Bandaged

Restless sleep drifted through the screen-less window. I arose to engage in tasks not fitting for the weary-eyed. Sanguineous drainage from my fourth digit confirms the aforementioned. Bandage in place, eyes closed, another attempt at rest. Out-of-focus faces from the recent come to visit while sleep cowers in the corner. Mouths move empty of sound, attempting to lip-sync with the living.

Without warning the lens is brought into a distant focus. He is close, his eyes wide with horror, eyes that I have yet to make peace with. I fail to apprehend my emotion; I partake in the communion of a salt-laced dew withdrawn from bloodshot eyes. 30 gallons of tears a year we produce. I wonder what gallon I’m on. It occurs to me, I have not written since that day with him. A simple behavioral pattern I so easily overlook, a coping mechanism of sorts.

Compartmentalizing is effective only so long as the doors gets properly closed, the windows tightly latched. But memories are like mice, able to flatten to gain entrance. Perhaps there is something I missed, more to be learned from his last moments. This language barrier is strongly fortified. The tongue of bilocation is not easily deciphered. I once dreamed I learned their language by walking through long-forgotten graveyards studying the headstones, Rosetta Stones of the dead.

Opportunities of connection present themselves often, but each one for a brief moment only. Some recognize their swan song more than others. Last week, I helped a woman load potting soil into her cart. She spoke of her love for plants, how she inherited that from her mother now passed. I heard the most insignificant hesitation, a hairline fracture slightly beneath the surface. When I asked what her mother’s name was, she paused with a look of confusion at the question. She answered and continued with her story. I then asked what kind of garden her mother had, what flowers were her favorite. She told me a story of a weekend spent together long ago. The two of them labored in the mid-west humidity to unearth a lush garden that her mother had said was hiding “just under the crabgrass”. They battled the earth for three days and with a tear in her eye, she boasted victoriously, “The lilies and the lilac bushes flourish to this day.” I exited that store richer than I had entered.

Lilies are my Love’s favorite flower. The texture of the leaves, the colors exploding toward the periphery, the pollen-stained fingertips after removing the anther, the smell…

“Yes, I remember the smell.” His face will not recede, now demanding my attention. The smell in his room was distinct, never before had I witnessed that odor… and not since. Many memories attach themselves to smells, this one alerts me of its absence. I feel it is time to set this weight down.

Have you ever seen someone die while having a pulmonary embolism? Neither had I. Picture a body in an emaciated state, ravaged from cancer, ingested poison that presented itself as a cure, then remission, then cancer again, then more poison. Unresponsive now for several days, wife and mother at the bedside continuously. His breathing changed, as is the process, but something about this seemed different. I hurried to get medication and returned to the same odd, labored breathing. As I noticed a paler color, terror made a house call. His hundred-pound body morphed into a marionette. With shoulders and hips seemingly attached to the bed, his midsection was violently pulled upward as an unearthly gasp escaped a clenched jaw. I pushed the meds as fast as I could, hoping to give even the slightest relief in those last seconds. 

and then he was gone
Mother and wife quietly sobbing, his thirty-some years quickly growing cold. 

These are the moments when your weight has shifted forward but your foot has not yet advanced, the roller coaster at the crest before the plummet into darkness. A mother bearing witness to every mothers fear; a wife who patiently waited to marry until his remission was confirmed, as he had wished. I remember thinking if there is not a God, I don’t want this anymore.

and then it happened…

The faint sounds of his six-week-old child, making those sounds that only a six-week-old child can, drifted from the hallway, flattened itself beneath the door, struck a deal with Charon¹, and entered the room trading violence for a soft-spoken emptiness. This same emptiness claims ownership of that room to this day. I know, I just did rounds 5 minutes ago. The patients come and the patients go. Entrance is simple and you can leave as you wish. You will, however, take the room forever with you. And the smell…

As I lay, trying to sort things unsortable, I feel the touch of tiny fingers. I slip my hand into hers, the last of the tiny fingers that I will hold. The things she will see, dreams she will pursue, most will unfold beyond the reach of my mortality. Someday she will stand above me looking down. Who will she see? Communion is served again. The feeling of dès vu² descends as I gather as many details that frail arms allow.

Who is it you have lost? Whose face is it that hovers just beyond your periphery? Please say their name out loud for me. Tell me one of their stories and I will tell you one of mine. Their image, that memory that brings laughter and tears simultaneously, let it dance in the breeze around you for a moment, just long enough to allow the beauty of the past to stretch its legs. And when the suffocating despair that visits much too often stops by to say hello, please remember that somewhere in the mid-west, there is a garden of lilies and lilacs that flourish to this day. 

1. Charon, in Greek mythology, whose duty it was to ferry over the river Styx and Acheron the souls of the deceased.

2. dès vu: the awareness that this moment will become a memory. From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, John Koenig