What Comes Next and How to Like It

by Abigail Thomas

  Go Figure

  Catherine and Tim and the boys moved from Philadelphia to Woodstock. They bought an eccentric old farmhouse with five acres of woods. Chuck and I went to their closing and then took them out to dinner at the Red Onion. “Why is it you’re here for all my family’s momentous occasions?” Tim asked Chuck, but I don’t think he needed an answer.

  It took Tim a long time to get past Chuck and Catherine’s ­affair. He and Catherine had been going out, but then Tim moved to Philadelphia and the two of them were taking a break. But it was a break, not a breakup, and Tim was angry with Chuck. Now we have Thanksgivings together, and birthdays, and Tuesday night movies at my house.

  Right after Catherine moved, Chuck moved too. He found a house in Woodstock with a nice yard and a big studio.

  My Eyes

  My peripheral vision was tested recently. One eye at a time stared into inky blackness, and I had to hit a buzzer whenever I saw tiny flashes of light, like stars disappearing and reappearing in another, more distant part of the cosmos. Both eyes did fine. Then the doctor stared into my eyeballs, seeing nothing out of the ordinary; my left eye has the beginnings of a cataract, no big deal, although it made me feel old. The day before, while driving on the Mass Pike to see my daughter Jennifer, I noticed that if I looked at the right red taillight of the car in front of me, I couldn’t see the left. It was alarming. Blinking didn’t help. Rubbing my eyes didn’t help. Willpower didn’t help. I’d never lost control of a body part before except during childbirth. It kept amazing me that I couldn’t fix it. The situation lasted about twenty minutes. When I got to the Prudential Center exit, I called Chuck and told him. “Something sort of interesting happened to me,” I began, then described it. He called me back twenty minutes later. “Is one side weaker than the other? Is half of your face sagging? Do you feel tingling?” No on all counts. “Then I think you’re okay for now,” he said. “But call your doctor.”

  I didn’t tell anyone else because I was on a mission of mercy to Jamaica Plain to help Jen with her five-year-old twins, both of whom have asthma. This time it was Violet. She had been coughing and wheezing, and Jen was afraid she would wind up in the ER again. I would take care of Ralphie, he of the room-brightening but seldom seen smile. I looked forward to hours of Lego. The next morning I finally told Jen about my episode of partial blindness and she insisted I call my doctor and my doctor insisted I go to the ER, where they found no sign of a stroke, thank god. Not knowing what else to do with me, they sent me to an ophthalmologist, who thought perhaps I had had an ocular migraine. The doctors were puzzled but not overly concerned. They prescribed an aspirin a day, which I now regard as a sacrament.

  Two nights later I woke up in Jen’s bed (she slept with the twins) experiencing an electric shock, as if I had just stuck my finger in a light socket. My skin tingled for minutes. Oh my god, I thought, I’m shorting out! The next morning I wasted no time telling Jen, who immediately looked this phenomenon up and discovered it not uncommon, that our bodies often give us electric shocks, sometimes to the tune of dozens a day. It’s not dangerous. We are electric after all, which is hard to remember because inside we are so wet. I breathe in and out, thinking we are really machines, fleshy machines, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. Why am I not aware of this more often, us being such miracles, so well put together? Alive!

  An Entry from Jennifer’s Blog

  Last Sunday was Father’s Day. Catherine and I were catching up on the phone this morning and I mentioned that Ralphie has been talking a lot about wishing he had a dad. Catherine said, without missing a beat, “Well, Augie and Freddy wish they had a unicorn.”

  My Old Dog

  Harry is beginning to have trouble climbing the stairs, and spends some nights on two pillows by the pellet stove in the living room. He is still having a good time, he loves to eat, he loves his belly rubbed. Will you make it through this winter, my old friend? I wonder, and refuse to believe the voice that says no.

  Then he develops a deadly sounding cough, and at my own checkup the doctor hears something in my heart that wasn’t there last year and my blood pressure is no longer 120 over 70, far from it. The doctor can hear the murmur only when I’m sitting up, which might be good, since I love to nap. Still, I realize, making my echocardiogram appointment, I’m mortal.

  When I take Harry to the vet the doctor says he has a “pretty significant heart murmur,” which worries me, and he has his own appointment for an echocardiogram. He’s an old dog. So am I. This morning I am waiting to hear our results. There are two clocks ticking but not in unison. Tick tick tock tock. I am sitting in my big chair and Harry is asleep on his cushion.

  It turns out Harry and I are both if not exactly fine, not at death’s door either. Harry has to take a diuretic, and my doctor pronounces my condition “nothing earth-shattering.” The name is horrible: “mild mitral regurgitation,” but I can live with it.

  I still have to quit smoking. I impulsively dropped what I hoped would be my last cigarette into a cup of cold coffee and applied a nicotine patch to my shoulder. Then I sat there in my chair. My daughter Jennifer called and we discussed birthday presents for the twins (trucks, dresses, and Legos); I talked to my son, Ralph, about singing lessons for his daughter Justine’s birthday; I drank some orange juice and ate some carrots and watched a vampire movie and then took myself off to bed early. It wasn’t even nine o’clock.

