Reliving the Anticipation of My Daughter’s Death

“If I could have a sliver of June, I wouldn’t discriminate, even if it was the feeling that she was going to die.”

In the opening scene from the Netflix film The Deepest Breath you hear a woman’s heartbeat as she free dives over three-hundred feet to the bottom of a weighted line. The light blue waters turn dark and eventually blacken. Her heartbeat slows as her organs crumple under the weight of the water. She brushes against death as she dives to the end of the line. If you listen closely, you can hear it in the faintness of her heartbeat.

Lub dub. Lub dub. Lub dub.

The sounds in the first scene are reminiscent of the beginning months of life when a baby is inside her mother’s womb. The free diver exists in the similar underwater ambience of a mother’s resting heart rate. Watching her free dive to her own heartbeat epitomizes how delicate the line is between life and death, as her heart rate slows to a near stop.

The heartbeat is significant for us all. It’s the first sound we hear as developing fetuses. After birth, our own heartbeats follow us even when we cannot hear them. Often, in our daily routines, we forget about our beating hearts. The heartbeat is an indicator that there is still life in the vessel that is the body. It’s the last sound I searched for in June, our eighteen-month-old daughter who passed away from cancer, as I placed my ear to her chest after her last breath.

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In the film, competitive free divers descend a weighted line into the depths of the ocean while holding their breath. They use no equipment besides a specialized wet suit and a diving hood. After diving over three-hundred feet down a line into the ocean, they attempt to resurface, following the line back up to the light. Often, they black out just moments before reaching the surface. They’re so physiologically tapped, they’re unable to reclaim their first breath of air in over three minutes. The air their bodies require to survive the dive. The oxygen deprivation causes their bodies to shut down while a flurry of safety divers grab onto their lifeless bodies to resuscitate them, all while still swimming. In some cases, a wasted moment spent pulling a diver out of the water could mean the end.

If I could sum up June’s treatment in a feeling, I would play the first scene of The Deepest Breath. I’d ask everyone I knew to watch at least the first five minutes. After that, I would understand if it was too unbearable to finish. The first scene is sufficient enough to evoke the horrific and lurking feeling that plagued me throughout June’s cancer treatment. If it’s as distressing for you to watch as it was for me, then you’ve gained a fragment of insight into my life.

It’s the same feeling I’d get when I had to check June’s pulse after walking out of the bathroom and being away from her for only a couple minutes. She’d be completely drained of color, and sleeping so soundly, that I couldn’t distinguish a rise in her chest. Or worse, when the nurse came in and felt it necessary to do the same to June who was asleep in my arms. For the nurse, her own mother holding her wasn’t convincing enough that she wasn’t dead. The nurse needed proof in the pulse.

It’s that recurring feeling, if you’ve never felt it before, of needing to find a heartbeat on your baby who may or may not be dead. Death was a reality we faced every day June was alive after her diagnosis.

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For days, after watching The Deepest Breath, I replayed the scenes in my mind as my life and the film blended. I couldn’t shake it. I tried to talk to my husband about it, but he wanted to forget it. I couldn’t blame him.

Imagine, you were offered a tiny slice of your deceased child’s life back, but you weren’t given the option of what that ‘slice’ would be. Would you still take it? Could you imagine that it might be the feeling of what it was like to watch them die? The brutal anticipation of their very death?

For me, that’s the feeling I get when I watch The Deepest Breath.

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After watching the film for the first time a year ago, I recommended it to many friends. I snuck it into random conversations. Feels cruel now, but I did it to not be so alone. Likely, to loosen the firm grip it had on me. Loneliness crept in after watching the film, as it often did during June’s life, to accompany the fear. For days, I sat alone in the feeling the film gave me. Like grief, the feeling overcame me both voluntarily and involuntarily.

While picking up toys off the living room floor or standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes, my body floated to the feeling of watching June endure treatment which was elicited by watching the free diver dive. The feeling was addictive, so I’d pick up more toys. I’d pluck dirty dishes out of the dishwasher and hand wash them, just to stay, standing in the feeling a bit longer. I almost liked it. It brought me back to when June was alive, despite it being triggering and traumatic.

If I could have a sliver of June, I wouldn’t discriminate, even if it was the feeling that she was going to die.

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A feeling of knowing overcomes me as I watch the free diver valiantly swim and then glide into the depths of the ocean. They, like us, can’t just turn back. It’s too dangerous.

