dans le feu de l'action

Endings

The hospital’s dining room was full. Maybe seven or eight senior citizens - all but one spoke English. She only knew Italian and the ensuing barriers were pretty apparent. My grandmother is an isolated woman at that hospital. I always wondered why she never even had to learn English in all her years here. Florence (who is hilarious, but accidentally; and I don’t mean that we laugh at her, but there is a certain innocence in what she says that can elicit nothing but laughter from the rest of us) was sitting with her family, and I suppose it was her daughter-in-law who had come to fetch my grandmother’s water from the other room. It was the most trivial of favors, but I was suddenly overcome by the generosity, the comradery, the obvious care for a stranger displayed by a woman who has seen her husband deal with the idea of losing his mother, both physically and mentally. Rather, I was overcome by all of it, really. The people in the room (except for my sister, my dad, Florence’s son and daughter-in-law, and of course, me) were suffering. They had to be fed, and helped in and out of bed, and accompanied to the washroom. They had lost their privacy, and with it, their dignity. I kept my emotions in check, but I felt like crying.

Two hours later, I was driving back from my aunt and uncle’s house, having just said goodbye to them for a few months. My uncle C. had a back brace wrapped tightly around his midsection, giving him a slight bend in stature. For the first time, I noticed he was short. My aunt M. has been limping for months now; her left knee causes her pain and discomfort, and a certain flavor of frustration - I think it might be despair - had quickly followed her physical ailments. As I thought back to my visit, I realized that this year they would celebrate their 65th birthdays. The image of a capable couple had been replaced by a new reality, and again, I kept my emotions in check. Tears make driving into something of a challenge.

I was nibbling at my cherry pie that my aunt J. had given me when she started to ask me about my plans for the future. Having little confidence in my plans, I told her I was exploring my options, and she proceeded to lecture me about sticking with something to the end because it’s all worth it. The guilt I normally feel when I think about how much more work I could have done bubbled up to the surface, and my thoughts turned to my own parents, who want nothing but the best for me. I thought of how much I’d let them down if I didn’t do something with my life, and I thought about how hard they’ve had to work to put me through school, certainly at a cost to their own health. I noticed today that my dad’s hair is now more grey than black and he frequently complains of back aches, and my mom (usually the picture of health) has officially been sick for two weeks. They’re getting older, I thought, and I won’t have them forever. Again, I held back on really feeling the weight of this. Bit my lip, and distracted myself with more Robertson Davies.

I’m sitting here now, in my basement, staring at the words I’ve just written, and I don’t want to hold back feeling any more. I want to cry, because crying makes you feel better; but the tears just won’t come. And I think it’s because I know I won’t ever feel better about today. 

Because today, I saw what can only be described as endings; with no real belief in an epilogue, I saw that truly, this, too, shall pass.