  I settled in bed with my three pillows and my three dogs, the curtains pulled, door closed, fan on, lights off, everything the way I like it, but this time my heart was pounding in my throat. Out of the blue came a fact: this body of mine, the one in pink pajamas, the one hanging on to her pillow for dear life, these pleasant accommodations in which I have made my home for seventy years, it’s going to die. It will die, and the rest of me, homeless, will disappear into thin air. I could actually hear my heart now, pounding.

  But hard on the heels of this came a worse bit of news. My beautiful children, now in the middle of their lives, are going to grow old and they are going to die too. If I could somehow come back in thirty years, I might not even recognize them—white-haired, frail, they would be elderly strangers. When that thought struck, I felt an awful meaninglessness, and then nothing, and that absence of feeling was the worst thing I’ve ever felt.

  The next morning the dogs woke up early, and we headed downstairs, all except Harry, who slept in. I opened the door, and Rosie and Carolina raced into the dark, noses to the ground, tails waving in the air, tracking whatever creatures had crisscrossed our yard during the night. When Harry finally got up, he barked at the top of the stairs, calling for me to wait for him at the bottom before he made his cautious way down. Before he went out, he checked everybody’s bowl. Harry’s an optimist. I love this old dog. Off he ambled into the yard, tail held high, head held high. Peeing on everything perpendicular.

  Cold and gray. A long day ahead, and I don’t know how to fill it. I’m not painting, I’m not writing. I’m depressed. Morbid. I measured the water and the coffee and plugged the pot in and worried about the day stretching ahead.

  Then I had a bit of luck. Yesterday I discovered a bowl of plums in the icebox that had sat there forgotten for a month, and I took the bowl into the backyard and tossed the plums one by one onto the icy grass near the woods where I’ve seen deer. A dozen dusky purple plums, past their prime: an offering. And this morning when I went out to look the frozen grass was bare, and I was filled with a joy I can’t get to the bottom of.

  Years Later I Hear of a Proposal

  This morning Catherine tells me that the day after Rich’s accident, Chuck asked her to marry him. “I don’t know what he was thinking,” she says. Later that afternoon Chuck tells me that the day after Rich’s accident he asked Catherine to marry him. “She said no,” he tells me.

  I don’t know what to do with this information. It’s like being served a meal you didn’t order and couldn’t possibly
eat, and all I want to do is send it back to the kitchen.

  Why on earth are they telling me this on the same day? When I ask them later, they are both surprised.

  Chronology

  I hate chronological order. Not only do I have zero memory for what happened when in what year, but it’s so boring. This comes out of me with the kind of vehemence that requires a closer look, so I scribble on the back of a napkin while waiting for friends to show up at Cucina and it doesn’t take long to figure it out. The thought that this happened and then this happened and then this and this and this, the relentless march of event and emotion tied together simply because day follows day and turns into week following week becoming months and years reinforces the fact that the only logical ending for chronological order is death.

  Hep C

  Chuck had an appointment with his liver doctor. He sees her every six months to check on the progress of the disease. We know he has stage four cirrhosis, but so far he is holding his own. He didn’t call when he got home, which he usually does. I called him.

  “What did she say?” I asked. I’m not shy about this.

  “She says I have three years.” Chuck laughs.

  “What?” I say.

  “Just kidding,” he says and changes the subject.

  I call Catherine.

  “Will you please ask him what’s going on?”

  But he’s already called Catherine and told her it was all a joke.

  Rather Die

  Chuck calls to say he’s decided to become a geriatric nurse so he can take care of me in what he refers to as my rapidly approaching old age.

  “And this friendship will finally be consummated,” he says, which I guess is nice of him, but all I can visualize are bedpans and gruel.

  “I think I’d rather die,” I say.

  Hospice

  I decided to take the training for becoming a hospice volunteer. I need something to make me feel useful. I told Chuck.

  “Just in time,” said Chuck.

  “Ha ha ha,” I said.

  I want to make Death a member of my family. I don’t want it to arrive as a stranger.

  The Information

  During the last seventy-two hours of a person’s life, there will be a discoloration of toes and kneecaps, a marked coolness of hands and feet. There will be mental confusion, and a mottling of the skin, which will start at the feet and progress up the legs. When mottling reaches the upper thighs, death is imminent. Two minutes after the heart stops beating, the person is still aware. This is what happens during the course of a natural death, an easy death.

  There are other scenarios—a bleed-out, for instance. If there is bleeding from the mouth and nose, we are to cover the blood with dark towels. There will be a large quantity of blood, and we want to spare the family the sight of it. If there is an internal bleed-out from a tumor in the esophagus, say, or a tumor in the lungs, there will be no visible blood. The instructor says if this is happening, we hold the patient’s hand and wait. Death will take only a few minutes.

  Hold the patient’s hand and wait. The simplicity is so moving. It strikes me that the physical details of the dying body are as intimate and predictable as those of the body making love.

