Keep On Keeping On

We had a moment last night, like a cooling breeze after a sweltering summer day. I won't give any details of our "moment," except to say that they didn't involve children, or laundry, or housework, or hospitals, that for a few glorious minutes we were able to push aside time and just BE. Afterwards, he stood in the glow of his computer screen, using his whole upper body to sign (his own invented sign language) along with Bette Midler's "The Rose." I laughed, and then started to sing with him. "It's the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance .... It's the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live."

I cannot say that I regret my choice to marry this man. In my naivety, back when I was twenty-one, fresh from college, with absolutely no idea what real life was like, I thought love would get us through anything. Besides, when I looked at the future, I saw life and death. I saw widowhood and single motherhood, and I knew it wouldn't be easy. But I'm a tough cookie, despite my sentimentalism, and I knew that I would make it. What I didn't realize is that there can be so many levels between "fully alive" and "dead," that death, for many people, is not the flipping of a switch, over and done, the soul transported in a flash to a better place. For some, like Mark, is a barrel of precious oil with a very slow leak. I step on the earth next to him, soggy with the runoff of his fading life, and know that there is nothing that can be done to stop it. I capture what I can -- words, pictures, memories -- so that when the barrel is empty, the essence of him will live on.

He's a fighter. He's not a saint! I'll tell you that upfront, but frankly ... is there really such a thing? I think anyone who lives within the same four walls as another human being eventually faces the fact that we are all marred in some way. And Mark is definitely human. But he is a fighter. He said the other day, as I drove him yet again to the hospital, "You've done this. You've had three babies." Yes, I experienced that kind of pain -- for three days, spread out over six years. And I wasn't all that brave either, taking the epidural the moment the medical staff would provide it, crying (with my second) when it failed to work effectively. I know what pain feels like, and I don't like it one bit! I can't imagine living with that body curling type of agony day in and day out, knowing that there is no hope of it ever going away this side of eternity. I'm not sure I would be able to go on. And yet he does. Some days, he truly amazes me.