Hospice Thoughts

From Lynda's Retrospective...

Well, today was certainly one of the toughest days I've had in this whole process, but at last we seem to be coming to some sort of conclusion. There are so many details that I could relate but it all seems so irrelevant at the moment, I'll confine myself to observing that in spite of my efforts to do what's right for Lynda, I can't seem to deliver on my promise to make the end of her life more comfortable.

To be clear, I am not mired in grief, hence these feelings are not retributive but they are borne on the wave of guilt than has somehow been generated in the course of our lifelong resonance, Lynda and me, so that now I feel the guilt she felt for abandoning her mother, even though that is only the hyperbole that she sold me through my youth to shield me from the inevitability that is life and, of course, death.

I was in this manner protected from this inevitability (the truth) when I came to this final stage, thinking I would be able to do whatever it took to make her comfortable and remember that through it all she was still being loved and cared for.

It is no wonder, then, that I stumbled right out of the gate and failed to protect her from the saviors, those who could not nor would not face that inevitability and therefore sought to sell their chimeras as hope and light, as a salvation from pain and death. Sell those falsehoods to her they did, and in concert with alchemists and necromancers they succeeded in raising her from the dead (with her complicity, of course), selling them, in effect, what remained of her life for a handful of beans.

Now of course the beans have failed to work their magic, and though the healers did as they thought was right and sacrificed first the white chicken and then the black one, they way they'd been taught to restore the non-living, it did not actually work on Lynda. Ironically, the saviors are interested only in saving their own immortal souls, and of course, the alchemist and necromancers are only pretending to heal in order to protect the illusion that is their livelihood; they have all, in fact, already stolen her away, and the eyes into which I peer for life and the ears into which I pour my affirmations of lifelong love are closed and shuttered already; battened down for the heavy storm that approaches.

She is still not ready for the maelstrom, now, I think but perhaps only because I've already truly failed her, and all that is left, as she said to me today, is for me to "walk out and never return". I won't do that, of course, but it won't change her feelings of abandonment because, at the end of the day, so to speak, that's just what I am doing. I could say that it's what I'm forced to do, but I know and others will too, that in fact I am giving up, perhaps just to save myself, and the selfishness embodied in that resignation is appalling to me. Of course I have to give up, but didn't I say I won't? That is the difficult part to face: I haven't the will to face this fully. She knows that. That's what she meant. I will walk away.

By this I mean that I have not been able to devote the necessary hours and days to her care and well being. I've been able to see her once or twice a day, but to really follow through on my promise to Lynda, I should really have taken her into our home as soon as Pierre moved out. We could have gotten a hospital bed and I could have arranged for a day care nurse and assumed the night time responsibilities myself. That's what I could have done, should have done, and no doubt, this is what Lynda thinks I should have done and failing to have done this is the same as failing to fulfill my promise.

After all, she did buy the house for us, so in a way, it was her due. And yet, when it came down to it, the room is used for storage, and I never faced even the possibility of discussing it with Valery because I didn't want to put her in the position of having to say yes and resenting me and Lynda for the morbid imposition. I didn't even want Valery to have to think that the decision was hers because that would have inflicted the very same guilt I am now resolving.

The fact is, I love both Lynda and Valery. But Valery is my partner and to her I owe far more than the compound debt I acquired from my Mother. It is, alas, but another of my compromises with the fabric of life surrounds and envelopes me; I yield, as to the howling wind that erases my words ere they are spoken. Nobody's listening, eh? Might as well be mute.