I REACH OUT to hold my husband’s hand during a concert, a private gesture in a public space. Sometimes I just lean into him, enjoying the feeling of our shoulders touching. I push gently in and he pushes lightly back. We listen to the music through each other’s bodies, an ethereal way to make love.
We talk about who will die first. It is a difficult conversation because, even at our ages, being in love has made us push death into the background. We pretend that we will live forever. The final stretch of life that lies before us is a gift that we know will expire. John suggests that I engrave the words “carpe diem” on my wedding band. I inscribe the same words on a paperweight I give him for his birthday.
Sometimes I wish to die first so I will not have to lose him, but it is more likely that he will die first because he is almost nine years older than me. Whatever happens, I will have had the unexpected experience of our love-filled marriage. I will have known what love is at the closing chapters of my life. I will always remember John’s presence, as I still feel my brother’s. I don’t want to probe the inevitability of death further. Not now. We both overslept this morning.
JOHN’S HEALTH began to decline soon after we returned from a ten-day vigil at my dying brother’s bedside in Tucson, Arizona. When we got home, John was diagnosed with pneumonia. His body was severely weakened and he had difficulty sleeping. He could not travel to Edgar’s memorial service with me because I had to leave early and return late from Springfield, which was less than two hours away. I was grateful to good friends who drove him there just in time for the service and brought him back right after, holding onto his arm to keep his body steady. We had planned that he would come to Oxford University with me for a symposium on women and children’s health in which I would participate. He had to cancel. It took him several months to recover. Now that I look back, I see that he never completely recovered.
It was the beginning of a life that moved in cycles, good months alternating with bad months. Over time it turned into good weeks, then days, and then hours. He became unsteady on his feet. He had trouble getting a good night’s sleep. The most mysterious and intractable symptom was a black depression that periodically overwhelmed him. When the depression lifted, he was exuberant. We could do anything. Upon my return from Oxford, he proposed that we make the move to Wake Robin. He had found the perfect cottage, the best one by far. If moving to Wake Robin would make him happy, I readily agreed. Then, a month later, just before our new chairs arrived, he became anxious. Was this the right move? How could we furnish our new place; what would we take from our condo? As his anxiety increased day by day, I took more responsibility for the move, trying to assure him that everything would go smoothly, even though I myself had doubts.
By the beginning of March his mood had lifted, and he proposed that we travel around the world on the Queen Mary II. I looked at the itinerary and started to imagine us in all the places I had always wanted to see: Hong Kong, New Zealand, Australia, and the Cape of Good Hope. How exciting! Three weeks ago he hadn’t wanted to go to the store to buy milk and orange juice. Now he buys three of each. I tell him that we can’t fit them in the refrigerator, but he just smiles and I smile back. So what if the refrigerator is too full and the milk turns sour? He is out of his depression. We share kisses, morning, noon, and night, punctuating them with the words, I love you, to assure one another, to reassure ourselves. We are near delirious with refound happiness. The sky is bluer, and the grass, greener.
Then he began to approach ninety. He said, “I ignore birthdays. I don’t want a party, please don’t do anything,” so we had a nice dinner, just the two of us. I had written a poem to mark the day, and he accepted it as “the best present,” holding his magnifying glass steady over each word while I waited for his smile.
But he could not put a stop to birthdays. Neither could he climb fully out of his depression. He could no longer make decisions about our move to Wake Robin: what colors to paint the walls, how to pick out carpeting, and how to connect our phones. We couldn’t get cell phone connection. Our computers didn’t work. Every glitch became a monster. My stepdaughter spent days trying to get everything to work.
Totally frustrated, John could not sleep past one or two in the morning. He lifted himself from the bed slowly, as if there were too many thick blankets bearing down on him. The weight burdened him all day. His spirit became mummified in layers of cotton. He was inside his depression, and I was left outside. I could not reach in to pull him out.
Instead of rescuing him, I found myself slipping in. Depression can morph into a communicable disease. “How was your night?” I asked each morning, making my voice cheerful with expectation. I already knew it was bad when I saw how his body was positioned next to me: face down, one hand holding his forehead as if trying to wipe away his nighttime torment. Evenings were always better. As the night sky darkened, his mood would begin to lighten. We could converse. Sometimes he would lie about how he felt and I knew it was for my sake. He wanted to spare me. I didn’t contradict him. When he said he felt better, my guilt was eased. My love should cure him; I should be able to seduce him into a sweet sleep and a fresh awakening.
The mention of insomnia in conversations with other people brought out all sorts of advice. I listened eagerly. Soak your feet in hot water. Drink hot milk. Read a book. Play this CD. Count backwards by seven. Medications, old and new, were prescribed. And then there were things not to do: Don’t watch the evening news. Don’t read on your Kindle. Don’t exercise at night. We consulted his family doctor, a geriatric therapist, and a psychiatrist. We spent much of August of 2014 traveling back and forth for treatments at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. Then, one morning after a two-hour session with a new doctor and an increase in medication, it happened again.
