I never thought

 Washing my Master's body.

I never thought that I would be the one.  

I never thought that I'd be there. 

I never thought I'd want to. 

I never thought I'd be able to.  

I certainly never thought it would be an unspeakable combination of sacred and horror.

My Master died at 7:00 am on Friday morning.  We had him home on hospice, where he wanted to be, before he became incoherent.  Death is a horrifying thing up close, probably no matter how it happens.  I had been sleeping next to him in the living room, he had one of those hospital beds there.  His breath was getting more and more labored.  With a rattle sound the hospice nurses had warned us about.   I have seen enough animals in the process of dying that when he started the gasp death reflex I called the hospice nurse.  I got Matt, who was also on call the night we brought Master home and called him in a panic because we were having trouble with medications.  He came to our house at 9 pm and spent almost 2 hours with us, figuring out the right dosages.  He wrote out a schedule and I stuck to it day and night, taking night shifts with other family members, but still barely sleeping. I could only really sleep in the recliner chair right next to his bed. When I tried to go upstairs to sleep during someone else's shift I mostly just lay awake.

It was again Matt on the phone when I called that Friday morning and I remember my exact words: 

"He is doing that gasping thing that animals do when they are dying". 

His reassuring, confident voice said, unsurprised by my weird comparison, "It's time to wake everyone up so they can say goodbye". Which I did.

Another hospice nurse and some other people came out to the house to establish the official time of death, but it was 20 minutes later than my Master's real, true time of death. She was the one that suggested we might want to wash him, but she was ok doing it if we didn't want to. My Master's mother and I did this sacred duty. To wash him. Before he was taken away.

I never thought it would be me.

His mother, I'm sure, never thought it would have to be her.