Taking control of death

Monday, 03 October 2011 13:10

I wanted to share how we dealt, as feminists, with the death of my partner, and what was possible in Switzerland that probably is not in the UK.  It is too close for me to do much analysis, so this is an account, which we could use for discussing feminist/lesbian engagements with death.

 

Some background

 

I met my sweetheart, Corinna Seith, in 1998, and we maintained a relationship across two countries (she was German living and working in Switzerland) for 12 years, and whilst it was difficult, we both maintained our careers and autonomy.  To understand Corinna you need to know that she was a passionate feminist, with an immense investment in bodily and personal integrity – she taught self-defence to women and girls for 10 years – and a German feminist view on autonomy, which was sometimes at odds with her wish that we live together!  She was also an intellectual, much more committed to high theory than me, but since we met a researcher on VAW who wanted her work to make a difference.  She also had a wicked sense of irony and was a lot of fun.

 

We were hugely compatible in a multitude of ways, although capable of deep disagreements, she renewed my love of nature and cycling; she taught me to ski at 47 and enabled me to walk in the Alps, doing tours I could never have imagined.   We had agreed at the end of 2008 that I would spend more time in Switzerland, coming every two weeks, and that when I retired it would be to live with her, since she was 10 years younger than I and was just establishing herself as a significant researcher, having got a full time job as head of a research group.

 

At the end of 2008 she had a terrible headache and went to see a neurologist, who because her sister had been treated (successfully) for brain cancer three years previously referred her for an MRI.  They found ‘abnormalities’ in three places but did not know what they were and decided to monitor her.  A second MRI in April 2009 showed changes and they scheduled a biopsy.  We had a civil partnership quickly before this so that it was clear I was her next of kin, and in terms of inheritance, since German and Swiss law meant everything would go to her siblings without this.  The biopsy was done in May 2009, except it turned into surgery as they discovered a malignant brain tumour.  We agreed a motto then - ‘to live well with this’.  She had radiotherapy all through the summer, and MRIs were OK till February 2010.  Then there was new growth, so two lots of chemo.  In April 2010 she almost died and was in intensive care for 5 days, with paralysis on the left side, and stunned everyone by learning to walk again within a week.  We had to move flats, as hers was not accessible, and I moved to Zurich full-time, working remotely. From September she was using a wheelchair and in November she had a bleed in the brain which meant they had to stop chemo.  She died on Thursday, December 16th.

 

Throughout she refused to be a ‘cancer patient’ and was determined to have as much of her life as was possible.  There are more complicated things to say about having a partner who was committed to autonomy, whilst having an illness that affected her capacities, but in ways she could not/did not recognise, but that is a different story.  For someone so healthy and fit to lose the ability to ski and walk, and then for an academic to not be able to type or concentrate were huge challenges, all of which she managed with extraordinary good grace.

 

At some point I was given a leaflet about an organisation Fahrfrauen – secular, feminist – who are reclaiming women’s role in dealing with death.  I had shown it to Corinna who was interested in principle, but not ready to think about this yet.  At the end of September I suggested we meet with them, because I wanted the funeral, as we called it then, to be what Corinna wanted:  I was aware she was losing functioning and that we could not know how much time there was left.  It was a really moving evening, as she tested whether they could recognise her despite the wheelchair.  She had already decided she wanted to be buried in a cemetery close to where we had moved to, as Anita Augsberg (one of the most famous German suffragists) and her female partner were buried there.  We decided the ceremony would be in the hotel close by – it had been a convent and then a women’s hotel in the 1980s – as it was somewhere we liked, and was stylish (very important for Corinna), and that close family and friends would have a wonderful meal afterwards – instead of the partnership party in the mountains which never happened she wanted us to eat and drink well and celebrate her life.  At one point she was talking about her old battered rucksack that had travelled the globe (every continent) and so many mountains with her, she called it her friend, and one of the Fahrfrauen women said ‘why don’t you take it with you’!  I think this was the point where Corinna both recognised death and that these women were great.  They also told us that she could come home if she died in hospital, and that the last washing and dressing could be done by her close friends.  We were both astonished and she looked at me and said ‘Could you do this?’:  my response ‘I would love to do that’, whilst crying.  What we had to do was say Fahrfrauen were involved, as they have recognition in Switzerland, and call them immediately. Also decided this evening was the theme – feminism and friendship – some of the music, who she wanted to speak and what she wanted to wear.

