Survivor
On Monday Lordes, my housekeeper of 20 years and namesake of Lourdes, France's renowned physiotherapy center, spotted a discrepancy in the linen closet. Actually, to call it a linen closet is somewhat ambitious. We are talking about whatever closet resides in the hallway, jammed between my apartment's single bathroom and the master, if one can call it that, bedroom. The bottom shelves of the closet are given over to toilet paper and miscellaneous cleaning gear. The upper ones house the 'linens'. And none of these distinctions matter, of course, except that Marlou ran a tight, not to mention traditional, ship in the housekeeping sense, and conditions in this four-plex on Roble Avenue were never exemplary and now they promise to decline.
So something was missing in the sheet and towel department, and so much is currently missing in my mind, it took a supreme effort to track the items down. With my life spread among two apartments, one upstairs which I visit on a quarterly basis, there were not many hiding places. All it took was a brief stop at LaunderLand. The proprietor was momentarily puzzled, then sure enough, they emerged, one by one, each larger than its predecessor, blue-paper-wrapped bundles of sheets and towels. Until 2 April laundry was circulating in and out of our local wash-and-fold like currents in San Francisco Bay. Then it all stopped.
And here they are, sickroom linens frozen in time, already acquiring the quality of a museum display. There is so much laundry that the laundress rigs up a temporary holder made of plastic bags, hanging the load off each side of my wheelchair in the back and dropping the third packet on my lap. The logistics of transport and the scent of fabric softener obscure the fact of how Marlou vomited and sweated out her final days upon these cloths.
Photos of my wife, large ones, have appeared framed and propped up around the front room. It says something about my current state that I cannot recall their origin. Perhaps we always had these pictures. Perhaps my siblings and friends recently assembled them. The fact that I can't remember only adds to the power of the photographic shrine which currently dominates the dining room table. It's a permanent exhibition as far as I'm concerned. And yet, of course, it's not, which is yet further occasion for sadness.
I can see Marlou sitting on our sofa. The new one, of course, more or less custom-built and, no one would argue, quite beautiful. The idea behind the sofa was, in functional terms, simple enough. I could not easily sit with Marlou on its predecessor, a sectional that arrived from Sacramento. That one curved around our living room and squatted low to the ground, salmon-colored and modern. I could stand up from my wheelchair, make my way to Marlou's side, sink into the old sofa and cozily watch TV or listen to music only for brief stretches. The backrest was inadequate. Standing up to pee, my most frequent of pastimes, took a major effort, with Marlou, pulling on one or both arms, to haul me up. We spent long hours far apart, as result, me in a recliner chair, Marlou on her couch.
Even when the new sofa was in place, something in me hesitated. I resisted sofa snuggling, and for reasons that were hard to pinpoint. And then it started happening. I would park the wheelchair at one end of the new, higher sofa, pivot and drop into place. Marlou would draw close to me and, through cooperative effort, get my mostly paralyzed right arm around her shoulder. Then, the thing that was suspicious became the thing that was poignant. I needed to be hugged as much as she. Neither of us was confident in voicing such needs. Yet being hugged made everything better, made everything painful rise to the surface, and made us both aware of our precariousness. Living with cancer. Living with death. Living with each other.
The new sofa proved a bit too low. It was still helpful for Marlou to grab my arm and help me stand. Until helping became impossible. Then Marlou began to hurt, hugging no longer felt as good, so we sat and held hands. The weight of age or of experience was now making it harder for me to get up from the new sofa. I bent my legs under me, leaned very far forward, sought my center of gravity and worked my way to the vertical. It was hard work, but there was harder work to come, and then there was no work at all.
For days, I recalled scenes of Marlou's death agony. Gradually, the scenes have gone away. Now the apartment feels too full of things. I don't know what to do with all the food. There are cards that came with flowers, cards that came with gifts and cards that came with nothing except signatures, and I need to look at them all, some for a second, even a third, time. Very little has been registering.
Already in moments the awareness settles around me that mine is the apartment of a survivor, displaying relics of the one who did not survive, full of bills to pay and forms to complete. And then, once the relics have been shelved and the details dealt with, nothing. It is hard to see a way forward. But one always appears. What is even harder is seeing the way backward.
Marlou's essential qualities come at me out of her photos. When she lost her hair, the first time that is, she consciously decided to create a remembrance portrait. In a headscarf, with help from our friend Clint, she staged a latter-day Vermeer, with two pearl earrings. She wanted to take a picture, she said, while she still looked good. This statement contained much about Marlou. Her capacity for open-eyed sobriety. And a matter-of-fact regard for her own beauty. While she looked good...Marlou could sense both the 'looks' and the 'while'. And in quoting Vermeer, who knows? Marlou was drawn to this painting for reasons that involved more than a headscarf. For now, it is a pleasant mystery.
