DEATH CERTIFICATE | Ramya Sampath
The dying don’t always go gently
And the living slide unnoticed in and out of this agreement
What do these pressures mean
The speed of blood in narrowing walls
We didn’t plan for this:
Breaths without measure—
The moan of air within a parched vase
Brimming unmoistened with liquid rising
One eye refuses to close
Watchful without sight
My attending conducts this symphony of drips
The crossed crescendoes of vitals fading
The death certificate— can you help me
I have never done this
We do not know the time of death
Do we know the moment a river merges with its delta?
The morgue requires a completed certificate before the body can be moved:
A permission slip to a frigid waiting room
A passport to an uncertain land
I reach into my pocket and find a pulse oximeter
I pulled it off a dead man’s ear
Stuffed it between a mask and a candy wrapper to dampen the glow.
Even compassion feels contraband.
Ramya Sampath is a resident physician in Internal Medicine at Yale New Haven Hospital. Her written work focuses on the transformative power of grief for family members and physicians and has been featured in narrative medicine forums, such as JAMA's A Piece of My Mind, Intima, The Perch, and Months to Years as well as in a variety of medical journals.