 

What follows is an account of the last few days, the days after her death and her memorial.

 

The last few days

 

Having begun to explore moving to a hospice Corinna was discharged from hospital at the end of November early (she had terrible pain that the current medication we had did not work on, and I was away for 2 days) and had to come home.  This was fortuitous, as it became clear that the combination of care and me was enough once she had been given morphine for pain relief and I found a quiet, calm place inside me that I was able to fill the flat with.  It suited me to be able to spend a lot of small amounts of time with her, rather than ‘visiting’ for extended lengths of time and it had meant for the two weeks prior to her death family (all of whom had to travel from Germany) and friends could come, sit around our table, eat and talk, until Corinna was awake.

 

We also found an amazing doctor who specialises in palliative care, and enabling people to die at home, which was what she wanted: on his first visit he said she was so deeply asleep that he had no fears about her being at home, it was clear she was relaxed and comfortable. She was finding swallowing difficult and sleeping more and more, so he came on Monday evening to put in a line and taught me how to give the morphine by syringe and told me that she was unconscious.  The next days were very hard, as she lost her swallow reflex and liquid got trapped in her throat, she also made strange noises – some like huge sighs, others a more guttural sound that built up until it sounded like a motor-bike - I asked her if she was riding fast around Lake Como!   All through the last four days the radio was on so there was soft gentle music the whole time. On Wednesday the doctor arranged for a morphine pump, plus tranqs to prevent seizures - everything happened very quickly – tribute to Swiss efficiency.

 

I spent a lot of time on the Wednesday stroking her head and trying to comfort her,  whispering to her, telling her she did not need to stay, how much I loved her and what a wonderful life together we had.  A close friend, Desi, came that evening and we ate together, she found how Corinna was distressing and was not sure we should leave her.  I, having spent many nights when I was not sure she would be alive in the morning, said we should sleep.  Desi woke early and spent time just sitting with Corinna and woke me about 7.00 as she was worried about her breathing, and also because she was due to go to work.  I will never be able to thank her enough for deciding she was going to stay, I remember thinking that morning I had no idea dying could be such hard work.

 

Sabine K (Corinna’s ex) came at 9 and spent some time with Corinna, I decided that we three should eat her favourite breakfast and went to our local shop to buy Italian ham, cheese, tomatoes and gipfeli (german croissant).  We had a poignant breakfast together, during which the carers came and washed her, both of them moved and one crying.

 

Sabine K went to work and Desi and I decided to clean Corinna’s room, so there was no dust (allergies) and it smelt of the floor cleaner she liked.  Desi also wanted there to be candles, golden light, so we filled the candelabra and put a nightlight near the bed.  I then went to try to finish a bit of work, but after only 20 minutes Desi came in and said she thought I should come, Corinna’s breathing was strange.  It was very laboured and shifted between breathing all the time and long pauses.  Sabine had also noticed her skin was changing colour – bluer.  I was on her left side stroking her head whispering in her ear and Desi was on the right side holding her hand.  I kept telling her she did not need to stay, and then I began to say it was time to go to the mountains, to take her backpack, with all our love in it, and to look for the sun.  She breathed this huge breath out and then there was nothing for 20 seconds, Desi and I looked at each other and then there was another breath! I then said ‘you don’t have to fight anymore, it is time to be the black crow in a blue sky’ (the last line from the Joni Mitchell song she wanted at her funeral). There was no other breath.  Now I wonder how could I have encouraged the woman I love to die, but at the time it felt totally right.

