Monthly Archives: December 2018

Today like a few days ago he slept all night and until at least 2 this afternoon. He fluttered his eyes and muttered at me but said emphatically that he was not hungry. I stayed a few minutes and opened the curtains… but he remained safely ensconced in his sleep.

I left, and as soon as I was able to be alone, spent an hour or two grieving… for he is surely leaving. On his own time, in his own way, as it should be — but oh! it hurts.

Why? I miss him as he used to be when we tore around the back country, eating trout and having great adventures.

I miss his arms around me as he pretended to be brave ( oh yes I knew but it didn”t change the comfort). I miss his endless confidence in me, even as he tore up and down the cabin swearing because I had disappointed him in some incomprehensible-to-me way.

I grieve the man I have only truly come to know as he has been stripped of mindful abilities. This man is the one I wish I had always known, both of us with no more bluster, no pretences, artifice exhausted, just us alone with bare and raw souls.

Oh over the years and multitude of angst-filled fights, we got a lot of the way there, which is surely the object of every human interaction. I remember how when we met I began to believe the reason for sex was that we in our god-like existence had to learn to love the Other. And sex ( just the icing on the cake he said once when I was ill) was the learning tool…to help us.

And now he is happily and peacefully sleeping away. The timing, weeks, month, years, is up to him.

My gift now must be to let him go. And I think he will know if I am not ready. But he is so tired now he sleeps and sleeps.

“Oh that is boodiful,” he says stammering but fervently, on hearing certain music or touching colours and fabrics, or, once in awhile, touching my face.

Sometimes he stops in the middle of our time together, when he has been trusting me and responding, and asks, ” But who are you?”

And we have another moment of joy or grace.

I know his judgment when more able-minded, on seeing himself now would be that he should not be living this. “Take me out behind the barn and shoot me,”  he said when confronted with evidence of the devastation that this disease would bring.

But now, he is mostly happy, especially since now they let him lie in bed as long as he wants. When he does get up, mostly driven by hunger, sometimes coaxed by a caregiver (one does this trick of waving a banana under his nose!), he needs a good wash and a change of clothes, and then he is ready to eat and dance and explore a new world.

And appreciate the boodiful.