We were on the way home from seeing a terrific film at our favorite theatre Saturday evening when we came upon a young couple trying to cross the street with their serious dog.
I promptly stopped.
In their 20s, the couple practically sprinted to the far side.
Diane espied them with understandable envy.
My wife uses a cane now, and that probably is just the beginning, given her illness.
“I wish I could still walk that way,” she said.
Words re-parrotted on a flat surface fail, miserably, to convey her depth of anxiety, her width of regret, the constantly leaking, stalking tragedy of steadily losing command of your limbs.
Every moment, whether together or apart, the fright of the feared shortness of time we have left feels like a bully gripping his gnarly fingers around my neck.
How much worse it is for her.
She sleeps at odd hours, when others are awake in the same room.
Yesterday afternoon I wanted to visit a market six miles away. I asked her to ride along for company – me, for her presence, her, just to get out of the house.
She declined. Too fatigued. Soon, she dozed off.
A non-baseball fan, earlier she had announced she was going upstairs to watch the other television while I followed the Dodgers. When I demurred, strongly, she shot back “that’s not fair.” Yes, it was. It is unrealistic, but I don’t want to leave her side. With the inevitable clock ticking in the background, who cares if the Afghan war, baseball or cartoons are on the television screen?
This morning on the way to work, she felt weak and stopped for a milkshake.
By afternoon she called to say she was scotching her plans to go to the gym and was leaving early for home. She felt nauseous. She would hurry so she could lie down for hours before I arrive from tonight’s City Council meeting.
Prayers and wishes for miracles buttress our daily routines, as if they were mountains of sandbags warding off an inevitable (?) disaster.
Too often, though, reality hammers on our front door. As if either of us could forget.
The intruder warns you that not a moment may be assumed when a catastrophic illness has, uninvited, rented a room in the home that encases your marriage.
