The patient who wanted to hear the rain

Details changed, as always, for someone who can't speak for himself anymore.

A few weeks ago I cared for a retired fisherman in his last days. He wasn't talking much by then. Mostly he slept, and when he woke he'd look toward the window. His daughter told me he'd spent his whole life listening to weather, reading it from the deck, and now the room was sealed and quiet and climate controlled.

So we opened the window. Just a crack. It was raining, the soft kind that barely makes a sound, and the sound filled the room anyway. His breathing changed. His hand, which had been clenched on the blanket for two days, opened.

I've been a hospice nurse for nine years and a Zen student for longer, and I still catch myself wanting to fix things. Adjust the pillow, check the line, find one more task. That afternoon there was nothing to fix. There was only rain, an old man, his daughter and me, sitting together while the weather did what it had always done.

He died that night, with the window still open.

Dogen says to study the self is to forget the self. I think I understood it a little better in that room than in years on the cushion. Nobody needed me to be anything. I just needed to be there, and to let the rain in.