Fire

When the helicopters began circling I barely noticed.  They are ever present, flying to and fro with what I had once assumed to be burn victims or prenatal babies.  We are so close to Stanford Medical Center, I even hear them on the ground, whooshing and stomping at the hospital heliport.  Much of the romance wore off when I learned, from a reliable source, that most of the helicopter traffic has to do with organs, their donors and recipients.  I am too old to come to grips with the fact that lots of what goes on at Stanford has to do with money, and that Stanford has been left in the moneygrubbing dust by places like Berkeley.  So I tuned out the helicopters this morning, until it dawned on me that they were flying around in circles.

What they were circling hardly surprised me, everything throbbing with meaning these days, and the apocalyptic so prominent in both personal and public spheres.  There was a fire, a rather large fire on the urban scale, in central Menlo Park.  And I did not bat an eye when my father-in-law returned from a personal reconnaissance stroll and reported the news.  Peet's was on fire.  The blaze had gotten to the urban planners above, and from their offices it had spread to the roof.  The town was awash in firetrucks, several from regional suburbs.  Streets had closed off.  And during it all I sat on my recumbent exercycle, hearing the reports, trying not to make banal jokes about dark roast.

After all, we had had a better night, Marlou and I.  My twin fears, being absent when Marlou dies and being present, seemed to fade.  I slept soundly for about six hours.  I'm getting adjusted to things.  Those shepherding birth and death seem to lose a lot of sleep.  Nothing to worry about.  In fact, when one of the hospice nurses called this afternoon, we had the briefest of chats, and she told me the simplest of solutions.  Roll into the bedroom, turn off the wheelchair, lean over the bed and tell Marlou what you want.  Prior notification regarding passing.  And a sort of FYI on the fear.  A.k.a., I am afraid you will die without me.  Marlou listened to this, shrugged her shoulders and told me it wasn't necessary, this husband-wife bedside dying thing.  Go catch a film, she was almost saying.  And the dying timetable?  She patted my hand.

As for fear of death, I find myself revisiting the June night in 1968 when I bumped into three leering kids with a gun.  I got a close look at the gun but a better look at the street pavement and a long gaze at the blank mystery of mortality and a terrifying lack of completeness.  That I would never do what had to be done.  That I would lose life without valuing it.

It's the hands, Marlou says.  I have wedged my wheelchair in close to her bedside.  She lies back, hollow cheeked on her pillow.  Her eyes are mostly closed, but she speaks.  Some of the outer layers of personality have gotten sanded down in this process.  And the morphine creates a sort of solvent, making thoughts and moments flow in and out of each other.  Marlou has not had an easy time saying what she wants in much of her life.  But in this part, despite the word-robbing brain tumor, she makes herself quite clear.  If you don't understand me, she slurs, say you don't understand me.  I don't understand you, I say.  She says for the second time, it's the hands.

It is, of course, and from my perspective the hands belong to Marlou.  I'm sure she is thinking of someone else's, but I only notice hers.  In the afternoons now I lie on my side, unabashedly asking assistance for body positioning.  Whoever is around props a pillow under my butt so I can tilt toward Marlou.  Face-to-face now, we can hold hands, stroke arms and maintain some physical connection.  This phase of things, when Marlou's pain finally drowned in morphine and her nausea disappeared with the collapse of her digestive system, has blossomed unexpectedly.  

At night in bed only a few days ago, I expected something more querulous when I gave her hand a good night pat.  Instead, she worked her torso onto its side, a grand effort these days that rivals my own.  Marlou reached out her hand, first one, then the other.  She wanted to hold my head.  She has such an exquisite grace and delicacy that she can manage these things, weakness or not.  A friend has noticed that Marlou's right leg is not only half-paralyzed, but twitching in a familiar neurological way.  Her body isn't cooperating, but look at what's happening, her fingers, slender and long and now bony from loss of flesh, are drifting over my hair, descending around my ear and resting on my temple.  The other hand finds its way to my forehead.  And we have found our way to this moment, and maybe this is all there is.

At lunchtime my friend Alan and I sit on a park bench watching the local fire brigade have a go at what is left of Peet's.  They're awfully good, I can tell.  Charred bits of wood come tumbling out of the inside, new beams arrive as temporary supports.  The fire crew begins removing yellow crime-scene tape, starts rolling their massive ladders down from the blackened roof.  A lane of traffic reopens.  Just another disaster.  The helicopter has long departed, having gotten its film-at-11 moments for the TV news.  I ask Alan if his wife wants to stop by and say goodbye to Marlou.  He wants to know if I'm asking this on behalf of her or of me.  The question brings tears to my eyes.  This is time for direct talk.  Me, I tell him.  Okay, he says.

The soil in my raised beds exceeds all expectations.  I had planned to dig a few transplanted California poppies into place with a trowel, but no tool is necessary.  Thanks to my ceaseless attentions and brilliant grasp of California clay, the garden has composted and mulched itself into organic heaven.  The soil particles are actually dancing, holding hands in a sort of molecular maypole dance, worms diving in and out of the center.  Things are so loose that the poppy roots all but jump to the soil surface on command.  They transplant as easily as puppy dogs.  I will toss them some bone meal.

Nevermind that Marlou's birdfeeder crashed to the terrace today.  Marlou had found the thing somewhere, squirrel-proof and receptive to goldfinches.  The arrival of a new or odd bird rarely escaped her notice.  That the birdfeeder loosed its bonds and hurtled to the brick terrace on this particular day means nothing.  It is not portentous.  Never mind Peet's.  You can only open your eyes so much, and then you have to close them.