73 Percent

Marlou is sleeping a lot these days.  And I am sleeping less, or so it seems at 3:45 AM.  I give up on averting my eyes from the bedside clock and acknowledge defeat.  I know what to do at such moments.  Fortunately there are not many.  I have been sleeping pretty well for the last weeks.  But something has coalesced, gathered critical mass in my mind, and now in the middle of the night it cannot be ignored.  What's been happening can only be described, not defined.  Like everything else this these days, there's no benefit in living beyond the present.

Marlou is sleeping more and doing a lot less.  There's no more heavy leg lifting to get me on the exercycle.  And yesterday, even the light leg hoisting that comes with the rowing machine proved too much.  I picked up the laundry.  We scaled back plans for dinner...no making cornbread...corn tortillas from the supermarket would do.  New shelfs for Marlou's new car had arrived at Stevens Creek Chrysler, but the afternoon drive to Santa Clara did not materialize.  Marlou fell asleep.

Now, in the wee hours, I go through the complex neuromuscular maneuver of extracting limbs of uncertain position from their entanglement with sheets.  Once freed, I swing myself to the edge of the bed, sit and no I will remain sitting.  Humming, yellow light signaling, this is no time to unplug the wheelchair battery charger.  I stare at the bookcase.  On the bedside table I have some herbal sleeping tablets, mild things composed of chamomile and its spiritual cousins.  They don't do much, but I don't need much usually.  I take the pills.  They taste vaguely of flowers.  

Marlou and I have discovered another effective, certainly more enjoyable, insomnia remedy in the Belgian chocolate pastilles perennially on sale at Trader Joe's, their cocoa content proudly posted at 73%, much like forensic analyses of street heroin.  But not tonight.  Until the batteries get charged, I'm not going anywhere.

Panic.  There's an underlying panic to what's happening.  Things seem to be unfolding faster than imagined.  I need home help.  Regular daily assistance...shoes and socks...exercise machines...Marlou often can't do these any more.  And is this the spread of cancer?  The effects of codeine?  And does it matter?

Marlou cries out in the night.  'Chocolate'.  Did she actually say that?  Yes, she did, the diction slightly garbled by sleep, but quite understandable.  I have heard and am simply too tired to ponder what it means, for I know.  The night is a jagged chasm, but one can still yell instructions.  The Belgian chocolates are there on some level.  Marlou is trying to reach me with this information.  Chocolate.  For now, enjoy it.  All 73%.  And now I know the thing I need to know.  It was there all along, and I missed it, starting with dinner.

We had a friend, David, who joined us for chili and salad and tortillas.  I made the chili, Marlou made salad, God made the tortillas, and all of us made the evening.  We had had a wonderful time.  David helped me get on my rowing machine, and while I huffed and strained in the carport, we discussed Leonard Cohen.  I told him halfway through my exercise regime that Marlou might want to show off her new car.  The red Chrysler was gleaming there before us.  David wandered inside just as Marlou, bundled up for January, wandered out.  Within moments, they drove away.  Not far.  But long enough for me to finish rowing and join them inside.  

Over dinner, David unfurled sexual hijinks among Bay Area teachers, followed by the BBC's 'New Tricks'...and now it was after 4 AM, Marlou had offered a sort of virtual chocolate.  Life had been going on.  And even when it wasn't, in the imagined future, there would be a missing ingredient, something I had dropped from the recipe.  I was not going to be alone.  I was going to be safe.  I had friends, knew how to take care of myself...and in the sum total of all of us I would be okay.

But there are risks.  The ones I fear most involve the slipping-in-the-shower scenarios.  The other ones, the sort that come at you in the night, in the wee hours, out of nowhere, those are more powerful.  For there is a risk in believing in Marlou and the connection we have.  What of this offer of chocolate in the night?  Whatever it is, can I take it?  Do we really have a mysterious communication that transcends sleep, day and night, and is really no more intermittent than anything else?

The battery charger is still humming.  The clock is still moving.  There are knowns and unknowns, and what I need now is sleep, and for that there is enough.