Sometimes I have to look at my hands to remind myself I’m 82. I feel older, much older. It hasn’t always been like this. I’ve only felt this way since April.
I remember it was early April, because my daffodils were just beginning to bloom. I had worked so hard to get them ready in order to welcome spring properly. My mind was alive with images of the summer garden – of lawn chairs, lemonade, picnics, and ring-around the rosies with the great grandchildren. Our garden, his and mine, was a source of hard work and joy. The constant digging, picking, and watering offered physical exercise while allowing time for psychological restoration. In short, it was our fountain of youth; it kept us young and healthy. More importantly, however, it was our planned, peaceful utopia wherein we would spend our days elbow deep in tranquility and tulips.
My hands haven’t touched the garden since April. I look at my hands and hate how clean they are. How clean they have to be. I can’t come in his room unless I’m sterilized. As though my hands are extensions of the monitors and wires that line his bedroom – our bedroom. Don’t they know it had been growing in him for months while I touched him, unsterilized, ungloved? My hands were stained with dirt and still I touched him. If my hands, our garden’s dirt, could kill it I would burn the imprint of my hand across his neck. I would reach inside and sprinkle the soil from my hands and the dirt from my nails all around his lymph nodes. I could test the PH of his blood and fertilize him until he was strong again. I would prune again and again. If only these hands, these old, wrinkled hands, could bring him nourishment like they can my garden – our garden.
Thank goodness the alarm is going off. It’s time for his meds. These hands can work and in turn, offer my mind silence and rest. To be honest, I dread going into his room. He looks so pale and thin. A mere shadow of the man I have known for 62 years. As is our routine, when I pass him the pills he’ll smile and say “down the hatch.” I’ll ask him how he’s feeling, and he’ll respond with his painfully optimistic, “much better today.” I’ll want to scream NO YOU’RE NOT. STOP LYING TO YOURSELF, TO ME. YOU’RE DYING. Instead, I’ll just smile and nod. Then I’ll hold his hand and finish reading until he gratefully falls asleep, escaping the pain. These are my days. These are his days.
“Wake up Ben. It’s time for your medicine, love. ” It’s seems to be getting harder to wake him these days. I reach down and touch his cheek, “wake up sweetheart.”
“Huh? Wha…oh Winnie…” He clears his throat.
“Here Ben. Take your medicine, sweetheart.”
I lower my hand. The 2 pills gleam bright blue and green against my pale palm.
His hand remains motionless as his eyes travel upward. They stop on the pills. His gaze then shifts to my hands. When we met back in college, I loved how his deep brown eyes seemed to swallow the world in one gaze. They were so alive. They would look at you with a probing acuteness. As though he could size you up with one glance. He spoke little, and consequently his eyes never missed a thing. But since his illness, his eyes had faded. He would look at me and only me. His eyes stopped swallowing the room: the filtered sunlight through the window, the family photos that lined the opposite wall, his favorite and “lucky” baseball cap beside his bed – it was as though it took all the effort he had to look at one of anything. And now he was using that effort to look at my hands.
“What?” I whispered.
“I miss seeing dirt under your nails.”
I chuckled. “What do you mean?”
“From our garden. I loved seeing you fuss over your dirty nails. Even more, though, I loved how they stayed dirty. Winnie, I fell in love with you again and again over our 62 years together because you were never afraid of getting dirty – you chose to work alongside me.”
I smiled, forcing back the tears. I was about to give him one of the many clichéd expressions about how when he gets better we’ll work together again, but he interrupted me instead.
“Plant the tomatoes, Winnie. They’ll be late if you don’t get them started.”
“What are you talking about, Ben? I don’t care about the tomato plants. Let’s get you better first.”
“Plant the tomatoes, Winnie. I know how much you love cheese and tomato sandwiches. What will you do if you don’t have any from the garden?”
“You mean what will WE do…”
“Stop.” It was barely a whisper.
So this was it. My God…the charade of a miraculous cure had crumbled. I let my hand drop. The pills slipped through my fingers and fell to the floor. This time I let the tears come. No smiles. No masks. I let him see it all – the pain, the fear, and the crushing debilitation of powerlessness. I lowered myself to the chair and his hand reached up to touch my cheek. His hand burned hot against my wet flesh. His dry eyes were once again alive, and they swallowed me whole. He saw and understood everything.
He just let me cry. He shed no tears himself. Instead, he let me have my moment of pain without having to share his.
Finally he spoke up, “We sure did create a beautiful garden together Winnie. I can’t tell you how grateful I am that I shared it with you.”
“Me too, Ben.”
I knew this was goodbye. I had rehearsed this moment a million times in my head. I had thought about what I would say, and what I would ask forgiveness for. Yet, words and language seemed to have failed. Nothing could express what our eyes and fingers intertwined could communicate. I watched him until he fell asleep and then peacefully died.
I let myself have a good month of mourning. You know, not wash anything – including myself – and only eating what was brought over by concerned neighbors. Today, however, I awoke to the feeling of spring in the air. The sun was bright and inviting. The air seemed lighter somehow. It’s not spring, of course, but I guess “the feeling of spring” is simply that sense of hope and belief that after death, something more is coming. It’s different, to be sure, but still something to find joy in.
I was hesitant to be out gardening again – especially without Ben. His goofy, oversized, garden hat would always bounce along the hedge rows as he worked. I was alone. No hat. No soft whistle to keep me company. For 62 years I had never gardened without Ben. I felt as though I were betraying him as I lugged the hoe across the yard and picked up my spade. Death was everywhere. My beautiful peonies bushes were bone dry. The roses too were barely salvageable. My once straight rows of vegetables were crooked and picked over with weeds.
I very slowly dropped to my knees. The old familiar cracking and moaning of my protesting knees seemed to christen the affair. Even the humming birds seemed to have stopped by to act as witnesses for my communion with dirt, plant, and earth. I worked my spade, but I soon I dropped it; preferring instead the hot soil on my hands. The dirt slipping through my fingers felt as though an old friend had stopped by to lovingly shake my hand. I stabbed the earth again with my hands. I felt the dirt lodge into my nails. I smiled as I dropped the first tomato plant firmly in the earth.
