How to Die

By: Sarah O’Connor

When you have your big toe amputated, it makes your foot look larger, which is unexpected. Most people believe that removing a toe is simply like trimming back a hedge with a snip, snip, which Kane thought as well, but it is much more complicated. First, a doctor slices the skin open along the side to peel it back like a banana. No, it’s not like that at all. They start from below the toenail cuticle and splice down over the knuckle hair to its base joint and pull the skin apart like a kid peeking behind a curtain. Here’s where it gets brutal.

A foot doctor takes a surgical laser and sears the skin all the way around the full circumference of the toe. The smell is not so bad. The skin is then yanked upward to expose the toe bone and its connection to the foot. With surgical cutters that look like something from a garden shed, it is clipped off like a thick branch, or so it sounds by the loud snap. So, there is, in fact, a snip, but only one, if the blades are not dull.

Toe is now on the bed alone, we assume waiting to be scooped into a biohazard bag for disposal. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Though Toe has been freed, the rooted joint remnants must be removed. The doctor takes a tiny crowbar like tool and starts wedging it into the exposed joint, prying bits of cartilage loose. It’s quite unnerving, and the foot no longer looks like a foot, but rather an open jug.

Large pedicure clippers now tug and clip away the loosened chunks as if pulling wisdom teeth. When finished digging, pulling, and clipping, the doctor finally squeezes together as much skin as possible, pinching it tightly together like just before a circumcision, and crudely stitches the hole closed. Vanity is only for faces and sexy parts, not for this particular foot.

Days later, Kane was ready for the unveiling of his loss. The Christ-like garb of gauze slowly unwound. When a sole tree in someone’s yard is cut down it takes a while for the owner to adjust to the flatness and to appreciate the open sky that meets the lawn, but this, the empty space before a set of following toes was jolting. How big did his toe used to be! It must have been a monster! His foot was now bizarre, and he couldn’t look away, so he stared.

For fun, while lying in bed, he aligned his foot with the cross on the wall so it would seem as though he had a crucifix for a big toe and texted pictures of it to his oldest daughter.

Keegan responded, “We should invent one of those as a prosthetic! There’s bound to be plenty of toeless Christians that would jump at such a choice.”

“Jumping no, but hop, maybe.”

“LMFAO!”

“Don’t pitch this idea to your mother; she will get on me.”

"Dad, you’re dying; what can she do?”

“Pray! She will pray over me.” This was no joke.

“Just words, Dad.”

“It’s embarrassing! She’s dramatic, makes things up as she goes, and the nurses make faces.” This was also true.

The process of learning to walk without a big toe makes you regret taking toes for granted. Kane always appreciated his incorrect, cool, bad-boy biblical name; it made him feel tough and better than a dead Abel. Yet, he couldn’t help thinking of the irony of now being a Kane using a cane to walk. He finally broke and asked for a walker because he could also no longer stand the wisecracking nurses. He didn’t mind their sponge baths, but to tease while escorting him to the toilet was humiliating.

Toe was collateral damage so Kane could bank a few more weeks of life, hopefully months. His body rejected the chemo treatments and gave him gangrene. He complained about how much worse he was now after starting and wished he had declined to better enjoy his days instead of struggling with a hobble. He had made a horrible mistake and he let everyone in the hospice know.

“I’m leaving this place without all my parts!”

This was on his mind because of the Bible passage his ex-wife left on the bedside table. 

Romans: Give your whole body to God.

Normally, a little biblical gaming with his ex was amusing, but that was before he was toeless and full of cancer.

There was much sleep to be had for him over the next few days. He would wake disoriented in the dark, sometimes in the sunlight that infiltrated between the blinds, or in the blue light of the television. None of the other hospice patients had a TV, and he was proud of this, even if he wasn’t allowed to keep the volume… oh, let’s say, audible. He was dying along with everyone else and didn’t understand having a noise curfew.

Dying is not as easy as in the movies; body parts hurt, things you don’t even know exist hurt, and even parts that no longer exist have pain. Phantom pain is like having an unwelcome superpower. There are smells you can’t describe, yet all who try, state a combination of overcooked broccoli, rotten eggs, and chemicals too hard to spell. No one knows how to describe the smell of death accurately or politely, as it’s simply disgusting. The sterile overlay of alcohol swabs and disinfectant is nauseating, and eventually it’s no longer acknowledged because denial smells better.

When in deep sleep, Kane travelled. He often visited his daughters, and though he couldn’t see what they were up to, he could sense their moods. He knew when they were troubled or happy. He was calm in this place and didn’t need anyone to tell him about their lives; he knew they were okay. It didn’t matter if his girls called him or whether they even wanted to. He had stopped chasing and mastered being alone, meditative.

During the day, he was always at risk of slipping into what he called an “episode” or the dark villain from within—the other part of him that he knew everyone despised. The shadows that crept out and hurt others did not deserve forgiveness, and sleep protected him from their hate and them from his. He had nine friends on Facebook, one was his apartment manager, and the others reluctant family members.

“Keegs, I want to leave a mark when I die.” He could feel the weight of this burdened statement through the silence on the other end of his phone.

“What does that look like to you, Dad?”

“A headstone.”

“You no longer want to be cremated?”

“No, I googled headstones, and they aren’t expensive; this one is three hundred dollars.”

“Is this on Amazon?”

“Yes, it’s used and reduced.” His laugh hurt like a swallowed shard of glass, but it also felt soothing.

“Does it include a hammer and chisel, or do we have to order that separately?”

“Good question.” He went back to sleep for a couple more days, and the conversation was forgotten. No headstone ordered, no words of wisdom, therefore no engraving prices to calculate.

His eyes reopened to a gray wheelchair, he preferred blue, and though he was skeletal he also preferred the obese double-wide ones. They were the Cadillacs of motorless wheelchairs. Insurance did not approve him for an electric one. No one wants a man waiting for death racing through the halls at forty miles an hour, forty miles an hour, can you believe they can go that fast? Imagine if you shit yourself at that speed with your backless gown! If he had to do it all again, life that is, he would open a hospice with a racetrack. Let the dying zoom and if they crashed, killing themselves or others, then it would be a win-win. He was positive he could get venture funds. He would require patients to make the facility a benefactor to cover accidental damages and death. Accidental. Cancer is accidental, no one plans to have cancer. No one prays to have cancer.

What a privilege to die quick, not like the yearlong escapade of his journey. Though some people just kill themselves. He admired their courage, but instead he moped, wondering if there truly was more. Imagine dying slowly. Imagine dying suddenly. Imagine choices.

His choice, flushing life down the toilet, speeding through the sewer system and back to the oceans of life. All the junk and chunks filtered through until all that’s left is the lifeblood of pure drinking water to quench the living.

Kane woke to the smell of himself. Cleanup on bed six. It was almost time for him to go; his breath present but gapped, as if he could hold it longer than an Olympic swimmer. It didn’t hurt, but the liquid in his lungs rattled. He was returning to the womb of fluid and confinement, flushed out and now flushed into…

Light… brighter than what’s possible to experience with the human eye. Unseen light. Kane perused the cosmos and noticed a gate.

IS THAT THE DAMN GATE, FOR REAL?

You can’t go in there.

WHY NOT?

You’re not whole.

BUT I AM.

No, you are missing something.

MISSING WHAT?

Toe.

BUT I HAVE NINE!

No, not a toe, Toe.

WELL, HOW DO I FIND TOE?

You can't, Toe finds you.

WILL I KNOW TOE?

Yes.

Now do you know how to die?