13 Souls

Sara de Miguel

Translated by Jesus M. Gonzalez 

13 Souls

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Written By Sara de Miguel

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Copyright © 2017 Sara de Miguel

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All rights reserved

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Distributed by Babelcube, Inc.

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www.babelcube.com

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Translated by Jesus M. Gonzalez

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Babelcube Books and Babelcube are trademarks of Babelcube Inc.

Dedicated to all the sick and deceased people that have taught me everything about life.

If you can heal, heal.

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If you cannot heal, alleviate.

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And if you cannot alleviate, comfort.

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(Augusto Morri)

INDEX

A brief introduction

Eva

Juan Luis

María

Iván

Ana

Azahara

Alberto

Manuel

Eugenia

Pilar

Felipe

Roberto

Sara

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION

My name is Sara. When I was 13 years old, I was diagnosed with a small benign tumor in the humerus. The doctors didn’t think it was important enough. They said that because I was in a developing age, it would be re-absorbed on its own. I continued with my teenage life, with the corresponding inconsistencies that come with that age. I finished high school with good grades, I survived a very difficult family situation, and I had my first experiences as a grown-up person.

I decided to pursue psychology because I like people, but I don’t like seeing them suffer, and I thought that I could help them feel better with themselves and with their environment. The tumor remained stable until, at the age of 19 years old, it suddenly grew enormously. It invaded all the humeral head, and the doctors had to operate urgently. They removed the tumor, and I received a bone-grafting hip and artificial bone. It took me over a year and a half to recover partial mobility. It was a slow and painful process, especially on an emotional level, as it involved living a sick person's life while all my friends lived a normal life. It was an experience that impacted me a lot at all levels. It made me reconsider my priorities, and value the small moments and relationships with the people in my life.

This experience of illness and the presence of the possibility (although distant, you cannot help pondering it) of death, made me delve deeper into the part of psychology that works with sick people. I wanted to listen to them, share their physical and emotional pain and be able to help them in everything I could. In my first job as a psychologist, I worked in mental health. During those seven years of working with serious psychiatric patients, I also trained and specialized in palliative care psychology.

On October 19th, 2011, I knocked on the door of my first patient as a home palliative psychologist. I knew that as soon as I entered that house my life would change forever. What I could not imagine was how much it would change.

It has been several years, now, of knocking at the door of seriously ill people’s houses, who will pass away in a brief period of time. Every time I knock on a door, I cannot help feeling some guilt: although I don’t bring the disease, I’m the real proof that there is a sick person and that death is approaching.

I can’t help feeling an intense uneasiness every time a look at those people, and their families, in the eye. However, that same uneasiness is what motivates me to keep on knocking on doors to offer listening, comfort, and support.

It’s curious that every time someone asks me what I do for a living, and I answer that I am a palliative care psychologist, they automatically change the subject. Almost no one asks me about my work, almost nobody wants to hear about illness, much less death, when the only thing certain in our life is that we will die. We don’t know when or how, but when we get there we all want to die well, and we don’t even want to consider what dying well means. Fortunately, I have the immense pleasure of working in a team of very professional and, above all, very humane doctors and nurses with whom I have shared the extraordinary experience of helping many people to die as best as possible. And if it has been so, it has been because every sick person we have encountered has had a story, and a present, fruit of their own unique past. They have read to us the pages of their biography, taught us to see with their eyes and to feel with their hearts. They have shared with us their fears and worries, and allow their emotions to flow so that when the time comes, they can die with the least possible suffering.

My greatest learning throughout these years has been that if we listened more to people who approach death, we would help them to die better. And above all, that if we listen more to the people, who approach death, we would learn to live better.

EVA

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On October 19th, 2011, I knocked on the door of my first patient as a home palliative psychologist. It was an old wooden door, in an old building in the center of the city. The doorbell rang in the wide, high-ceilinged landing. My hand was shaking.

A small woman opened, with a sincere smile, and as soon as she opened it she asked me if I was the psychologist. I nodded, returning her smile, and she took my hand, looked me in the eye and gave me a big hug. I stopped shaking.

Eva led me by the hand to a cozy living room, and she sat down on the corner of an old sofa. All the furniture was old and was marred by the passage of time. It, however, smelled clean, like some very pleasant flower arranger. I sat next to her, and she shared with me a woolen blanket that we put on to cover our legs. It was a patchwork blanket, those with squares of colors woven together, worn out by the use. She had been ill for over three years and she knew better than me about how to talk to a psychologist. She was very talkative, witty, and funny. I listened to her story for more than three hours. It was a pleasant and rewarding conversation. That afternoon, I just listened. I listened her story. I got to know her, and I recognized her in every word.

Eva was 39 years old. She was barely six feet tall. She looked a little swollen, probably because of the corticosteroids that have this unwanted side effect. She wore a scarf on her head, knotted in the back, in vivid colors. It gave her a youthful appearance despite the baldness. She had tiny wrinkles at the corners of her big brown eyes. She also had very dark circles under those big brown eyes. She told me that she had married at 20 and had had 3 children. The oldest, Toni, at the time was 19 years old and worked as a waiter in a bar on the coast. The boys, Juan and Miguel, were 9 and 7 years old, and were in soccer training that afternoon. She had separated from her husband four years before, and she fell ill a few months later. Breast cancer with brain metastases. She had undergone surgery several times and had undergone many other chemotherapy sessions. The probability of recovery was very small, and she knew it. She was angry, but she accepted her destiny stoically.

As Eva spoke, there were times when I had to hold back tears, and some other times when I had a lump in my throat that wouldn’t let me breathe. She did not shed a single tear. I guess when you've cried all you could, you have very little to cry about.

I don’t understand why this is happening to me. I have always been a good person. I was a good daughter, very obedient. I was a good woman, I married very much in love, and I always looked after my husband and my children. Even now that I am very sick, I get up every morning, prepare breakfast, and I take them to school. Although, after that, I need to sit on the couch for an hour to recover from the effort. As you can see, I am not running a marathon any time soon! Hehehehe! My husband left me for a younger girl of twenty-something years, just to leave her a few months later and move on to another. I've worked a lot, in a furniture store. I used to sell a lot because I like people, I was very kind to clients, and as soon as I got sick from cancer, they fired me with almost no pension. Now, I almost never make ends meet and my siblings have to help me. I don’t understand why there are bad people in the world, real parasites, and nothing happens to them and I'm going to die. I will not see my children grow up. I won’t see them get married or have children. I won’t be able to be a grandmother, or care for my grandchildren. It's not fair.

My first address, my first patient, and my first lesson: life is not fair.

I returned to her home many times, for a year and a half, once a week. We always sat on her couch, side by side. In summer, she replaced the wool blanket with a cool white sheet, she said that it was because even when it was hot, she felt a bit of cold in her legs. She could talk for long, almost without pauses. She smiled from time to time, and occasionally she lowered her head, in a sad gesture.

She told me about Juan's behavioral problems. He had become a small tyrant at school. About Toni and his girlfriend. They wanted to go live in Madrid. About the sadness that was seizing Miguel, and that it was increasing as she was forced to ask for help more often when she needed to get up, shower or make food. About the conflicts with her siblings. After seeing Eva’s physical deterioration, they had appointed themselves commanders in functions of her own house. We worked together to find solutions to each piece of her particular puzzle of various problem, especially the symptoms that overwhelmed her, such as headaches, constipation because of the morphine, mood swings, and insomnia. Frequently, we spent the time