“Did I ever tell you that I love you?”
“You never needed to.”
“Well, I do.”
“I love you, too, Silvia.” She stood up and smoothed her slacks, “Come on now. It’s been a lovely visit and I don’t want to let you go, but let’s get you home anyway, before I have you locked in my tower.”
We walked arm and arm back to the manor.
Later, on the way home, Oliver said, “I’m glad you had a nice visit.”
“It was the very best,” I answered honestly.
I knew I probably wouldn’t see Sandra again in this lifetime, but that was all right with both of us. Some people you meet and they’re your friend for a day. Some you meet and you never really know at all. And then there are those who get caught inside your soul and stay there forever. That was Sandra. We’d shared secrets, smiles and tears over a period of fifty two years. Sandra would always be a part of me and I would always be a part of her.
I could not have asked for a better friends or a better life, but there’s a nasty trick about living. It happens at its own pace and in its own way and you never, never know what’s coming next. So you keep running and running to keep up with it and most people get tired. Others don’t get tired. They just get overtaken by the road.
And that is what happened to us, I am afraid. It seemed like it wasn’t long after we arrived back at the wood that the aches and pains started in and Oliver and I began to dawdle. We ignored it for as long as we could. We did some travelling around Europe and did our best to keep throwing dirt at each other, but the truth was that sitting in bed together with a good book became more appealing than dashing about.
“Silvia,” He called to me the morning he turned eighty, “Come sit in the grass with me.”
“We might never be able to get up.”
He laughed over his shoulder. His hair was all salt and pepper, his face was aged, but his dark eyes were the same as ever, always smiling. “Please, Love? Take the chance? Alexander can help us up when he gets here if we get stuck.”
“He’ll throw out his back and be on the ground with us!”
Oliver grinned and held out his hand, “Come on, it’s my birthday! Give me my wish! Sit down with me and let’s watch the wind blow!”
I took his hand and sat beside him, under his arm, like we’d been doing for sixty-five years.
“I love you, Just Silvia,” He told me.
“I love you, too, Oliver,” I answered, “Happy birthday, Sweetheart.”
“It is happy. I still have you.”
So we sat. Alex and Lucy arrived shortly after and we celebrated the twin’s birthday quietly in the wood.
And before I knew it, all of us were old.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Five years later I was making pies. They were strawberry pies. I had an over eager strawberry patch that summer and only so many things I could do with them, so I had decided to make pies and was going to take them into town and give them to the Madison’s, who were a nice family that had too many children and not enough money for pies. There I was making the pies when I realised I was being watched. I looked over and saw Oliver grinning at me from the doorway.
“I love it when you look at me like that,” I returned the smile.
“You know something, Just Silvia?”
“I know a lot of things. More than you do, certainly.”
He chuckled, “Well, I don’t know if you know this or not but you are every bit as beautiful right now as you were the day I first laid eyes on you.”
“Are you going to hit me in the head with a ball?”
His eyes were twinkling, “Best shot I ever made. I’m serious, though, Sil. You’re just as beautiful as you were then. What a life. If I had a pecker that still worked when I wanted it to I’d steal you off to the back of the house and have my way with you.”
I giggled and tossed the strawberries with sugar in a bowl.
He was quiet, just staring at me.
“Oliver, you’re making me all fluttery.” I grinned.
“I always loved looking at you, you know that? It’s been the greatest joy of my life being able to look at you every single day.”
“Are you feeling sentimental?”
“Yes. Very.” He was quiet for a long time. When he spoke his voice was low, “Will you play a game with me? “
“What game?”
“You do what I say. I’d like it if you turned around.”
It was an old game and one we had not played for a very long time.
“You’ve gone gobstoppers, Old Man,” I told him.
“Please?” He asked.
I did.
“Now put your hands flat on the table.”
I did.
“Now close your eyes.”
I did.
