Marcia’s
clock
copyright 2016 Bonnie Vanak
I’m sitting
at my desk at work, with a prime view of hectic rush hour traffic on Interstate
95. People driving at breakneck speed to get home, get somewhere, get anywhere
because time these days is precious and even free cell phone minutes aren’t
enough. I’m not thinking about going
home, even though it’s five o’clock. I’m
thinking of cutout pink valentines with a photo of Care Bears glued in the
middle. Care Bears stuck to a long, chrome hospital pole with the cheery
inscription, “To Mom. Happy Valentine’s Day. Love, Laud.”
Laud is his
nickname. Marcia told me she named him Hilario because she liked that name. “I
didn’t know I was going to have a son who was autistic and couldn’t say his own
name.”
Marcia told
me about Laud’s Care Bears today as I slowly reeled past the roundhouse slap
shock of seeing her lying on the hospital bed, a lanky pile of bones and flesh,
her Miss Clairol hair once swinging down to her shoulders, now cropped short
and threaded liberally with gray.
“I just
took the razor,” she told me matter-of-factly. “It started to grow out and I
took the razor to trim it and then realized I really did a number on it and
needed to even it out.” It’s rather military style, her haircut, flat top, perfect
Army requisition hair.
But about
the Care Bears, I fear I digress. You see, ever since Marcia told her adult
son, who has depended upon her for his whole life, that she was sick, he has
bought her stuffed animals. One after the other. A virtual parade of plush fur
plopped in her ever-thinning lap. A zoo of Care Bears for mom. The giant Care
Bear gift at Christmas.
“You should
see it,” Marcia says in her monotone, tired voice people have when they need to
talk because they have a lot to say and know there is little time to say it in,
but lack the energy, “It’s huge. Isn’t it Janet?”
Janet, her
sister, looks up from straightening up the rollaway patient cart with the
little Jell-O cups, a mauve cup of untouched oatmeal and green cans of ginger
ale. She stretches her arms out “like so” to indicate how big this bear is.
“But you have to see it next to the others,” Marcia tells me. “It makes the
others look so small.”
There’s a
Care Bear sitting on the bedside table, a clay potted plant nestled between its
legs, the table Marcia hasn’t the strength to reach. It sits next to a Dean
Koontz book she hasn’t the strength to read. Above her head is a trapeze to
help her sit up. Marcia reaches up and her sister scurries over.
“Do you
need anything?” Janet asks.
“No,”
Marcia says with a glimmer of a smile. “Just playing.” She fingers the trapeze
and it swings gently back and forth like the pendulum on a grandfather clock.
Tick, tock, tick, tock, minutes slipping away.
I hand her
three cards I have brought. Two are valentines. She is too weak to open the
second card. I do it for her. It’s a funny card. “My weird sense of humor,” I
say, laughing because I must laugh, because if I don’t this crazy play of
emotions I am struggling to contain
will gush out like water.
“Yes, Marcia says, with her
oblique, dry sense of humor, “You did always have an odd sense of humor.”
I give her
a CD of Sister Jeanne singing. “The Sisters of Song.” I tell her that it’s a
gift from Monica at work. Marcia toys with it and lets it fall into her lap.
“Sister Jeanne, the fun, cheerful, rotund nun?”
“Yes,” I
reply, “that’s her, she’s sort of bouncy. There are 59 other nuns singing with
her on the CD.”
“You mean
59 other bouncy nuns, or maybe some of them aren’t as bouncy as Sister Jeanne?”
Marcia asks. I laugh, gratified to hear
Marcia making a joke.
Her sister
gives her a cup of ice and coaxes her to take a spoonful of red Jell-O. The
hospital has only yellow and green Jell-O, Marcia explains. Her mother had to
go to the store and buy red. But the Jell-O doesn’t sit right with Marcia. She
shakes her head, and plays with the Styrofoam cup of ice instead.
“I have no
appetite,” she says. “Do you think it’s because I’m on all these nutritional
supplements?”
I say,
“Maybe.” I don’t want to wax enthusiasm and nod like one of those little
animals you put next to a glass of water that bobs its head up and down
stupidly. I know what’s going on. But I will not say it.
