FINAL ACTS

Fridays are hard for me.  Gwen died on a Friday night.  A week and a day before she died, she asked the nurse "How long do I have left?"  The nurse said that she wasn't God and didn't know the answer to that, but maybe Thanksgiving, Christmas, the New Year.  I recall being stunned to hear those words.  The nurse then asked Gwen whether she was at peace with that.  In her inimitable, understated manner, Gwen said, "Of course I'm at peace with that. I've had almost five years to get ready.  I'm OK as long as John and the kids are."  The next day I reminded her of that conversation and asked whether she was still at peace.  Again she said she was fine with it as long as the kids and I were.  I thought I was.  Events a week later would prove me wrong.  I thought I knew what it would be like to be without the one who had been at the center of my life for all those years.  How could anyone be prepared for that?  In spite of books and articles I had read, lectures I heard, even the first-hand accounts of others whose loved ones had died I was unable to take in the fact that my pal, my beloved, my perfect partner,  would soon die.  This poem is about that:

FINAL ACTS

She awoke from her afternoon nap

and asked when we were going home.

We are home, I assured her

see, here’s our family picture, the TV,

the crystal bell from your folks’ 50^th.

This time it was different.

No, she said, I’m at the train station

I’ll soon be going on a trip

Get my suitcase.

Oh, I said.

A little later she wanted to know

when we were leaving for the cemetery.

Cemetery?  Whose funeral is it?

Mine, she replied.

Oh, I said again.

I couldn’t, or wouldn’t,

Or simply chose not to

Hear what she was telling me

In that final act of love.

On that sunny, early November afternoon,

I couldn’t imagine what lay ahead.

I remember everything she said

yet I never heard a word of it.

John A. Bayerl, January 22, 2011

And maybe it's OK that those of us who dare to love deeply prefer the anesthesia of denial to the cold comfort of knowing.  I recently read a quote from Thomas Merton:  "As soon as you know it, you no longer believe it, at least not in the same way as you know it."  I marked the page where I found that quote with a marker that the funeral home provided.  On it is the picture of Gwen with the happy smile and straw hat.  Each time I move that bookmark I find that I have to kiss her picture.  Maybe if I were to stop doing that I would have to stop believing something.  I'm not sure what it is that I'm not ready to accept, what I am sure of is that I'm not ready to do it yet.