Five Hours

by Lucinda Weatherby

  “Let’s try it out!” they shout, running to get Chippers and Patch from inside, where they’ve been in a large plastic storage container full of cedar chips.

  We leave the guinea pigs in their big outdoor dwelling all day and night. They look content, munching fresh grass and exploring the tunnels.

  *

  One night later that week, I get up from bed and shiver in my T-shirt on the way to the bathroom. The hot summer is giving way to cooler nights. As I climb back into bed, Dicken asks me if I’m okay.

  “Yup, just had to pee. Hey, do you think the guinea pigs are too cold?”

  “No, I’m sure they’re fine,” he says. “They’re covered in fur.”

  I think of their coats, guessing they’ve shed a lot in the summer heat. I consider going outside to get them, but the bed is warm and inviting, and I’m sleepy.

  In the morning I wake to Jasper’s alarmed voice: “Chippers is shaking! I think he’s sick.”

  Dicken and I bolt out of bed and fly downstairs, where we run into Grace, on her way inside with Chippers cupped in her hands. He is shivering and has green stains on his chin. His coat looks shabby, the fur sparse and stiff in places.

  “Oh, Chippers, are you okay?” Jasper asks, touching the guinea pig gently. “We’ll help you. You’ll be okay.”

  “We’ll help you, Chippers,” Grace says, then looks up at Dicken. “What’s the matter with him?”

  Dicken takes him and inspects him.

  “What’s wrong?” I demand, my voice shrill.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, do something!” I urge.

  “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” Dicken says. “You’re the one who’s had guinea pigs before, not me. Anyway, he’s still alive and moving. Don’t be so dramatic.” He looks at me then, and I can see him register my worried expression. His voice softens. “Listen, I’ll call a vet.”

  He hands Chippers to Jasper, and the two kids bend their heads close to him, talking in soothing tones.

  After the phone call, I ask Dicken to tell me everything.

  “The vet thinks he ate too much grass; it’s something guinea pigs do occasionally. That’s why he has the green stains. He probably threw up.”

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “We’ll see. I’m going to take him in now. The vet wants to look at him.”

  “I want to go to the vet with you!” Jasper wails.

  “Me too!” Grace shouts.

  “Okay, okay, everybody get dressed and we’ll go.”

  I don’t go. I feel frozen. I can’t bear watching Chippers shake that way. I wait, my stomach in knots, too distressed to eat or concentrate on anything. I try to picture Chippers healthy and happy, with a perfect shiny coat.

  Has it been hours, minutes? I can’t tell. The phone rings. It’s Dicken.

  “How is he?”

  “Honey, Chippers died.”

  I am stunned. I hear ringing in my ears.

  “I was holding him,” Dicken says. “He died in my hands. The kids were right there too.”

  “Okay,” I say quietly, and hang up.

  I’m in a fog. I sit silent, staring blankly ahead. Inside I am furiously pushing away a vortex of emotions, a whirlpool threatening to pull me under.

  I don’t break down until the kids get back, running up to me in tears, talking fast, wanting to tell me everything. I kneel down and they wrap themselves around me, soft hands holding onto me tightly. I begin to sob. The kids cry with me. They are completely in this, and their raw grief, which matches mine more than Dicken’s, comforts me.

  “Do you want to see him?” Dicken asks, his voice gentle. He is holding a small cardboard box.

  I shake my head.

  Dicken and the kids take the box out to the garden and bury it.

  Jasper makes a huge, ornate collage with cut-out magazine photos of animals, painted hearts, misspelled words.

  “This is for you, Mama.”

  “It’s beautiful,” I say through tears.

  “It’s to cheer you up,” he tells me.

  “I made this,” Grace says, showing me a small collage. “But it’s not for you, it’s for Chippers.” She takes it down to the garden and sets it carefully in the grass by the grave.

  *

  I sleep fitfully that night, my head throbbing, with a pain in my chest as if someone has literally pummeled my heart. I wake up at one point hot with anger. Angry that Chippers has died, angry at Dicken for building the outdoor cage, angry at myself for being too lazy to go and check on the guinea pigs that night. I beg God to let me go back to that night and do it differently.