 

After about 15 minutes of tears we realised we had to call Sabine and the doctor.  I also sent close friends a text, it began ‘Corinna has gone’. I knew that was too tough so I tried to give them something more, related to what happened, so the next bit was ‘She was peaceful and heading to the mountains with all our love in her backpack.  Her body will stay at home for two days for all those who want to say goodbye’.    The doctor came – he was so respectful – just came in the room and stood by the side of the bed and watched her, after about ten minutes (during most of which I was crying) he went and did the death certificate with Desi.  He then came back in and removed the pump and two needles she had for the medication, so gently, hardly touching her body.

 

When Sabine K returned there were more tears, and after she had said her goodbye we sat at the table together remembering.  I said ‘I found this fantastic photo of you and Corinna in a boat on a lake’.  Sabine could not remember this so I asked if she wanted to see it.  We then spent an hour looking through all the photos I had collected, anticipating her death, sharing memories – it was wonderful.

 

After about three hours Sabine B from Fahrfrauen came and the four of us washed Corinna for the last time, with gentle music playing: if there is any meaning of the word sacred that is not religious, that is was what this was.  We dressed her in a nightgown/dress she had bought in Mexico – very Frida Kahlo, white with wild colourful embroidery and she kept on her wonderful firework socks that a friend had knitted the week before.  I kept having to go back into the room and run my fingers through her hair, cry into her neck and ask her impossible questions.  As a result her head ended up on one side.

 

After the washing I decided we should toast Corinna, so we opened a bottle of Chateaux Neuf Corinna had been saving for something – it was corked!!!!  But we toasted her anyway, and I went and got more wine from the cellar.   Slowly other women arrived – and they spent time saying goodbye and we toasted and reminisced and nibbled at whatever food I could find that required no cooking.  It felt so right that her body stayed at home and we grieved together.  At 9 her sister and brother in law arrived from Germany – more tears and more wine.  Her closest male friend called from Denmark and said that my text had given him this wonderful image and he had walked through the snow imagining it (another friend in Zurich also said this).  My daughter, Ema, arrived from the UK at 12pm.

 

We had to have the window open in Corinna’s room to keep the body cold, the next day when I went in the warmth had left her body, and I was not so magnetically drawn in to physical connection – the process of letting go was organic and slow, not this ‘cut’ when bodies are taken to unfamiliar places by unknown people.  I still spent time with her body, but less often, and with increasing distance.

 

The days after the death

 

I had to go and register the death, which Sabine B did with me.  Zurich is amazing – all the processes are paid for by taxes, there is a basic coffin for all cremations (not everywhere in Switzerland does this).  Literally the only thing you pay for is a pillow, and we had already decided that the pillow and pillow case she had been lying on would go with her!  A lesson in how commodification transforms processes that should be common and collective into displays of status and sources of profit.  I was astonished and hugely appreciative that we registered the death and made all the other arrangements – the cremation and burial - in the same office and it took 45 minutes.

 

At some point various women called to say they would like to come in the evening, as did the last man she had a relationship with some 20 years ago.  The night before our friend Susan who runs the refuges in Zurich told us that there would be a demo for a woman who had been killed by her ex partner – five years after she had been in the refuge. I immediately said ‘I will be there’.  Everyone looked at me and I said I could not think of a better way to remember Corinna, and that if she were still alive she would have wanted me to go for her and me.  So Sabine K and Ema and I went to a  demo in the snow, and just before we began walking Susan, having asked me before, said something about Corinna.  It felt so right the first tribute to her was in a group of women acting against violence.

 

We just got back in time for the first friend to arrive.  Everyone brought flowers – lots of roses, and most also brought wine.  Much wine was drunk that evening – four of us had a mini wake into the early hours with a lot of laughter and reflective conversation.  Having these two days where I got to slowly come to terms with her death, and where friends – she had so many deep and profound friendships – could come and say goodbye and share the grief and remembrance was so important: it was slow, I could spend time with her body whenever I needed to; it was a shared, collective experience, reflecting the way we had lived our life together; it was in our home where everyone felt comfortable and could stay allowing the full range of feelings and reflections to be expressed; no-one had to encounter her body alone.

