Little Bottles

While Lorna is working in the bathroom, I am seated in my wheelchair outside in the hallway peeling a label off a portable telephone.  I can't help feeling useless, but a moment's reflection convinces me to the contrary.  We are both at work.  Lorna's task on this Sunday morning is to empty out bathroom shelves and drawers long idled by Marlou's illness.  They are full of her things, years of things, and for some reason none of this stuff has been touched.  Now it's time, and what makes this time, the time, presents an intriguing mystery.  And viewed from the opposite perspective, the barrier to this cleaning out and winnowing and condensing that has held things in place for 15 months, that is unclear too.  I am singularly oblivious to objects around me, that is true, but even this trait does not account for the label I am currently peeling off the telephone.  It lists all numbers for Pathways Hospice and urges a call 24 hours a day.  The thing has been on there so long that it strips off reluctantly, shredding, elastic backing having chemically decomposed into gummy.  While Lorna works.

If I recall correctly, she has been in this country for more than 10 years, perhaps 15.  Some of her knowledge and responses seem utterly American, some don't.  She has just extracted a large number of skin fresheners from Marlou's bathroom cupboard and is talking about her husband's classic car.  No, she has told him, they are not driving his 1955 Ford convertible to Yosemite.  They can drive about the Bay Area, waving at well-wishers from Fremont to Sausalito, but the long hot drive across California's Central Valley in an old, poorly air-conditioned, badly shocked-absorbed car...its worth reckoned at $60,000 or so...no, this isn't going to happen.  In this regard, she seems American, an assertive woman, no Southeast Asian subservience about her.  On the other hand, in chatting about my recent trip, she is surprised to learn that London is in England.  I do not mention that many in London share her view.  Never mind, for we are on to other matters, particularly the matter of lotions.  Marlou had a fair amount of clear lotions, many green tinged, and this baffles Lorna utterly.  Lotions, she tells me, are white, maybe white-yellow.  But this green, clear stuff?  She keeps shaking the bottles, staring at the contents.  What is this stuff?

I am asking the same question every moment.  What is it, where did it come from, and why didn't I know about it?  Well, I have lived in this apartment for longer than I care to admit, long enough to have purchased a series of plastic urinals, none of which have been used.  I must have envisioned them as backup, then they drifted into the realm of the forgotten, which is to say, the back of the lower cabinet.  Now there are out, and everything is out, and the presence of these relics of mine and of the mysteries of Marlou's toiletries works to soften the blow.

For in terms of possessions, I know this represents the final stretch, these small items of personal use.  Hair brushes, perfumes, blow dryer, sunscreen, each connected with a human body well remembered.  And now they are here without the human, the transformation startling and sad.  Fortunately, Lorna is either oblivious to this or moving briskly as she does with everything.  I watch the perfumes go into a small box.  What to do with these?  I know they are valuable.  I tell Lorna I am not sure.  What I am really not sure about, as we turn to another bag, is the lure of these tiny bottles.  Opening that will remind me in the most physical and intimate of ways of someone who seems barely dead.  So the thought never quite reaches consciousness.  After all, the perfumes been there for a long time.  They are going.  I tell Lorna to take anything she wants.

There are a surprising number of sick room supplies, of course.  No-rinse soaps.  Antibacterial gels.  No-rinse shampoo.  Even gauze and tape from Marlou's liver surgery wound.  And there are many baffling items, odd skin treatments, hot weather freshening lotion.  Did Marlou ever use a hair curler?  Why a lifetime supply of bath gel?  Did she ever throw anything away?  That is the real question.  Some of these products, such as the after-rinse hair re-newer, may even represent museum pieces.  Was Marlou holding onto tampons in fond remembrance of her life before menopause?  Every single over-the-counter medication was a year or more out of date before her cancer diagnosis.  These are small idiosyncrasies, the sort of things that emerge after death.  People will discover at least as many oddities as they dispose of my things.  And that is at least half the point of this exercise, to remember that soon enough people will be doing the same for me, half impersonal, half perplexed, having sent me to the crematorium, the rest to the landfill.  And if there is any hope for human progress, my prescription drugs will not head for burial as these are.  The local pharmacies allege that the Menlo Park Police will happily incinerate drugs brought to their office, but I am not convinced.  At the very least, there will be forms to complete.  Whatever.  I admit that I can't be bothered.

Just as I couldn't be bothered to clean out this bathroom, to get rid of the past, and free up space I could use myself.  Which is one of the themes here.  Claiming space for myself.  Claiming a fair amount of anger at having to deal with so much loss.  It took time to get around to the emptying out of Marlou's body potions, aids and drugs and curios.  It took time to put this in the past.  And put me in the present.  Now angry, still somewhat shellshocked, but present.  It's good having Lorna around.  She met Marlou in her final weeks.  On the first night Lorna slept on the sofa, standby, on-call...fate was particularly unkind.  That was the night of Marlou's Mad Scene.  Actually, she had two.  Marlou had brain tumors, that is the simple answer.  And she was more than I could handle, much more.  I sent Lorna running up the stairs to summon Marlou's parents in the apartment above.  In short, she only remembers Marlou remotely, as a very sick person.

An Amtrak toiletries kit, little bottles of shampoo, hair conditioner lotion and soap, all packed into a small wicker basket with a washcloth.  I seize the latter.  One can always use a washcloth, and the saving of this particular box of unneeded bottles is all my doing.  I am the one who treasures the Amtrak trek to Seattle.  But Marlou was the one who was the good sport.  She made the most of it.  She also made the most of complaining about the absence of washcloths in several British households.  She was not above being judgmental, even superior, Marlou was.  And this wash cloth reminds me of both extremes.  I am at the stage now of remembering her as she was, good and bad, smooth and rough edges.  Which may be why I took advantage of Lorna's puttering about in the kitchen several mornings ago to do some of my own puttering at Marlou's desk.  I folded four of the five portraits sitting there, placed them in a desk drawer.  And shoved the remaining photo toward the back of the desk.  I chose Marlou in her pre-cancer bloom, robust and smiling.  Her energy in the photo is infectious.  And that is, and was, enough.