This was written over the summer semester for my Ficition 1 Class I hope you enjoy.
West Eighty-First Street was unoccupied on the twenty-first of December as the temperature in Cleveland dropped to ten-below overnight. It had not been this cold the entire year. Somewhere, in the heart of the night, the snow originated in heaven to descend from somber skies. It had no means of falling, but fall it did. Since November you desired so badly to see snow but it had simply not fallen. Why did heaven’s gate wait to give you what you so desperately wanted? Already there was two feet of it on the ground and it was only 7:20:30 a.m. When did the snow begin its mystical descent to create this winter livery? Frozen, muddied snow lay dumped in indiscriminate and tedious heaps. Curbsides in downtown, swamped in filthy sludge, made squelching protests as their slushy contents were distributed anew by the few brave commuters who wandered the streets bundled up like overdone Eskimos on their way to Arctic. A few trees and shrubs attempt to delay the inevitable, gluing snow to their boughs in the further recesses as downtown. Workers trudged off to their cubicle in the office. Were you still here when the snow started swirling among the brittle ebony branches of the old Oak tree on the tree lawn? Or perhaps you were already departed, the weight of survival too great to bear to endure on, our turn-of-the-century home acting as the portal for that journey none of us had prepared for but you knew was somehow coming? Did you really know it was coming, like a deft- handed monster under a child’s bed waiting to attack? How did we even grow to this aspect in our lives where we depended on those vows of ten years ago? The parquet inlay in the teak rosewood floor with its Art Deco design embraced the metal feet of the hospital bed that somehow you took to so straightforwardly; could you no longer hide from me how very ill you were all those months that lead up to this? I kept you home as you wanted and away from the hospital room. I was caring for you in our refuge from the world. The one place the outside world did not exist. Protecting you in a neighborhood that was crumbling around us, no longer the quiet Polish neighborhood we moved into but now a street filled with violence, crack, dealers and thugs. The neighborhood was losing its battle as well.
Your delicate, fragile ninety-three pound, five-foot-two frame, engulfed in the swaddling clothes of the chenille bedspread, fell and rose slightly with every breath you took, me anxiously expecting the next one to follow. Your hair had greyed considerably in those last three months, and your facial features as hollow, sullen and sunken in as they were, even with that adorable beard that earned you your very first nickname “Fuzzy” made you look similar to those who had survived months in Auschwitz. Those twinkling eyes that once dazzled me beyond mere words were now deep, soulful, calm, and somber. Gazing empty, void of any life, any sparkle how it hurt to see you slip so helplessly away from me. The color once was a piercing enchanting brown but had become burnt steel and I felt myself drowning in them, suffocating, for even I knew what was coming. I never admitted that I wanted the end to come, the suffering to end for your battle to end against the disease that took you from me, from my arms, from our home.
The sunlight of the dawn of that December day flooded the dining room from the leaded-glass window with a warmth, an almost visitation of the sacredness of divine love. Love beyond words, love beyond bounds, beyond the mortal. Have I ever known this love before? Did I realize then how much I loved you? How will I ever learn to live without it? You seemed so brave and courageous in the beginning, Oh it will be alright I promise you said, just a few days and I swear things will be back to normal I. Did you know in the essence of your being then that statement would never be true? The padded antique chair engulfed in the rampant despair of the parquet floor which also held your bed to its earthly confines was at your bedside as you slumbered. I read to you before your eyes closed Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone because you never found time to read it on your own. I sat the entire time, guarding your sleep from what I could feel in the air that day. It was this abundance of all creation and I not wanting to miss a moment of it, of you, of us.
Your Kaposi Sarcoma Lesions that swallowed the inside of your legs that needed to be cleaned, the blood soaked dressings needing to be changed became your own personal Shroud of Turin. I, your loving Mary Magdalene and blessed Mother all rolled into the devoted lover. You should know I fell asleep in that chair holding your bone thin hand that first night, and every night that followed all but one. How could I have fallen asleep after ten straight nights at your side? Did you need me away from your side for you to slip away like sunset before the moon rises, fills the sky, sending a moonlight radiance that only it can provide? Did you want to spare my watching the life slip away from your eyes completely? That precious breath never to come again and leave you. Were you aware of how violently ill you were the night before you died? How I held you in my arms, sitting behind you, supporting you as you threw up an entire wash basin of blood for over an hour. Then you were passing out never to recover. The battle was at its peak, and my darling, we were losing.
Did you know of your incredible beauty, your endless skill, your undeniable knowledge, your uncanny wisdom, your immense strength that drew me to you like a mouth to the flame? It is what kept me at your side and does even now. But when did you start to withdraw from the life we knew, the life we shared and created for each other? When did my full-time job become making you comfortable at any cost, trying to control the unbearable unending pain and letting the silence of peace and light flood our house on West Eighty-First Street in a tsunami that engulfed us so you could simply sleep tranquilly. Was the television even on those eleven days? The destruction of mankind could have happened and we would have never known about it.
It was all about you, the way it was supposed to be, the way I wanted it to be. Would we have even cared if the whole world was ending?
I knew my personal world was and I had a front row seat to it. Friends of ours said they could smell fresh cut roses in the house but there never were flowers in the house those eleven days. A few commented that they could hear the beating of angles wings. Did you hear them? Did you see the angels so many heard? Did you smell the roses? Did you see the balls of light at your bed the entire week? Is that why it was so peaceful? What I did for you was what I had promised to you on that scorching July day when we exchanged our vows and you broke the champagne glass in the handkerchief. But why did I let you sleep so long, so quietly? Was it the only thing I could have done? Was that all that was expected of me? If I could only turn that clock back to those days in 2002 and have the conversations we should have had about what we both saw, what we both shared, what we both knew but could never talk about. If we could have put words to what we were both going through maybe I wouldn’t feel like I never had the chance to fully accept what happened.
It seemed to happen so suddenly. It was over all too fast. You were buried before I had time to fully accept what had happened, fully comprehend you were gone forever.
To sit in that chair just one additional day and embrace your bone thin hand again before the heavens parted, the otherworldly cherubs descended and surrounded the bed in spheres of delicate angelic rays accepting, embracing, loving and engulfing you while I alone slept. I slept those last few precious seconds away and for the longest time I could not forgive myself that one very fatal sin. But was it a sin, or did you need me away from your side long enough to slip away? I regret only sleeping. I love you still. Even now I can feel your presence. Please don’t ever leave me. Just come, visit me. Hold my hand, when it is my time let me be with you.
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