 

I woke on the Saturday with this fantasy of piling all the furniture in front of the door to stop her body being taken away.  We had decided that the four of us who washed her would also put her in the coffin – this meant that no one she had not given permission to would touch her body, reflecting her position on bodily integrity and her lesbianism.  I went in several times that morning – the coldness was now very obvious and I could only touch her hair a little. I went on to the balcony for a cigarette and noticed a crow in one of the trees behind our building, I called the others and we agreed this was a symbol that it was time for the body to leave.  The Fahrfrauen women suggested we sing – and they had these wonderful women’s songs - two in English and one in German - that we all sang around the body.  The men from the crematorium had come and said it was not possible to  put her in the coffin and get it down the stairs. I would have panicked but our Fahrfrauen women took in their stride and said ‘ok we do it at the crematorium’, leave it to us, we will move her body onto the stretcher.  Ema then had the brilliant (and for me distracting) idea that we should put things in Corinna’s rucksack – a wonderful eclectic mixture of basil, her favourite smell, a coffee capsule for a cappacino, bird food so she could see her nuthatches, the scarf she wore on her head in the mountains, one of her hats, a silk flower from her sister, a rose, a heart, and the crazy wonderful large paper hat her niece made seven years ago when she got her PhD, full of women’s symbols and words about Corinna, and a message from me.

 

All six of us got in car and followed the van to the crematorium – there was wonderful snow and the trees glistened and I clung to her pillow.  We then put her in her coffin, with her pillow, the blanket she had be wrapped in as a baby underneath and her hands holding the rucksack and sang another song.   We put the screws into the coffin, so no-one other than us and her closest friends/family had touched her body after she died.  When we got back to the flat we had to talk about the memorial and all the other things that needed doing – announcements in the newspaper, invitations, her memorial card, making lists of who is invited, what material to carry the urn in etc etc.

 

Ema and I spent the next two days working with Sabine K on all these tasks  – the challenges of doing all these things are big enough, but having to do it in two languages and different cultures was very demanding.  But so many friends helped, by email and text, translating , helping with complicated decisions.  In the end there were two large announcements, one from me, family and friends (with in large letters at the top Feminism and Friendship) and one from her workplace in the two national Swiss newspapers.  We created a memorial card a clean design concept she would like, and an invite to the meal.  All invites were done by email – and had to be done twice as we had somehow forgotten to put the date on!

 

I spent some time Sunday and Monday trying to reconnect with memories of Corinna from before she was so sick.  I realised I had subconsciously decided not to focus on the photos of her when she was well that were in the flat, or even the ones I had been collecting – it had been a way of stopping myself yearning for what had been, which enabled me to be with and love her as she was.  Ema and I walked along the lake on Sunday – something C and I often did.

 

I had second thoughts about going to the Crematorium on Monday for the actual ‘burning’ – it is a technical process only in Switzerland.  But in the end did go, as the finality of her body was an important completion of something.  Just Ema and Sabine B from Fahrfrauen came with me.  We had a few minutes with Corinna’s body, and the devastation of the illness on her was more visible to me than it had been before.  I had thought of cutting a lock of her hair, but realised that it was the physicality of running my fingers through it which had been my pleasure, and that this was over.  Sabine B had been talking about the cremation as a process where the body returns to the elements. Ema had connected to both the science of this and the symbolism and had woken with a  vision of the water from Corinna’s body going up into the sky, becoming snow and falling on the mountains that she loved.  I said ‘that is a wonderful symbol’ to which Ema replied ‘but it is also real, the science of what will happen’. We all found comfort in this way of thinking about this last step for my beloved – she loved snow, and had told the Fahrfraeun women when she first met them that she could smell it in the air before it fell.  The actual process was a bit like being in some futuristic fantasy – but we watched as the coffin went in.  As we came down from the crematorium (it is on a hill) the sun came out and you could see the mountains (they are often covered by cloud)!  Sabine took us up to the hotel where the memorial would be and we had a coffee looking at the mountains.  She then talked about how this day, the 21st was the winter solstice and in the old calendar there are now 13 days in which the light and dark fight until the light wins and daylight is longer, and that in this time the wild goddess is up to her tricks.  The 13 days end on 3rd January, the day of Corinna’s burial.  She said she was amazed that without knowing this, these were the dates that we had chosen.  As someone who has always been a rational materialist I find it fascinating how comforting I found these offers of symbolic/spiritual meaning.  It was if all meaning had been stolen, nothing could make sense of this most wrenching process, but some of the possibilities the Fahrfrauen women offered provided me with ways of thinking that were meaningful.

