No Alarms And No Surprises, Please

A Heart That's Full Up Like A Landfill

Chemo bye-week.  Its quiet.  I am laying on the McCrosky mattress while Jenny is in the living room watching the Friends Reunion.  

If I'm honest, things are strange here.  Not bad strange, just strange. Maybe we are just a microcosm of our times.   

Snippets of the actor's voices waft into this room from the tv Jenny is watching.  Mixed with this are sounds of Abby's show that is playing in the kitchen, turned up loud enough to be heard over the whirr of the Kitchen-Aid, and the dog's nails clicking down the hardwoods as he leaves the room, each step sounding like a slim branch hitting a window as it sways in the wind.

Alexander cutting the Gordian knot
As I lay here collecting my thoughts, Jenny texts, asking if I think she should take more pain meds. Her pain is rising again.  I tell her I do think so if she is in pain, and suggest she discuss it with the palliative care doctor at her next visit.  I retrieve the meds and some water from the kitchen, and take them to the poor thing.  I sit next to her.  Crying, she tells me, "I want to grow old."  My response, given as I am rubbing her leg to comfort her, was as weak as always. "I know you do, dear.  I know you do."  A "there there" would have been as effective.  I hear these fears, sometimes just said in passing, sometimes as lamentations.  After 10 months, I still got nothing.

Then, I realize she is texting with el pinché.  She, noticing that I noticed, turns her phone screen away. I quietly get up and leave her to her oxy and her love drug, returning to McCrosky, the most unbelievably comfortable bed.  She texts me "I am so scared," and this whole gestalt of love and pain, betrayal and trust just gets to be a bigger and more tangled Gordian knot.

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