As for the other photos, they show her radiance. Even in the last year, when resignation had settled over her features, Marlou shone. She had a warmth that emerged naturally. There is a message in her glow. It is a message for me. That I can expect this of life, that I can expect to have this quality in my days. The quality may not come from a single person in the future. But I can seek it in the people I have around me. Love was not easily transmitted in my childhood home, and much of my life it has not felt like something I deserved or could count on. Now it feels like something to expect and readily exchange. And that may be why amidst the bills and forms and items to dispose of, and the vacant travel plans and eerie creaking of my empty apartment, something important has arrived from Marlou. Via invisible UPS, signed for, opened, assembled and now part of me.
So something was missing in the sheet and towel department, and so much is currently missing in my mind, it took a supreme effort to track the items down. With my life spread among two apartments, one upstairs which I visit on a quarterly basis, there were not many hiding places. All it took was a brief stop at LaunderLand. The proprietor was momentarily puzzled, then sure enough, they emerged, one by one, each larger than its predecessor, blue-paper-wrapped bundles of sheets and towels. Until 2 April laundry was circulating in and out of our local wash-and-fold like currents in San Francisco Bay. Then it all stopped.
And here they are, sickroom linens frozen in time, already acquiring the quality of a museum display. There is so much laundry that the laundress rigs up a temporary holder made of plastic bags, hanging the load off each side of my wheelchair in the back and dropping the third packet on my lap. The logistics of transport and the scent of fabric softener obscure the fact of how Marlou vomited and sweated out her final days upon these cloths.
Photos of my wife, large ones, have appeared framed and propped up around the front room. It says something about my current state that I cannot recall their origin. Perhaps we always had these pictures. Perhaps my siblings and friends recently assembled them. The fact that I can't remember only adds to the power of the photographic shrine which currently dominates the dining room table. It's a permanent exhibition as far as I'm concerned. And yet, of course, it's not, which is yet further occasion for sadness.
I can see Marlou sitting on our sofa. The new one, of course, more or less custom-built and, no one would argue, quite beautiful. The idea behind the sofa was, in functional terms, simple enough. I could not easily sit with Marlou on its predecessor, a sectional that arrived from Sacramento. That one curved around our living room and squatted low to the ground, salmon-colored and modern. I could stand up from my wheelchair, make my way to Marlou's side, sink into the old sofa and cozily watch TV or listen to music only for brief stretches. The backrest was inadequate. Standing up to pee, my most frequent of pastimes, took a major effort, with Marlou, pulling on one or both arms, to haul me up. We spent long hours far apart, as result, me in a recliner chair, Marlou on her couch.
Even when the new sofa was in place, something in me hesitated. I resisted sofa snuggling, and for reasons that were hard to pinpoint. And then it started happening. I would park the wheelchair at one end of the new, higher sofa, pivot and drop into place. Marlou would draw close to me and, through cooperative effort, get my mostly paralyzed right arm around her shoulder. Then, the thing that was suspicious became the thing that was poignant. I needed to be hugged as much as she. Neither of us was confident in voicing such needs. Yet being hugged made everything better, made everything painful rise to the surface, and made us both aware of our precariousness. Living with cancer. Living with death. Living with each other.
The new sofa proved a bit too low. It was still helpful for Marlou to grab my arm and help me stand. Until helping became impossible. Then Marlou began to hurt, hugging no longer felt as good, so we sat and held hands. The weight of age or of experience was now making it harder for me to get up from the new sofa. I bent my legs under me, leaned very far forward, sought my center of gravity and worked my way to the vertical. It was hard work, but there was harder work to come, and then there was no work at all.
For days, I recalled scenes of Marlou's death agony. Gradually, the scenes have gone away. Now the apartment feels too full of things. I don't know what to do with all the food. There are cards that came with flowers, cards that came with gifts and cards that came with nothing except signatures, and I need to look at them all, some for a second, even a third, time. Very little has been registering.
Already in moments the awareness settles around me that mine is the apartment of a survivor, displaying relics of the one who did not survive, full of bills to pay and forms to complete. And then, once the relics have been shelved and the details dealt with, nothing. It is hard to see a way forward. But one always appears. What is even harder is seeing the way backward.
Marlou's essential qualities come at me out of her photos. When she lost her hair, the first time that is, she consciously decided to create a remembrance portrait. In a headscarf, with help from our friend Clint, she staged a latter-day Vermeer, with two pearl earrings. She wanted to take a picture, she said, while she still looked good. This statement contained much about Marlou. Her capacity for open-eyed sobriety. And a matter-of-fact regard for her own beauty. While she looked good...Marlou could sense both the 'looks' and the 'while'. And in quoting Vermeer, who knows? Marlou was drawn to this painting for reasons that involved more than a headscarf. For now, it is a pleasant mystery.
As for the other photos, they show her radiance. Even in the last year, when resignation had settled over her features, Marlou shone. She had a warmth that emerged naturally. There is a message in her glow. It is a message for me. That I can expect this of life, that I can expect to have this quality in my days. The quality may not come from a single person in the future. But I can seek it in the people I have around me. Love was not easily transmitted in my childhood home, and much of my life it has not felt like something I deserved or could count on. Now it feels like something to expect and readily exchange. And that may be why amidst the bills and forms and items to dispose of, and the vacant travel plans and eerie creaking of my empty apartment, something important has arrived from Marlou. Via invisible UPS, signed for, opened, assembled and now part of me.
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