Drift Away

Suzan had not spoken in three days.

But I knew her voice. I had been visiting her for the better part of a month, and in those early visits she had plenty to say. She told me about her husband, the long happy kind of marriage that people do not talk about enough. She told me about raising her children, about the grandchildren who came after, about the particular joy of watching your kids become parents. She had a warm and uncomplicated faith, the kind that does not need to argue with anyone. She loved God and she loved her small country church and she loved the people in it. There was nothing restless about her belief. It fit her the way a good coat fits, worn in and reliable and exactly right.

Then the cancer finished what it had started and the words stopped coming.

By then she had gone three days without food or water. She would squeeze my hand sometimes, turn her head slightly, make small gestures that told you she was still in there, still listening. But she had not opened her eyes or spoken directly to me in days. The room was dim and warm. Her walls were covered in crayon drawings and school photos and the gloriously unhinged art that only grandchildren make. More love than skill. Every one of them a small act of worship. A whole gallery of people who adored her, watching over the room she could no longer leave.

That afternoon a small bluetooth speaker sat on the bedside table.

Then Dobie Gray came on. Drift Away.

The first thing I noticed was her toes.

Under the white sheet, they began to move. Left, then right. Slow and deliberate, perfectly on the beat. I stopped mid breath and just watched. After three days of stillness, Suzan was moving.

I started singing along, quietly at first, holding her hand, trying to let her feel the vibration of it. Not because I have a particularly good voice. Because it felt like the wrong moment to be shy.

What happened next I will never forget.

She lifted her chin, pointing it upward like she was looking at something above her. And then her face broke open into the widest smile I have ever seen on a dying person. Not a twitch. Not a reflex. A full, radiant, unambiguous smile that took over her whole face.

Then her shoulders started to dance.

Small movements, left and right, but completely intentional, right on the beat. She squeezed my hand as she moved and I sang and the room held both of us in that moment, the crayon drawings on the wall and the afternoon light and a woman on the last edge of her life dancing to a song about being set free.

About halfway through the song she gently stilled. Her grip softened. She was asleep, or something close to it, still holding my hand.

I stayed until my tears cleared enough to drive. Then I said a prayer of thanks for what I had just witnessed and quietly let myself out.

Suzan never woke again. She drifted away peacefully a short time later, her family around her.

I have thought about that afternoon many times since. About what it means that music can reach a person when words cannot. About whatever it is that stays alive in us until the very end, still moving, still feeling, still capable of a smile that big.

About the small country church that shaped her faith. About the grandchildren on the wall who will never know their grandmother danced on her last afternoon. But whose drawings were there in the room when she did.

I do not have a theological explanation for what happened that day. I just know it was sacred.

And I know she knew every word.