A single steel paper clip was all that separated life from death.  It’s probably steel, she thought, or aluminum, or tin… or some combination of the three.  Maybe some copper.  The woman wasn’t sure why she was pondering what a paper clip was made of, only that it temporarily took her mind off the more immediate decision that lay right before her. 

She sat in a small hospital room, surrounded by an impatient lawyer, a stoic doctor and a sympathetic nurse.  In front of them, perforated with tubes and hoses and surrounded by a battery of expensive machines, lay the withered, nearly lifeless body of her eighty-seven year-old mother.

The paperclip served but one function.  It held together a small sheath of legal documents that needed to be signed.  Documents that would satisfy the lawyers and allow the medical staff to turn off the machines.  Documents that would allow the woman’s mother to finally slip naturally into the death that was unnaturally being denied her.  Phrases like “do not resuscitate” and “permission to terminate extraordinary measures” stared back at her from the sheets of paper, but only the woman could sign them; without her they were meaningless.

She looked at the paperclip.  She wished to God that it would somehow disappear and that a mighty gust of wind would come and blow the papers away – out the window – away from this place of death and sadness and out into the world of breezes and flowers and seasons where her mother had spent a lifetime. 

Far too often, she thought, people suffer deaths that are sudden, tragic, unexpected or unnecessary.  Lives end abruptly in fits of screaming adrenalin amidst the chaos of crashing and breaking, searing heat and the ripping of steel. Souls far too young are taken before their prime, and bewildered loved ones are left behind to assess the gaping hole in their lives and to ponder the eternal questions of fate, fairness and a loving God.

But that wasn’t the case here.  There was no tragic suddenness.  The woman’s mother had led a long and fulfilling life, only beginning to falter in the last few years.  But a stroke had slowed her to a point where the life force just drained from her, drop by drop, leaving her senseless and remote – unable to move, unable to swallow, unable to smile or even ask for help.

And then this morning, the call had finally come.  The woman’s mother had passed a medical point of no return.  There would be no more breezes or flowers, no more seasons.  The only thing that now kept the old woman alive was the rhythmic battery of machines that bathed her blood, drained her fluids and aerated her lungs.

The vital life force was gone.

It would never return.

The woman looked at her mother and remembered a young woman in a plaid dress – a young woman as beautiful as a movie star.  She remembered planting tulips and learning to sew.  She remembered her own wedding and moving away from home.  She remembered bringing home her first child.  And her second.  And her third.

Slowly, the woman removed the single steel paper clip, and, taking a deep breath, began to sign the papers one by one.  She took her time.  There was no hurry.  Completing the task, she handed the papers to the lawyer who thanked her and briskly left the room.  The doctor and nurse nodded to each other and began slowly removing tubes and turning off switches.  Monitors went blank, the room became silent.  The doctor and nurse quietly left the room.

Her mother’s skin, as soft as a baby’s, had already begun to grow cold.  The woman looked away towards silent machines and the empty walls.  She was looking for reassurance but they offered none.   Their job was done.

A life lived long and well was ended, not in screeching tires and busting glass, but by the simple flipping of a couple of switches.  Clutching a single steel paper clip, the woman placed her forehead softly on her mother’s motionless chest and wept.