Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West.
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

W. H. Auden



Overall, I am not that impressed with this Auden poem, but those first few
lines remind me so much of the way I felt the first time I found someone
dead. I was 18 and had completed an on-the-job training position with
the hospital for the position of Certified Medication Technician. I gave all
the routine meds and all the PRN (as needed meds). All IM's, subcutaneous, by
mouths (po's), and suppositories. I was also involved in all codes on my floor.

Mr. Johnson was my first code. I was going in to give him a PRN shot for pain
and could tell from the door that he was dead. He was upright in bed and had vomitted.
I wasn't far from the nurse's station so I yelled Code 5 and within seconds (literally), the room was filling with people. The charge nurse, the nursing supervisor, doctors from all fields,
respiratory therapy, and I. I was popping vials of lidocaine and whatever else
the doctors were telling me they needed. They actually revived Mr. J and took him to surgery,
but they lost him 45 minutes later on the table when his lung ruptured. I just
remember thinking how I felt after I came out of his room and he had been taken
downstairs to surgery. I kept thinking how odd it was that nothing stopped for death--nothing.

A woman who was there visiting someone fainted and we had to get out the ammonium
carbonate (I think!), the phone was ringing off the hook, people were being wheeled up from surgery, PRNs were hanging on my door, televisions and radios were on, people were laughing.
It all seemed so odd. I was barely 18, still had braces on my teeth and hair down to my waist,
and had only ever seen a dead person in a casket. I just felt that Mr. J deserved things to stop
and take notice of his leaving this life.

I wonder how my dad felt that last night of his life. We had all gone home because he was
supposed to be coming home the next day, but an hour and a half after we left, they coded
him. They told us he was talking when they got to him, but I didn't think to ask what
he said to them. I couldn't think. I couldn't believe my father was gone. That just couldn't
be my dad with his intubation tube still down his throat, eyes wide open but not full
of life and color. I just kept saying to him over and over

Breathe, Daddy, breathe! Please, Daddy, breathe! You can't be gone, you can't be gone,
you can't be gone! Oh no, Daddy, no! And all around us, in every room, in every hallway, in all the world, life just kept going on.