Make time
I leashed Emma for her evening walk and we headed out for a circuit around the block. It was still quite warm and there was an unusual number of speeding cars to avoid. And as we headed for the penultimate turn home there was K sitting slumped in his electric wheelchair in his front yard.
He has deteriorated greatly in the three weeks since I last saw him. In fact he had been released from the hospital only the day before. The twinkle in his eyes has burnt down to an ember. He’s lost a great deal of weight and is shrunken. For five weeks he has been plagued with diarrhea and some of his thirty stomach ulcers are bleeding; he’d had 2 bags of blood and three of saline and antibiotics and is still completely devoid of energy. And he keeps drinking.
After a hug I sat on the grass at his feet while he cooed at Emma and told her what a good pretty dog she is. He was avid to talk, to be with me. “I always look forward to talking with you, you listen to me. You talk important stuff.” I thanked him and said how much I enjoyed his company.
First he described for me again the traffic accident a dozen years ago that left him nearly dead and in constant pain ever since. Then he talked about his recent fall and how he knows his time is limited. Then he grew sad and poignant talking about his wife who died at Thanksgiving after fifty-eight years of marriage, how he misses her and talks to her ashes every day.
“I’d do anything for her; did everything for her; wiped her ass when she couldn’t. She’s inside in her plastic box but I’m going to go down to Memorial Park and get her a proper urn. It’s the least I can do. She was a good woman. And I’ll get one for me too. I got our little dog cremated and we’re all going into a vault together. I know dogs got souls just like people; they got to, just look in their eyes. They know and feel things.”
I agreed. I said I’m sure they have souls, that I think all animals do. “I believe even that tree,” and I pointed to the beautiful young Japanese maple overhearing our conversation, “has a soul. Earth has a soul,” (and I scrunched a handful of grass in my right hand) “but we get so far away from it with TV and movies and cell phones and being busy that we forget what a privilege it is to be here, to be connected to it all. All that other stuff gets in our way. TV and Hollywood present a picture of what they think life should be that doesn’t have anything to do with reality.”
“You’re damned right. Life is hard. Kids today don’t have a fucking clue. I was the youngest of nine—the youngest of nine and all the others are dead now. I’m the only one left. I was the runt of the litter—have always been small. But when I was eight years old my daddy was already showing me how to plow behind a mule so I could get to work and help out.” (Here he went into an astonishingly detailed description of bridling the mare and fixing the harness, setting the plow reins and the angle of the blades that I wish I could repeat, it was so wondrously told.) “And Dad warned me never to put my hands down near the plow arch or I could lose one. But sure enough I had to learn for myself and stuck this right hand down to straighten the plow right when the mule ran into a rock and tore every fingernail off my hand. It hurt like hell for weeks—I was only nine—but I still plowed all that time. But after that, I listened to everything he ever told me as gospel truth. Kids today don’t have clue. Life is hard, damned hard I tell you.”
“But it’s so sweet too K, don’t you think?”
I looked out at the trees along the roadside blazing up golden in the last of the sun. The wild roses are blooming and you could smell the perfume a hundred feet away. I could feel the heat on my back and hear Emma’s panting nearby. K’s skin is paper thin now and he’s covered in bruises and spots, crescent shaped, round, jagged. His socks were sagging and his right leg was deep maroon, the skin burning off in hundreds of flakes like Mama’s did. Several fingernails were so long they had bent over the tips like protective caps. He is a mass of scrofula. It’s horrid when the body starts to decay while we’re still alive, yet it was familiar to me, strangely comforting. I’ve known this and seen it in my dying parents. He’s only eleven years my senior.
“Oh, yes it’s sweet. Life is damned hard but it makes living all the sweeter for it. I hurt every single minute of every single day. I know your brother does too. Life is sweet, yes sir, but I tell you honey, I’m ready to go. I ain’t gonna hurry it but it’s around the corner. But they ain’t putting me in any box. I got claustrophobia bad and the idea of being in a casket with all that dirt on top me? Hell no. I’m going to be cremated just like S and our little dog and then I won’t fret about being buried. I know it’s crazy ’cause I’ll be dead, but I couldn’t stand it. No way.”
I told him about burying Sam’s ashes, and taking Dad’s to Texas, and he started talking again about the vault at Memorial Park. Twilight was descending and it was time for us to move on. I asked if I could assist him inside or if there was anything needing doing I could help with. No, he said, the chair works fine and he has a housekeeper coming every other day. “She’s a short thing and about as wide as she is tall. But she’s a godsend, I tell you.”
“Well, I’d like to come around and have another talk real soon if you’d like.” “Oh, would you? I’d appreciate that so much. I get lonely. And you don’t bullshit with me. Gimme another hug, honey, but don’t break anything.”
And as Emma and I headed home K shouted out something else I couldn’t hear. But when I turned to look back he was waving—wan and feebly waving at us with a smile on his face. I waved back, then turned and let out a tremendous sigh, wondered if that was my last sight of him alive, as the dog and I headed back. It was getting dark and my mind was thick with the incense of humanity.
It was indeed my last sight of him. I didn’t make the time to go.