At a certain point during descension, a free diver’s body becomes neutrally buoyant, when the lungs and other airspaces in the body compress. That’s when the diver begins to sink. Free divers call this ‘free falling’. They liken it to flying. It, too, sounds addictive.

I don’t relate to the desire to dive. I can’t hold my breath underwater for more than a short ten seconds. I don’t like swimming. I’m fearful of the water. A doggy paddle is my best stroke. Perhaps, in part, that’s why this film is so terrifying.

The familiar feeling I get about June while I watch the free divers, however, is one I imagine the divers get every time they commit to diving the line. It’s fear, but not just any fear. It’s a familiar fear. More specifically, it is the fear of going to the edge of death and then coming back, just as the free divers do. Just as June did throughout treatment.

“The way I’ve heard it described,” the clinic nurse said to me before June’s first stem cell transplant, “is that they bring them to the edge of death and then slowly pull them back.”

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The free divers’ parents watch from the water or from the television as their child takes the deepest breath. Three-hundred and fifty-seven feet without an oxygen tank, wearing voluntary weights to help pull the diver deeper into the ocean. They dive along a cable because it’s easy to become disoriented. They kick until the darkness disguised as lightness carries them to the bottom of the weighted cable. The Devil disguised as God. To the edge of death and back.

Over and over, these divers choose to do this. Their parents, if asked, would choose they didn’t. Now, I choose to watch them. It is reminiscent of watching June. The terror. The anxiety. The perpetual panic. The heroism found in staring death in the eye, as it beckons their hearts to beat a little slower.

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Throughout treatment, I watched June brought to the edge of death and back. Much like the diver, she changed every time she sank into the abyss, then resurfaced. It was notable upon her return. Her eyes dimmer. Her smile weaker. Physiologically, she was more disabled than before she went.Much like the divers bodies after repetitive trauma to their organs.

Every dive for June was deeper. Every dive more dangerous. The damage irreversible. Like, when June went in for surgery, or another round of chemo. As in the time when she completed tandem stem cell transplants. June did not choose this. We, as June’s parents, chose this for her. We lowered the cable. Treatment was disguised as the cure. We sent June to the edge of death with only hope that she might return.

If the free divers’ parents thought the free dive would save their child’s life, then they might also reluctantly choose it for their child, despite knowing the outcome would forever change them all.

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I wish I could have gone with June during her dives. I would have given anything to have swam next to her the entire way. What did her mind tell her every time she went under anesthesia? Every time a doctor cut into her on a table? Did she go to a space filled with darkness or lightness? Was the edge of death peaceful like the divers described? Was it quiet like the ends of the ocean? A place beyond pain? Where did the pain stop and euphoria begin? Was there ever euphoria for June? I pray there was.

These lines I cannot delineate because I was not beside June during her deepest dive. I was waiting on the surface. I am only June’s mom. I could only watch her take the deepest breath. I couldn’t take it with her or for her, as every parent to a sick child at one time or another wishes they could.

As I watched her, I cheered her on. I waited on the surface with my hands tied, counting the seconds on the clock. Praying she would resurface. The medical responders diving to meet her on her way back also had their hands tied. They, too, could only wait. She’d have to do this alone. For herself. By herself.

Then, hopefully, they’d deliver her to me.

I’d dip my face into the water in anticipation of her return. The water was blurry and the salt stung my eyes. Those were my eyes after the endless tears I cried. Panic set in as the moments slowly ticked by. There was nothing I could do to speed up time or change the outcome. June would have to come home by herself.

I was June’s home.

Before each of June’s dives, before handing her off to a stranger disguised as a nurse, I kissed her goodbye like it was the last time. I held her warm cheeks in my hands and placed the tip of my nose to hers. We locked eyes. I inhaled her sweet breath. I told her how much I loved her. I kissed her one last time. Tears dribbled from my eyes.

Then I’d wait. At the bedside. In the waiting room. Other times, on our living room floor, where I cradled her near lifeless body after another round of chemo, waiting for her to survive her most recent dive.

From the surface, I’d wonder every time, was she coming back or had she gone to the edge and off to the great beyond?

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I’d like to imagine that when you reach the edge of death, you can see and feel life reverberate inside of you. An illumination of life’s culmination of beautiful, broken, joyous, regretful, and utterly sublime moments. An entire lifetime resounds when you reach life’s precipice. I’d like to think it is the most magnificent feeling you’ve ever felt.

Maybe that’s what the divers attained with each dive.

But with repeatedly returning to the edge, it can be too much for the heart to bear.

The near death euphoria ultimately causes the heart to burst.

I’d like to believe the euphoria took June.