Friday, February 26, 2016

#SOL16: Language

Toward the Light (M.A. Reilly, Massachusetts, 2014)

I.

It's later in the evening. The bedside lamp shines soft against the blinds. Sometimes I can almost imagine that I am with Rob before the diagnosis, before the end was closing in. I watch as he angles one arm above his head and notice that he looks deep in thought. How many times have I seen that look?

And so I am surprised when he asks, "What language do you speak here?"

Or at least that's what I think he says. Partial lines, single words, sounds--these comprise his speech. And even when I understand the phrases, the context is often obscure, unknown.  The single exception is in times of high stress, such as when he feels pain. Then, Rob re-finds our common language. For example, a few days ago a nurse was finishing a procedure on Rob and it hurt him.

"Mary Ann!" he yelled. "Mary Ann."

I was so caught up in soothing him and hating that he had any pain that I failed to notice what Jack noticed. Rob was lucid, cogent. I realized he was right. Rob, Jack, the nurse, and I were engaged in a conversation.

II.

A few hours later I watch as Rob takes the pencil-like sponge from my hand and uses it to simulate drawing a rectangle on the blanket that is covering him.

"Ten inches this way. Twelve inches that way. Ten more and another twelve. There. A screen. Now I can watch the game."

At a more cogent time, Rob told me to search for him at Star 50 after he dies. All of that day I thought about the language from Walt Whitman at the close of Song of Myself,
"...Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged,
Missing me one place, search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you."
Very early this morning, Rob looked up at me and said, "I'm so glad you found me."   I look at him now asleep, his breathing a mixture of rapid shallow breaths and breaths with pauses so large you could park a universe. My husband is composing worlds to help him leave the place he is forgetting to get to a place he must soon go to.  A place, where he will wait for me.

6 comments:

  1. Comes to mind one of my favorite Whitman poems:

    When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer

    When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
    When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before
    me,
    When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and
    measure them,
    When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with
    much applause in the lecture-room,
    How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
    Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
    In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
    Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

    For all of us a times comes to directly experience the stars -- from which we have come.

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    Replies
    1. Yes a beautiful poem, Bill. A favorite of ours too.

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  2. So happy to have found this......you are truly brilliant.

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    Replies
    1. Thank you Erica got all you said in your email. Appreciative to know what Rob was thinking.

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