Never shall I forget 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon.
Diane had just sat up on an examination table in the neurology department on the fifth floor of KaiserSunset.
A moment earlier, the doctor had looked up briefly from his computer screen. With the casualness of relaying a baseball score, he said, detachedly, “You’ve got it,” confirming her stubbornly unswerving months’ long self-diagnosis of ALS.
If someone had struck my head with a baseball bat, I would not have felt the impact. Since early winter, I had been the scoffer, the last skeptic standing, holding out against the certitude of my nurse practitioner wife.
Just after the doctor’s amazingly casual succinct pronouncement, Diane wore a sui generis look when she gingerly turned toward me.
“I’m sorry, Ari. I’m sorry, Ari.”
I could not respond. Diane knew what I would have said, but nothing came out.
I stood, padded across the pocket-sized room, and held her as closely as I could. The doctor was saying momentarily meaningless words about this degenerative disease that strikes 1 or 2 in 100,000 people.
“I am not angry,” Diane told the doctor in her typically open-faced manner.
“But my heart is broken.”
I don’t recall saying anything intelligible until we reached the parking garage.
I told her I wished it had been me instead. My constitution is uncommonly sturdy.
When we went for walks through the neighborhood or a favorite park, her gait outpaced mine. Now, though, her constant companion is a cane. Soon it will be replaced by a new constant, a walker. They were going to deliver it yesterday afternoon, but we were not home in time.
In the late afternoon freeway traffic, we rode in silence for a few miles.
She texted the children. One son responded immediately, even though it was 2 a.m. in his city.
Rhetorically, he wrapped his arms around his mother. She, who does not cry, wept as she read his tender reply.
How often she has offhandedly remarked, “I am lucky to have (four) such wonderful, loving children.”
Ailing periodically for the past year, tiring easily, sleeping often at non-bedtime hours, I hated to leave her alone at home at the dinner hour to return to my office for Election Night.
“What do you want for dinner?” she inquired as I advanced toward the garage.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I will pull together several dishes when I get home.”
Okay, Diane said.
Less than an hour later, she texted me.
In four uncomplicated words that would have moved a stone to emotion, she explained that she had recreated my favorite meal. In three equally uncomplicated words, I delivered my response.