  I also feel self-indulgent for taking this so hard, comparing it to the profound suffering in the world. I tell myself I’m a wimp for letting the death of a six-month-old guinea pig sink me into such a dark place. I feel guilty for feeling guilty.

  I don’t consider myself an especially fearful person. I like challenges; I like to turn over stones, not step around them. But I’ve always had a deep fear of death. The idea of my own dying doesn’t trouble me much—it’s the knowledge that I’ll inevitably lose people I love. If I’m this upset by Chippers’s death, how will I ever handle a greater loss? If something should happen to Dicken or Jasper, I’m afraid I’ll scream until my throat is bloody and shredded. I’ll tear my hair out. I’ll have to be restrained, taken to a psych ward, put in a straitjacket, and sedated. I will wail until I can’t wail anymore, and then I’ll shut down entirely, go into permanent shock. I won’t be able to move, talk, eat, or breathe, and soon after that I’ll die, which will be a great relief.

  At one point, I wake up and can’t get back to sleep. I get out my journal and a flashlight and pen. I write: I want to face death. I’d like to be with grieving people, do hospice work, or go to Africa to work with people who have AIDS or families who’ve lost loved ones. I want to talk with someone who’s lost a child. Maybe one day I’ll write about death.

  *

  The following weekend, I’m on a silent retreat facilitated by my therapist. As the group enters into silence the first evening, I feel scared. I don’t want to leave the avenue of verbal connection with others behind. I’m resistant, telling myself, Don’t worry, I can whisper with my friends, or I can sneak a call or two to Dicken. For a few hours, I struggle. I feel dark, lonely, agitated. I want to distract myself somehow, and wish I had a book, but we’ve been encouraged not to read on this retreat.

  Then I recall the Tony de Mello passage, about the vast desert of solitude: if you manage to stay there for a while, the desert will suddenly blossom into love.

  And something shifts as the hours pass. I’m beginning to unwind into the quieter realms. My attention sinks deep within me, and it is soothing, relaxing, not the terrifying void I’d imagined would be there. I begin to feel like I’m safe and sheltered inside a wondrous garden. I dream deeply that night, in vivid colorscapes. I dream of my grandmother, and my childhood dog, Moose. I wake feeling connected to something sweet and familiar I’d forgotten from long ago.

  Near the end of the retreat, we gather in a circle and sing a Sufi chant, Hu Allah, taking turns whispering the words into our neighbor’s ear. We are told Hu means divine presence, beyond definition; and Allah means God. The woman to my left cups her hand around my ear and leans in, a gesture that is almost uncomfortably intimate. In a beautiful soprano voice, she sings Hu Allah. The words touch me so deeply that tears form in my eyes. Then the woman on my right sings it into my other ear. I’m in an altered state: the voices sound like angels serenading me, and I think, Wouldn’t this be an amazing way to die, with someone singing like this as I slip away?

  The whole group joins in a chorus, “Ahhhhhhh-la!” Then we switch so that those of us who have been serenaded have the chance to sing. Coming back to my body, I find my voice and breathe the words from deep within, into the ears of the women on either side.

  We always close with a final sharing circle. Normally, I am reluctant to s
ay much in the big group, feeling too self-conscious to be able to articulate anything. But today, I give it a try:

  “I had a lot of fear come up this weekend—fear of silence, of being alone, of the void inside me. But when I got through that layer of fear, I got a glimpse of how much there is in that rich darkness, and I’m actually kind of excited to explore it. And the main thing I want to face is death. It scares me the most, but I can sense the treasure it holds. I think I’ll look into doing some kind of hospice work. That would be a way to expose myself to death and dying and get more comfortable with it.” Then I describe the experience during the last chant, and my vision of slipping away peacefully to the sound of an angelic voice singing.