  The Training

  Twelve of us sit around a big table. We are given a bad diagnosis and twelve squares of paper. On the first three we are to write the names of three people dear to us. On the next three, things we cherish. On the next three, stuff we enjoy. On the last three, things about ourselves we value. We spread the squares in front of us neatly on the table. Then we are given six months to live.

  The instructor describes the disease’s progress month by month. As each month passes, and our condition worsens, we must tear up two pieces of paper. The instructor comes around the table and collects the torn pieces in a shopping bag. By the end of the six months, when we are too weak to sit up, too weak to eat, when we have lost so much weight that our clothes hang off our bodies, we each have two pieces of paper left. The instructor comes around the table and from us she takes one of the last two pieces, tears it up, and drops it in her shopping bag. The room is quiet. We are each left with one piece of paper. Then she tells us to tear that up too.

  Tirade Against “He Passed Away”

  You never hear it said, “He is passing away.” It is always a fait accompli. “He passed.” How I hate it. As if the body had nothing to do with it, as if the body hadn’t even been around at the time but off playing Scrabble somewhere, or having a drink while the tenant moved out. Dying is the body’s call, the shutting down of services is the body’s last bit of business. Give credit where credit is due. Honor the process. Consider the simple dignity of “She is dying.” Or “He died.”

  It is interesting to think of it as a verb.

  III

  THE WILDERNESS OF NOT KNOWING

  Death of Dogs

  Of the three dogs I once had, only my old hound Carolina survives. She runs around the yard early in the morning, following scents in circles, occasionally lifting her head to howl. When I bring her in, she looks relieved and sleeps for the rest of the day.

  Harry, my elderly beagle, died first and peacefully on his pillow in front of the fire. My grandson Joe was living here then. Harry was failing, and Joe volunteered to sleep on the couch, ready to alert me if anything changed. When Harry’s breathing stopped being labored and became intermittent, Joe woke me. It was six in the morning. We sat down on the floor by Harry’s pillow. “You’re a good dog, Harry,” we said, stroking his fur. He died half an hour later. His body relaxed, and when his tongue lolled from his mouth it was gray. Gray.

  Joe buried him in the garden, and planted a weeping cherry, which is weeping again this spring.

  Then Rosie, my favorite (I admit I had a favorite), died in my arms last November. I knew she was dying, I’d known it all day, and I carried her upstairs to bed, where we lay all afternoon, and into the night. Occasionally she turned her head to look at me. “I’m right here,” I said. Now and then she would lap a little water from a bowl. She tried desperately to get out of bed when she had to pee, but collapsed on the rug. I picked her up, and we lay together until quarter to ten, when she let out a dreadfully human groan, and I held her and held her and when it was done I was old.

  Rosie

  I think of Rosie all the time. She is buried where I can see her grave from the kitchen window, a slab of bluestone covered with pebbles and flowers and a little plastic angel my friend Roland brought over. I miss her. Hello, my girl, I say, but I don’t think she hears. Hello, Rosie, I say anyway, Hello my darling. Joe planted a rose tree for her, and it has started to bloom.

  Years ago Jen took a picture of my Rosie, and gave it to me framed for a birthday. Her muzzle was already going white, but she is looking up at me with that look only she had, the look that meant “You are mine and we both know it.” I remember thinking one day this would be all I’d have left of her. I keep the photo in my kitchen window, and looking at it brings Rosie right back, although loss comes along for the ride.

  She used to sleep on the cushion behind my back in the big red chair, like a warm living shawl. When another dog walked by, she growled. After she died, I stopped sitting there and moved the chair to another room.

  I like to remember her last meal was roast beef from Woodstock Meats. Sarah had been staying with me, and she brought it home for Rosie. She ate it all, from Sarah’s hand.

  Alcohol

  Cooper is one of my two new dogs. My daughter Jen found him for me. He is a bluetick hound from Kentucky. He is dignified and solitary. A friend said he looks as though he might have been a historian in another life.

  Cooper wakes up at 5:30 A.M., you can set your watch by him. He makes moaning sounds that develop into howls, then Carolina and Daphne (my newest hound rescue) jump off the bed, and all three mill around my bedroom barking until I get up. I
brush my teeth, make my coffee, feed the dogs, and let them out. They crowd the dog door, scrambling and shouldering each other out of the way, then run noisily into the yard.

  Until two weeks ago I then would find cigarettes and disappear into my studio with a beer. Not just any beer, a beauty of a Belgian beer, a full meal of a beer, Rochefort 10. I told myself drinking early stimulates my imagination, frees me from care, and spreads my drinking throughout the day, thereby lessening its effect. I would then drink another beer and continue to paint. Alcohol, I reasoned, deadens pain, the dread I felt most of the time. By ten in the morning I would be sloshed.

  I thought nobody knew how much and how early I was drinking, but the cumulative effect began to be obvious. When Chuck and I went to Cucina, me already half in the bag, I’d have a Manhattan or two. I told myself it dulled my worry, or else it enhanced what I didn’t allow myself to feel, whichever was appropriate to the moment. When I ordered a third, Chuck frowned.