I could hear him coming up slowly behind me. His arms wrapped around my middle and lifted my hands to my belly, holding them together beneath his own. He buried his face in my neck and breathed me in. For a moment, I was seventeen again, lost in ecstasy in the arms of the boy I was going to marry sooner than I thought.
“Marry me?” He whispered.
I nodded, “Yes, Sweetheart.”
I loved him still all those long years later with just the same passion I had the first time he'd asked me. He could still take me to that sacred place with only a touch.
We stood there together with our eyes closed in a place where age and time don’t exist, where there were no distances between us, in that place where we were safe and loved and could only get to with each other. It was the place we were always meant to be. We were together. We were home.
After a time, he spoke.
“Silvia,” He said softly, “I’m dying.”
It was like a brick to the face. My knees buckled. I tried to move, to turn around, but he held my arms with his hands and pulled me against him. Even in his eighties he was still so strong he could overpower me with no effort. He had never done that before. He had never restrained me, but right then he wouldn’t let me turn. He was whispering in my ear in calm, even voice, saying words I didn’t want to hear.
“Rubbish!” I told him.
“The pain I’ve been having…it’s cancer, Love, and it’s a bad.” He was holding me as if I were not even struggling.
“No,” I said quietly, “No. No…”
He just kept talking.
“No! No! No!” I shook my head, “No!”
He droned on.
“No! No! No!” I was trying to kick him in the shins now, trying to stomp on his feet. Anything to get away from those words. “I’m dying…it’s cancer, Love…” I wanted loose. I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to hear anything he had to tell me. I didn’t want to know. “Shut up!”
“I saw the pictures today. I’ve been telling you that I was visiting Alexander, but the truth is he was taking me to see doctors. The cancer’s in my liver and my kidneys. It’s been there awhile. I’ve only got one kidney working and it’s not doing so well. The cancer’s in my lungs, too. They showed me, Sil. It’s there. It’s a small amount, but…”
“Stop this, Oliver!” I demanded, “Shut your noise!”
“I can’t stop it! If I could I would! It’s time you knew! I’ve been living with this for weeks!” His voice was rising, “I don’t want to leave you. Not ever, but it doesn’t seem I’m going to have a choice. It’s gone too far!”
“They can cure cancer!” I yelled.
“They can, but not this! It’s too late! I’m stage four, Love!” He struggled against me now, keeping me from going wild, “If I accepted treatment I’ll be sicker than I would be without it and I’ll just die the same!”
“I want a second opinion!”
“That was the third, Silvia! It was the third opinion! Do you think Alexander would allow me to give up so quickly? They all said the same thing! I didn’t get help in time! I didn’t have the normal symptoms, not in time…” There was desperation in his tone, “I’m eighty
-five years old! It’s just what it is, Sil! It’s what happens to everyone! We’re born, we grow old and then we cross the veil…”
“NO!” I screamed. Finally able to break free, I whirled on him and knocked him back with my fists. Strawberries flew off the table and scattered across the floor, the bowl shattered, “No goddammit! Are you listening to me, Oliver? I said NO!” I shoved him again. Not in sixty-eight years of marriage had I as much as raised my fist or, heaven forbid, actually hit him.
He stumbled backward, more out of shock than concussion.
“NO!” I shouted again.
It wasn’t even that I was angry. The truth is that I was not angry at all. How could I be angry with my husband for being ill? He hadn’t decided to go and get cancer. He was still active. He was still funny and good. He still had people who loved and needed him. He hadn’t chosen this! How could I punish him for something he had no choice in the matter of? No, I was not angry. I was terrified. I had met Death once long ago and he hadn’t even paused to give consideration to me. He’d snatched my baby right out from inside my body. He didn’t stop to watch me suffer, he never heard me scream and sob and beg him to be merciful to Cara. Death didn’t pay attention as Oliver worried and prayed for me while I lay unconscious, bleeding in a hospital, or care that he’d left that young man to mourn a daughter that he would never know. Death has no eyes and no ears, Lady Folia had said, but I knew his secret.