  My friend Courtney is nodding her head vigorously at me as I speak, looking like she’s about to burst, and then she blurts out, “I know I’ve already shared twice, but I have to tell you something, Cinda! There’s a woman I know who’s starting a local chapter of this group called the Threshold Choir. They sing at the bedsides of people who are dying. It’s just like you described in the Hu Allah chant. It’s perfect!”

  I smile at her. It does seem perfect.

  *

  When I get back home, Jasper and Grace come running up to me with shouts of glee and arms held open. Their beauty is almost blinding.

  The next morning, I go through all my pockets and find the scrap of paper Courtney gave me, with the name and number of the woman who runs the local chapter of the Threshold Choir. Just the thought of calling makes me nervous. Will I really be able to do this?

  I know I have to try. Chipper’s dying has made me aware of the depth of my resistance to death and the passing of time. I must face that resistance. I can’t clap my hands over my ears when the song of death approaches. I have to listen. I have to sing it, not in whispers but loud and strong.

  CHAPTER 7

  December 2004

  One evening, Dicken is home from a business trip, and we’re sitting in the living room, holding hands and watching Jasper and Grace dance to a George Harrison album. Jasper keeps coming over to touch Dicken briefly, as if he needs to make sure his beloved Papa is really here, in the flesh. It’s already dark outside at not quite five o’clock. I feel warm snuggled up next to Dicken. Harrison’s beautiful, stirring voice sings, “Beware the darkness … beware of sadness … All things must pass, all things must pass away …”

  “Do you realize that if I die when I’m seventy, my life is half over?” I say to Dicken.

  He smiles dumbly and nods in rhythm to the music.

  “When I look back on all my years so far and think that I only have that many again to get to seventy, it doesn’t seem like much time. Not that I want to live in this world forever. I guess I’m just not sure I’m ever going to be able to let go and face the great mystery of death all on my own.”

  “The things you think about, wow,” Dicken says, shaking his head. I can’t tell if he’s admiring or disapproving or a little of both.

  “Why, what were you thinking about just now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You’re listening to George Harrison’s stunningly soulful poetry and you can only think of nothing?”

  “Okay, okay, maybe I was thinking of something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, I have been considering a new hard drive.”

  I laugh, but within seconds I’m back to thoughts of death and being separated from my loved ones. Maybe this is just my annual winter gloom, compounded by the recent reelection of George W. Bush, which hit me hard. Everyone knows I get extremely internal in the winter, and that I turn into a dreadful Grinch at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Only this seems more extreme than my usual holiday funk. For weeks I haven’t wanted to see anyone other than my family. I haven’t felt like going anywhere. When I look in the mirror, I see spots and wrinkles on my face and a patch of gray in my hair. I have cellulite on my thighs. My teeth ache. My gums bleed. My appetite is off. Coffee doesn’t sit right. My knees throb. I have pain during intercourse—nothing feels right. What strange watershed am I crossing? Youth into middle age? How dreadful.

  “Are you sure you love me?” I ask Dicken, moving as close to him as I can. He smiles and puckers his lips. As I look at him, I wonder how I can ever be gloomy when I’m convinced I am one of the most comfortable, sheltered, loved humans on earth. I watch Jasper and Grace dancing and giggling, smell the lasagna Maud has in the oven. We’re almost able to bring Kevin home; Dicken is flying along in every way, our relationship is better than ever. So why this darkness? This death rattle?

  *

  Like most things in life, the Threshold Choir is not the perfect experience I hoped it would be.

  For three months, I’ve been attending biweekly meetings and singing for people approaching death. I get to sing the hymns I loved when I was little, the familiar words and tunes fortifying me as I stand in the face of the mystery. Standing at the bedsides of the dying, I can’t deny old age, illness, decay. I search for my courage, and I find it. I don’t look away. I stand and sing, feeling strong. I know it is a privilege to be a witness.

  The singing shakes all scary thoughts from my head and brings me into my heart. Mostly it makes me feel sad, humble, insignificant. I tell myself, Enjoy your life while you’re young and healthy. Enjoy your loved ones while they’re still here. Stop whining or waiting for people and circumstances to change. Keep looking at death and get friendly with it. Wake up to death, and to life!