“How was your night?”
“Wonderful.”
That morning he cleared his desk of all the accumulated correspondence and quickly went through his e-mail. He bought three pairs of bedroom slippers online and sent them back the following day, still looking for exactly what he wanted. He went with me to buy flowers; he made plans to have dinner with people every night; he wrote a poem for the first time and read it aloud to me; he fixed the CD player; he listened to Mahler the entire day. His study was now perfectly organized. Two weeks ago, nothing was in the right place.
“It’s a miracle,” I said to the doctor, wishing to bless him. He only nodded. He knew better. Still, he assured us that the depression was not likely to return. I wanted so badly to believe him.
A month later, the beast had him “by the neck” (John’s words). He had bad nights. Nightmares woke him up, carving deep crevices on either side of his face. Desperate for relief, we both agreed to go forward with electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), despite my reservations. My father had been treated with electroconvulsive therapy when it was in its primitive stage, and I remembered that my mother had referred to it with horror. My son, a doctor, supported ECT for John, and so did my stepdaughter Martha. I relinquished my hesitation because I wanted John to walk out of the cave and emerge as my husband, the man I knew, the man I had married.
So much hope is placed in doctors’ hands. We endow them with magical powers. I believed in magic after the first recovery. We both did. And then poof, the wand went dead. We endured eight sessions of ECT, driving for two hours back and forth to Hanover, New Hampshire, and staying overnight at Martha’s house in time for treatments at six in the morning. After each treatment, I fed him bits of blueberry muffin like a child and he swallowed them with sips of water. Each time he awoke from the anesthesia, I expected to see the smile of salvation on his face. Cured! Not yet. Patience, patience.
John became more prone to losing his balance. A fall, I feared, could kill him. My arm was in a constant state of readiness. A low level of anxiety permeated our partnership. If he fell when I was with him, it would be my fault. If he fell when I was not with him, it would also be my fault, only more so. I found myself, as an old woman, reliving the tension I had experienced as a young woman. Should I give myself to the children, or should I venture out to my own life? We were fortunate to be at Wake Robin where help was always available. How terrible I had felt when I did not get home from giving a speech in time to watch my son blow out his nine birthday candles. I should have been there when I was elsewhere. Now the same dilemma haunted me. Should I go to my office and write, have lunch with friends, feed my own soul? Bad mother, neglectful wife, selfish woman.
John did not keep me bound to his side. “Go,” he would say, “you’ve got to do your work.” It was I who imprisoned myself. I would call him frequently when I was not with him. If there was no answer on his cell phone, I called the landline. Again, no answer. I told myself that he must be taking a nap. But what if he’d fallen? What if he couldn’t reach the emergency button hanging from his neck? I called again, both numbers. And he answered. He was safe. I was safe.
John began using a cane. He often forgot to use it or misplaced it. When it fell down from where it had been propped—a table, a chair, a counter—I jumped at the sound of the crash. “Are you alright?” I developed a sixth sense, not for my body but for his. I felt like a mother watching her toddler take his first steps, ready to catch him at any moment, arms outstretched. The toddler wobbles, falls, and stands up again, laughing. Now John is in reverse, back to the wobbly stage, and no longer cushioned by laughter. When we walk arm in arm instead of using the cane, it could be mistaken for romance. Sometimes we hold hands, firmly. We have become an old couple, an obstacle in the way. I tell John a cane is elegant; it looks good on him. I have a photo of my father standing still for the photographer on a hiking path in the Alps, his cane planted at a rakish angle, as was the fashion.
Months later, Martha gives us the walker of a neighbor who has died. But I don’t want it in the house. No, we don’t need it, thank you. I put it in the garage. Then I begin to recognize the obvious: I can’t anticipate a fall. By its very nature, a fall is sudden, shocking. Still, I can’t help asking, too often, “Are you stable, are you alright?” The words became a wearisome mantra. I make the decision to get a walker. (The one in the garage had been given to a tag sale.) Whether he likes it or not, I will get him a walker. I have counted five falls in two weeks. He would list to the right and to the left like a sail, and then capsize. I have become expert at placing ice packs on his bruises and Band-Aids on his wounds. Nothing has broken, not yet.
Just before the start of the Labor Day weekend, I rush to the rehabilitation center at Wake Robin and request a walker. Reluctantly, John agrees to try it out. When he places his hands on the two handlebars, he smiles. I smile. He will be safe. I alone am no longer responsible for his safety. The walker is my friend. John agrees that graduating to a walker does not mark the end stage of his life. Walkers are parked everywhere at Wake Robin, lined up like alert soldiers. He treats his like a new toy, and I have to slow him down when we walk to our cottage. We joke about speed limits.
One day after dinner I suggest that we walk around the semicircle of our cottages. The doctor has recommended more exercise to improve his stability. With the walker, we will be fine. I stop to look at a neighbor’s window to assess the progress of their renovations. “Not much going on,” I say.
