting with Mary, and then, mid-sentence, I realize that something in the room has changed. What it is, I'm not sure I can even explain, but it's palpable, and both Tracy and I sense it immediately. Without a word, we each walk to either side of Mary's bed, and we each hold one of her hands.

"Mary, this is Tracy." I say, "We're both here with you."

I feel the room fall away, disappearing into a void of darkness. I can only see Mary's face, I can only hear the ragged breathing, the labor, the battle she has endured to be here in just this final hour of her life. She's tired. She wants to go.

Her eyes open for the very first time since I've entered the room, and I could swear that she looks at me, though it could be my imagination. She then takes one last, big, deep breath; one last gulp, one last taste of the atmosphere that has kept her alive for 80 some years, and then she stops breathing.

It's as if time stops. The world is frozen. I keep expecting another labored breath, but she sits motionless, her eyes still open, looking at me, and I realize that I'm holding my breath. I can feel her heart beat in the tips of my fingers as I hold her hand. I can feel it slowing, slowing, and fading away.

By now, she hasn't taken a breath in over a minute. I feel as if I should say something, anything, I'm not sure it matters what, so long as it's genuine, as it's the last thing that will ever be said to her in life--

"Mary," I say, "thank you. For everything."

I feel one final thump of her heart beat against my fingertips, but it's ragged, like a vestigial thump by the last remnants of her body fighting to remain alive.

I can pinpoint the exact moment, however small, that Mary's life ended. I felt it. It's almost as if the room became lighter, as if her presence in the room had suddenly disappeared and all that was left was a cold and sterile hospital room.

It's such a strange thing, really, that we can be here, breathing in the air, heart thumping, living or actively dying, and then in the next moment, we can be gone.

I went home.