  What I can’t understand is why I’m so afraid of my own aging when I’m just thirty-five. I can’t understand why I still have this terrible sense of foreboding. I thought the choir would make me stronger in the face of death, and it has. But it does not mitigate my terror of personal loss. Rather, it seems to have intensified that terror. The choir brings me close to the terminally ill, but it seems that it’s only their dying I can handle. It’s as if I’m able to face death only when it promises to end the deep, irreversible suffering of strangers: the erosion of self brought on by dementia, the strength-sapping pain of inoperable cancer. Dicken’s in robust health, Jasper positively radiates energy—and I can’t bring myself to imagine them ill or injured. I feel immense gratitude for my life as I sing for these unknown, unknowable people entering the mystery, but then I go home to count the years I have left, to cling to those I love as if my hanging on will keep them here forever.

  *

  While we wait for Kevin, I keep wondering if we’ll have another baby. I know this isn’t the time to consider such a momentous decision, but I find myself obsessed. It is a question I have been struggling with for a few years; Kevin’s impending arrival and my awareness of encroaching middle age have now brought this issue to the fore. Will he be the last child we welcome into our family? Or is there room for a brand-new life, a counter to my musings on death?

  I love babies. The year Jasper arrived was the happiest of my life. The joy and laughter he’s brought us are immeasurable, so why would we say no to another baby? Yet I feel hesitant—afraid another child will upset the fragile balance of our lives. I worry about morning sickness and debilitation, and the heavy burden that will shift to Dicken as a result. I already feel overwhelmed by the number of children in the house. There are compelling ecological reasons not to have another baby: overpopulation, the gigantic resource footprint each North American represents. And there are those dark moments when I question the wisdom of incarnating at all, when I see earth as a hell-realm, a place where even the most fortunate among us suffer and struggle, where all of our desires and pleasures are either denied outright or rudely taken away from us.

  Like the joys, the demands of parenting can’t be adequately comprehended by the human mind. Mothering brings me some of the most frustrating, humiliating, exasperating, heartbreaking, exhausting, marriage-challenging, dream-killing moments imaginable. At its worst, I could argue that it is relentless, tedious, unglorified, and unpaid work, something that denies me the freedom to pursue f
un, relaxation, peace, and my own goals in life. And yet there is an odd, math-defying reckoning that happens, where one glorious moment—like watching my son run to hug my own mother, or hearing him use a word in some humorously misunderstood way, or seeing him rescue a wounded bird and keep watch by the shoe box for hours, even after the bird has died—and all at once the entire weight of parenting evaporates. It’s like the sun suddenly comes out, warming me from the core in a way nothing else could.

  There is a gift in the humiliation parenting brings me. I was arrogant enough to believe that I could avoid all the challenges and pitfalls of parenting. I thought I was smart enough and in control enough to figure it out, to be a perfect mother. I’ve come to see that all my best intentions, my master’s degree in child psychology, my giving up everything to focus single-mindedly on my child, haven’t kept Jasper from experiencing the pain of being human. I’ve been profoundly humbled, again and again. Motherhood deepens me, helping me as I try to make peace with myself, and life.

  If one child has done this for me, will another mean twice the blessing? I can’t seem to turn off the noisy mental process of reasons for and against. I just want to know. I am tired of waiting for Kevin, waiting to see what happens, waiting for a direction to make itself clear. I want to be able to plan my life one way or the other. I keep hoping Dicken will have a strong opinion and take the burden off me, but whenever I raise the subject, he either dodges it or says something like, “Whatever you want, dear.”

  One night I demand a serious answer.

  He thinks for a moment, his expression sober, so I know I’m not going to get a brush-off response.

  “Well, I can think of plenty of reasons not to have any more. I can see us filling our lives with other things as we move out of the childrearing stage. But I think that’s on a rational, surface level, and when I feel into it a little deeper, I have a sense we’re not quite done. I think we might have one more, a girl.”