 

Before we left to come to the UK for Xmas Ema and I followed a suggestion from Fahrfrauen, that we make all the roses that had been brought to the flat into petals, to dry on the silk scarves we had chosen carry the urn to the cemetery in, so that people could drop a few into the grave as they passed it.

 

Whilst in the UK Ema built a website for Corinna, on which we loaded lots of photos and the texts in English and German for the memorial, so that people who could not be there could be ‘with us’ on the day.

 

The memorial

 

It became a memorial rather than a funeral at some point in the process.  It was invitation only – family, friends, feminists and work colleagues.  It was facilitated by FahrFrauen, with one of her brothers, me, a feminist professor who was her PhD supervisor and knew her research since, three friends and the head of the Zurich refuges (also a friend) speaking.  There was live music – sax and oboe – a recording of mass lesbian and gay choirs (including Corinna) singing Bruckner and at the end Joni Mitchell.

 

We then met to walk down to the cemetery, and different people carried the urn.  More people were at the cemetery, and Fahrfrauen and one of her friends spoke about her.  As this was ending a crow cawed really loudly twice, and flew over us – many friends said later it was so like Corinna, having to have the last word!  Everyone walked past the grave, with the Joni Mitchell song playing on repear, some put small things into it, others just the rose petals.

 

Everyone was invited back to the Hotel for an ‘apero’ – prosecco – and then about 60 of us had a wonderful meal, the invitation had been from Corinna herself, as she had wanted this.  I had selected the menu and wine, thinking what she would have chosen, and it was wonderful.  The end of the evening was to do something we had planned for our partnership party which never happened (I told everyone this) to set off night lanterns – our original idea was that everyone should have a wish for us and for themselves, so I asked that they have a last wish/thought for Corinna and one for themselves.  We were on a hill above the lake and university so they floated off across the city.  What was unexpected and wonderful was that the Swiss versions are twice as big as those I have seen in the UK, so two or three people had to hold each one whilst it filled with hot air from the flame – it became a collective experience with friends and family mixing in small groups.  It was magical watching them float away in the cold, snow covered hill.

 

About 20 friends came back to the flat where we continued to drink her favourite wine, sing songs and tell stories.

 

You can read the texts and see photos of the memorial on her website – it is a private site, not linked to any search engines, so you have to type the address in to find it.  www.corinnaseith.net. I am also attaching our draft of her memory card, so you can get a little sense of her.

 

Fahrfrauen

 

Whilst we paid for their work I do not think I could have managed this process, or been able to make it so much what she would have wanted without them.  In German they describe feminist support services (refuges, rape crisis etc) as ‘standing alongside’ women; Fahrfrauen stood alongside me and close friends, guiding us through each step in what would otherwise seemed unbearable, impossible.  But they were far more than this, they offered wisdom, insight, alternative meanings – some from historical practices, some from myth and ‘women’s culture’ and some from their own lesbian-feminism.  I was free to use or not whatever they offered, but it always felt that they had a sense of Corinna, who she was, what mattered to her in what they said.  The calmness and solidity they brought to every interaction enabled me to hold onto myself, at the same time on the occasions where I was overcome I was held by them.  I was disturbed by how numb and empty I had felt, but their reassurance that I was in a protective cocoon, and perhaps I needed to ‘hibernate’ to restore energy stopped me from questioning too much, and allowed me to go with my own process.  My daughter came back to the UK thinking that we need something like them in the UK, and I agree.

 

Liz Kelly

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