Ice, Death is made of, and if he couldn’t see or hear me, I had to find a way to shatter him.
“You took my baby,” I slammed my hands against the counter, “But you will not take my husband! You will hear me! You will see me! You will take your horrid, stunning blue sky and you will leave us alone!”
Oliver was staring at me with wide eyes, but he was silent. He let me scream and throw things around the kitchen. He let me kick a plastic bucket until my foot went through it. And then he let me run outside into the garden and scream some more.
“Where are you? Show yourself again, you immense and filthy coward! I’ll kill you! You’ll not have him, Death, you stealer of babies!” I picked up a shovel and swung it through the air, letting it go and skid harmlessly through the grass. “You’ll hear me! I met you once and you took what you wanted, but not this time! This time it’s not just a wee baby you have to spirit away! Defenceless she was! No, this time it’s Oliver Dickinson and his wife and we’ll have nothing of you! You will leave him alone or you will take us both together! Do you hear me, Death? You bloody, stinking, foul coward!” I was screaming so loudly that it hurt my throat, “You can’t have him and leave me! You’ll take both or no one at all!”
Thoughts were pouring through my mind. I had known Oliver was sick. I had known it for a long time. It was me who first noticed he was slowing down, sleeping late into the day. Age, I told myself, he deserved the rest. But then he caught a bad cough he couldn’t get rid of, so bad I saw him one day cough up blood. It was the same day I noticed his eyes were turning dark yellow where they should have been white. He went to see a doctor, had a million tests run and hadn’t gotten any better, but he’d kept telling me they hadn’t found anything seriously wrong other than scar tissue in the liver.
“You lied to me! You said that there was nothing wrong!” I roared and turned on him. “Why did you lie to me?”
His expression was the same as the one our sons would wear when they were little boys and I would lose my temper on them. He looked very much like a child that had been scolded and felt sincerely bad about it. It was odd, that look on an old man’s face.
Oliver sat on the stoop and sighed, “Because, Silvia, I couldn’t say it. I didn’t have the courage. I couldn’t face it. How could I ask you to?”
“I'd have faced it with you, Oliver! You fool!” Tears were pouring down my face, “We would have faced it together! We would have done it together! All our lives we’ve done everything together and now you have the nerve to think that you can go get cancer and die on your own? You shared this with whom? Alexander! Brilliant!” I couldn’t see. I started toward him, but I tripped over something and fell. I ignored the pain in my elbow as I pulled myself to my knees, “I’m your wife! You are not going anywhere! You are not going anywhere without me!”
Oliver came across the garden and put his arms around me. He made sure like he always had that I was not hurt.
“Now, Silvia, please,” He wiped the dirt off my arms, “I need you to be strong. We’ll get through it together like we always have. I’ll love you still even more after I’m gone. That’s part of the magic.” He was crying, “Please, Silvia, I’m afraid. You’ve always been the strong one. I couldn’t have done a thing without you. It was always you, Sil. Always you. You kept me going. I couldn’t have lived without you and, Love, I don’t have the courage to die a decent death without you, either. I need you. Don’t you know it? I have always needed you and I need you now more than ever.”
I buried my head into his shoulder, “Why?” I clung to his arms. My body wracked with sobs. “Why you? I don’t want to be left behind! I don’t want to be without you! I can’t! Seventy years we’ve had and it is not enough! Why couldn’t we have gone off the road and into the water like your grandparents? Why, Oliver? Why would Death take you away from me now? Oh, Ollie…I need you, too!”
Oliver and I had been together in that garden and laughed innumerable times. We had run naked through it; we had conceived a child there. We had sat in it and watched the sky too many nights to try to remember. We had chased our children and played with our dog in it. We’d left sweets for elves and talked with trees and seen our daughter married there. That garden was our haven. It had always been our little paradise.
