“Look what you’ve done to me! Look what you’ve done to me!”

The technicians' concerned glances through the square observation window in the door revealed their current cancer patient, Anne, lying on the table as expected for her final radiation treatment. But this patient was very different: wearing a troll mask with neon green hair, Anne's perfectly plotted goodbye to her newly found friends at the treatment center was not lost on them.

     They understood that they were losing someone very special and unique, indeed.

     The treatments, along with the monster growing inside of her, had ravaged her body. But despite this, she held her head high to all of us, grinning and bearing the pain and the exhaustion with humor instead of complaints. Teaching us all, without words, how it should be done. When the technicians rendered their final treatment for the patient whom they’d come to anxiously anticipate as a breath of fresh air in their morbid line of work, what they saw and heard would be unexpected…unexpected if you didn’t already know Anne.

     But that had been three days earlier. The current look in her eyes said it all. There wasn’t much time. She knew it, and right at that moment, I knew it, too.

     Everything was shutting down. Her body, having fought the battle for ten months, was ready to surrender. She was ambulatory just an hour earlier, but now was unable to speak. But was it the body, or was it the mind that was intentionally shutting the body down? Merely three days earlier, doctors said there were still months left, or a few, anyway.

But apparently, not according to Anne. Not for a woman who refused to burden anyone. Not for a woman who had fought to live the last ten months on her own, discouraging anyone to change their daily routine to accommodate hers, although they did. After all, this was Saint Anne we were talking about. But for Anne, no way, no how. She would determine when and how this would happen. The family was all in for a visit. No way no how was Anne going to have them return home hundreds of miles away only to have to come back again…particularly not on her account. The time was now.

     And now, her eyes no longer conveyed levity, but concern. What was it that Anne was concerned about, after having so graciously accepted what lay at her doorstep? As her eyes grabbed hold of mine, then went from family member to family member in the room, I followed them. She was doing a headcount, but was unable to speak, unable to express her concerns. Her count ended with me. It was then that it hit me: it was my daughter’s weekend with her father.  She was unaccounted for.

     So Anne sat on her bedside, uncommunicative, rubbing her thighs and rocking back and forth until forty-five minutes later when I reappeared with my seven-year-old daughter. I’d prepared my daughter on the ride back for what was happening to her beloved Granny. “Is Granny dying?” she asked. “Yes, sweetheart, she is. And she’s waiting for you…”

When we arrived, Granny threw her head back in jubilation, smiled, hugged her missing grandchild, and laid down. My daughter curled up next to her and soothed her hair as Granny finally closed her eyes and slept comfortably during her final hours. But more importantly, that smile had returned to her face, even as death awaited her, telling each of us that all was, once again, right with the world.

A tribute to Anne Roach McClatchy, 1929-1995, in hopes that her strength and dignity in dying may be an inspiration to others who may be facing or coping with loss.