John takes one hand off the walker to take a look. He begins to sway, gently at first, as if he might right himself. I stretch my arms out to him, but I can’t reach him in time. He falls, slowly it seems, but he hits the sidewalk hard.
“Are you hurt?” I ask several times, hoping for the right answer.
“Yes.”
“Where does it hurt, John?” He can’t say. I manage to pull him to his feet and we walk with my arm around his waist and his arm around mine. We head for our door. Panic practically fells me. What if this fall had been “it”? What if I had killed him? In my mind I replay the video of his fall again and again. I had been transfixed in disbelief as I watched him go down. I thought he would stop. But he didn’t.
“It was my fault,” I lament.
When we arrive at our cottage, step by careful step, he says, “I’ve got to lie down.” He didn’t say that after previous falls. He is pale and shaken. He has hit the right side of his head—not too hard, I think—but a bump is beginning to swell. I get the icepack and put it on his forehead. He complains of chest pain, possibly a broken rib. Should I press the emergency button, the button I had once dismissed as unnecessary? We didn’t need it then, but we do now. I find the emergency pendant hanging in the bathroom and press the blue center twice. It seems longer, but it takes only a few minutes for a man from Emergency Services to knock on our door. We speak briefly and conclude that John should go to the emergency room. I see the flashing red ambulance from the window. Two uniformed EMTs, a man and a woman, pull the oversized stretcher into the bedroom. So that’s what the wide doors are for.
I am instructed to follow in my car, but not to go through any red lights. I promptly disobey and keep up with the ambulance, wondering if the flashing lights are routine or an indication that John is badly hurt. But we are lucky. The x-rays show no broken bones. John can go home.
But this was John’s sixth fall. My doctor son, Adam, and the attending physician recommend that John not return to our cottage but go to the skilled nursing unit at Wake Robin instead. There he will be protected from further falls and receive physical therapy. I agree, feeling both guilt and relief. Our relationship is changing; he will live in one place, and I—no matter how close by—will live in another. He is entering a state of dependency, a state he will grow to hate.
We have one more night in the same bed; the nurses can’t admit him until the next morning. I sniff his clean body. I feel his hand rest on my thigh. I reach out for his shoulder and listen to his breath. When will we be blanketed together like this again? He gets up three times in the night, at three, four, and five o’clock, to go to the bathroom. I have asked him to wake me up each time so that he will not stumble in the night. In the morning we are both exhausted. Still, it doesn’t seem reason enough to move him to skilled nursing. But we go, he with both hands on the walker, me with one hand on his arm.
I give him up.
But only for the time being. He moves back to the cottage. Then he falls again, and begins shuffling his feet when he walks. New x-rays yield a diagnosis of a subdural hematoma caused by falls. An operation follows, and a slow recovery. Our lives are cyclical: brief recoveries when we dream about sailing on the Queen Mary II, and then the nightmares repeat themselves.
One night when John is in skilled nursing, I improvise. I ask a nurse to place a white tablecloth on a round table in the activity room. I set a bottle of red wine in the center and take the blue and white china plates out from my tote bag and frame them with silver knives and forks and blue linen napkins. Then I walk down the hall to John’s room, number 205.
“Dinner is ready,” I announce like a butler. He rises from his chair carefully, every motion mentally rehearsed before translation into movement. He grasps both handles of the walker, steadies himself, and takes the first step to set the others in motion. He cannot, will not, fall. I walk by his side, mimicking his rhythm. We reach the make-believe dining room and John expresses delighted surprise.
“How did you do this?”
“I got permission. I brought a picnic.”
It’s Sunday night, the only night when no dinner is served for residents. He could have had dinner with the other nursing home patients at four thirty in the afternoon, but we rebel against institutional time and besides, I wanted to cook. I had clipped a new recipe from the New York Times: velvet chicken, plus my favorite vegetable, parsnips, and his favorite, spinach. I didn’t have all the ingredients for the chicken. I used flour instead of cornstarch, light cream instead of crème fraiche, and omitted thyme out of necessity. I was generous with the Dijon mustard.
When I open the plastic containers, a lovely aroma swims over the table. I spoon the food onto the plates, careful to make them equal. I wish I had brought candles. But they aren’t needed. We create our own light. I drink two glasses of red wine alone. John has to abstain because the doctor said alcohol interferes with his medication. We make a toast, wine clicking with water.
“To your health,” I say.
“To your health,” he replies, and gives me one of his warm smiles. I kiss him in return.
CHRYSALISYou came out of it
born anew, like
yesterday, almost
not quite, but
good enough for me.
How did you claw your
way out from the chrysalis?
Scratching all that time,
scratching . . . scratching
until you caught a thread
that unraveled into sight
and sound, until you slid
back to me, arms
outstretched,
wavering in the air,
until the ground rose
up to our feet.