That day was the first time in sixty-eight years of being married and living in the wood that the two of us had ever had any inclination to just sit in the grass and cry together.
When we were calm he told me what his wishes were.
“I know we didn’t see this coming,” He seemed so together when he said it, as if he was talking about the pipes bursting or the car crapping out in the dead of winter, “But it’s just something we have to deal with. We have a lot to work out. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay. Hopefully a good while. We’ll have to see.”
“I can’t imagine you not being here,” I could feel my bottom lip begin to quiver.
“Silvia,” He looked me straight in the eye, “I will be here. Don’t you know it? I promised you, Love. Even if I’m gone for a little bit I’ll always come for you. The grave can’t stop me from that. Nothing can. It’s you and me, Sil. You and me and that will never, never change. Have faith in that like you always have because it’s as true as me loving you.” I nodded and stared hard at the ground, forcing myself not to cry. Oliver continued, “I don’t want to tell the children I’m ill. Not until we have to. It’ll upset them and I don’t need the stress, to be honest, and neither do you.” He was absently peeling a blade of grass, “I’ve spoken to the oncologist about treatment and it’s out of the question. I’m too old for a kidney transplant. That was the first thing Xander said, ‘Take mine!’, but neither of us is in any condition for a surgery like that. Besides, my liver is shot to hell. I don’t want chemotherapy just to be sicker than I would have been without it. It won’t buy me that much time. The cancer’s too advanced.”
“You’ll need pain management,” I said quietly, still staring at the ground, “I don’t know much, but I know cancer is not kind.”
“Toward the end I want you to hire a nurse and let her take care of all of that. I don’t want you having to wipe my arse when I’m too ill to help myself nor will I have Lucy doing it.” I nodded. Oliver put his finger under my chin and tilted my head up so I was looking him in the face, “For the record, Sweetie, I had a better life than I’d ever dreamed. There is not a day I would change. Not a decision I wouldn’t make the same. There is not a thing that I regret. My days were filled with love and joy because I had you with me. I owe all of th
at to you.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“Yeah, I do,” He rubbed my neck, “Now listen to me. This is very important, mind. You can make any decision you want once I can’t make it for myself, but you have to promise me this. I do not want to leave the wood. I do not want to be put into any hospital, no matter how bad I become. I need you to promise me that. I need you to promise me that I can spend whatever time I’m allowed here in the place I love the most with the people I love the most. That would be here with you, Alex and Lucy. Promise me you won’t move me until I’m gone.”
“I swear it, Sweetheart. I wouldn‘t have it any other way.”
“Thank you,” He answered softly, “And, please, Love, I don’t want anybody trying to save me, either. No great lengths to prolong what can’t be avoided. My name’s been written down and when it’s called, let me go as I was meant. In my time.”
“I will. It’ll be the hardest thing I ever did, but I will.”
We were quiet for what seemed forever. “It has to be right,” Oliver wasn’t looking at me when he finally spoke, “Even though it doesn’t seem it, it has to be. The universe has its way and we don’t always understand it, but we have to trust that all natural things are as they should be. We have to have faith in our time.”
“I wish I knew how much time we had.”
“We have forever, Love,” He drew me close, “We have forever.”
Alexander and Lucy came out to the wood the next evening. Alex seemed peaceful as he embraced his brother, but Lucy obviously was not. Alex must have only told her recently because she looked like she’d just seen an accident.
“Oliver, I…” Lucy began to speak, but immediately choked up. Instead of words, she threw her arms around him and held him as if he were slipping away. “Oh, Ollie!”
“Now, now, Lucy,” Ollie rocked her and patted her back, “No tears. Not right now, yeah? I’m still here. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right!” She sobbed, “Nothing about it is all right!”
“It is what it is. I take it in moments. This moment, I’m all right and I really need you to be, too. I can‘t take you falling apart on me right now. Can I ask you not to?”
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