She’s on
antibiotics this morning. Her fever was 100. And there’s the steak in a bottle,
as my sister-in-law called it when her mom was dying of colon cancer. Marcia’s
sister says they call it blueberry pie. And opium. “It’s the last resort,”
Marcia says in that flat, monotone, matter-of-fact voice. “For diarrhea.’
She tells me in a calm, accepting tone that she was used to taking her IV pole with the chemo in it and wheeling it into the bathroom. But this visit, she couldn’t find the strength. So they gave her a port-a-potty. It sits, lid lowered, next to her bed like a polite, waiting visitor. But she had no strength for that, either.
She tells me in a calm, accepting tone that she was used to taking her IV pole with the chemo in it and wheeling it into the bathroom. But this visit, she couldn’t find the strength. So they gave her a port-a-potty. It sits, lid lowered, next to her bed like a polite, waiting visitor. But she had no strength for that, either.
“I’m
wearing diapers,” she tells me. I nod slowly. I know all about the diapers. I
don’t tell Marcia it was the same with my mom’s colon cancer. First there is
the walker to lean upon, to hop drag to the bathroom, and then the port-a-potty
and finally, the diapers.
What do you
say to a friend who is dying and doesn’t want to give up? You talk about things
like Abiquiu. Abiquiu
where the monks at Christ in the Desert monastery have a web site.
“Remember the monks online?” she
asks me. I vaguely recall her telling me about them. Years ago, Marcia told me
all about Abiquiu when I
mentioned my husband and I were going to pass through there. “You must stop and
stay a while,” she had insisted, her artist’s eyes dancing with memories of
colors and light. “It’s beautiful. Georgia O’Keefe lived there. It’s got a
tremendous spiritual power.” She had gone on and on about the beauty of the
place. But we were in a hurry. The rose and toast and green cliffs were pretty,
but so were the trains we were heading for in Durango, so we stopped for one
minute, took photos like Japanese tourists. Snap, snap, snap and we were on our
way.
There’s so
many medications and bags just hanging there next to Marcia as we talk of Abiquiu. Red digital numbers flashing, pumps dripping.
It all seems so out of place, as if Marcia’s hospital bed is sitting in a vast
verdant field next to the cliffs and the beaming little monks, so serene and
peaceful.
And then
she stops talking of Abiquiu and
mentions chemo. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about any more government
trials. I don’t know if my body can take this anymore.”
A tight smile stretches over her
sister’s face. “We’ll deal with that later,” Janet says in a too bright tone.
“Just concentrate on regaining your strength and getting through this now.”
“Yes,” I
say, chiming in, feeling this false brightness spreading to me now, although I
know what is truth and what is reality and what is fact. “Just concentrate on
getting better.”
I didn’t
ask if she was in pain. I didn’t need to. I see the signs, the same ones my
mother had, the restless shifting of legs, heels flat against the bed, knees
bent.
I pretend.
I ask, “When are they going to spring you?” She says she doesn’t know. Maybe
Tuesday. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m wearing a diaper. I don’t
think Hilario can help with that. Maybe I’ll be stronger by then.”
How do you
look someone in the eye when you know they are dying and hold a normal
conversation with them?
What do you talk about with someone whose time
is running out and they really don’t want to admit it because they still have
so much to live for?
You talk
about Abiquiu and men she says were her “mistakes.” I tell
her, “Everyone makes mistakes, Marcia. Yours are just more colorful.” You talk
about ordinary things like work. You talk about everything except the one thing
hanging between you like a blanket, or the invisible veil between this world
and the next.
I drove
away from the hospital thinking about years, months, days, hours, minutes and
then seconds decreasing until the clock finally stops. Tick, tock, silence. I
thought about time and how precious it is and how there’s so little of it. And
then there’s Abiquiu. There are
monks online and cliffs of gold, rose and green that lift the spirit if you
pause long enough and listen to the music they make in your soul. There is Abiquiu . I will return there and make time to hear their song.
Because it takes a friend who is dying, who is too damn weak to sit up and open
a Valentine’s Day card, for you to sit up and pay attention to what really
counts.
I will go
back to Abiquiu. And when I do,
I will think of Marcia, whose artist’s soul knew what I failed to understand.
That we don’t have that kind of time and we need to soak up every second with
that which is beautiful and precious and real to us.
For her
there were fuzzy, silly Care Bears.
For me,
there is Abiquiu. I will return. I will.
