"Well, I really don't want to die," you said as we walked along the sunny wooded path yesterday.
"I don't think you're going to," I said. "You're strong. You have energy. You don't at all seem like someone who is going to die."
"Really?" you said, hopefully.
And then, a little later, you said, "But it looks like I am going to die in this place."
"I will do everything I can to make sure that doesn't happen," I said, something I have thought about, that perhaps when it seems very clear that the end is imminent you come home.
And, still on the walk, you said, "I want you to think that your visits to me are more fun than they are."
"They ARE fun," I laughed. "I love being with you."
Although it's a beautiful day and the woods are beautiful, it's also a bit too hot in places, the bugs are after me, and a headache threatens. I take us back to the room.
As promised, due to some new governmental regulations, they have taken away your refrigerator, but luckily you haven't noticed and I line up the new set of bottled coffees and mini-cans of Diet Coke on top of the bureau.
I lie down on your bed for a quick nap. When I wake up you urge me to stay longer. "It's nice having you here," you say, and I know it is, and I do stay, just a little longer.
As I walk out the front door of the place, Lois and Carl are sitting outside under the awning, he in his wheelchair. Lois has been coming every day since Fred and I have been here, almost three years. Carl cannot speak, but he brightens up with an interior "hello!" when he sees you. His face is smooth and cheerful, like a kid's. "When are you coming back?" asks Lois.
"I don't think I can come for a few days," I say regretfully.
"Fred's so much better when you've been here," she says. I pause. I look into her eyes. I have been coming more during the last few weeks because I have sensed it helps and resentment has been kindly absent. Still, I look for confirmation in her eyes. She looks back at me. I notice she pencils in her brows.
"I know," she says. "It's hard." She looks away. "It's hard for everybody,"
I love how we get to see this relationship soften in present time. "Resentment has been kindly absent." How the author seems happier to be there. Yet, she steers them back to the room when she has a headache which she doesn't divulge to Fred. I love the intimate exchange with Lois, "it's hard for everyone."
ReplyDeleteI notice she pencils her brows. I love the narrator's tiny aberration into not-the-caretaker but another woman. So delicately wrestling between love and duty. And how it's never smooth. Like the bugs in the wooded path, the beauty and the discomfort overlap...
ReplyDeleteA grateful and beautifully detailed day of peace and respite...assurances of what may come at the end...once again loving companions. And with all that the difficult truth...it's hard for everyone.
ReplyDeleteSo sad, to read the narrator's experience watching someone she loves slip away.
ReplyDelete