Perhaps it is because she sits with the dying that she hears it more than most. "Life's too short," they all say to her eventually, "Live, laugh, love", or some variation of the theme. She just sits, holding their hands and nodding her head, pseudo-understanding; her days are long, so long. Every one of them is like she is trudging up to her hips through a wasteland of sand that never ends. "You're still so young," they whisper, they croak, they accuse her with their eyes. But no, she is 36 now. Not so young, if she ever was. She rubs her own hands together more often for the warmth these days and she can feel them papering, like wax paper now and she wonders if they will ever feel as thin as pages from the Bible.
She nods with her friends, with her co-workers, with anyone actually. "Where does the time go?" they ask and then answer themselves. In college, one day I started and the next I had my papers and now I sell cars, manage the grocery store, write lies, or others say, Kids. Once you have kids, it's all over.
But when she looks at her son, all of his four years, she thinks, You've been here forever.
She thinks about the act that had created her son, an act of the past at this stage her marriage. It had lasted 14 minutes, from start to finish. She had looked over at his alarm clock, the fluorescent green numbers casting an unforgiving glow across her pale, unshaven knees. She wasn't surprised, even if it had felt like an hour.
It is maddening to her how bright they make the rooms for the dying. Clean shades of yellow and blue. A forced bliss. Like the framed paintings of flowers on the wall is going to remind you of the time you actually stopped to smell that flower only because that stupid adage came into your head and suddenly you would feel some overwhelming happiness just remembering and be okay with dying. The failing are placed in rooms that face the back of the hospital, so they can look at the forest. A group of doctors keep the deer fed and they show up often, along with the squirrels and the birds and the rabbits. It leaves her bewildered. So few have the vision to see that far. These rooms should be for those who need to keep on living.
Time spent with Jimmy Larson is the worst. Sometimes, she wants to phone in and say she is sick. Maybe call in her vacation days. There are just enough people in the town, so that someone is always dying, but there’s not enough to have a back-up for her. The others are glad she is there; no one else wants to do her job. They call her in the middle of the night to avoid it and she always answers. She's missed less than a handful since she started nine years ago. She is good at it. She knows her silence is their greatest comfort. But with Jimmy Larson she feels compelled to make sound. Read stories. Clap her hands. Sing songs. Seven days now since they took him off life-support, after three months in a coma. She has slept here beside him for the last four, in a little cot, with the quilt they keep here for her up at the front desk. Seconds stopped ticking in this room a long time ago.
She nods with her friends, with her co-workers, with anyone actually. "Where does the time go?" they ask and then answer themselves. In college, one day I started and the next I had my papers and now I sell cars, manage the grocery store, write lies, or others say, Kids. Once you have kids, it's all over.
But when she looks at her son, all of his four years, she thinks, You've been here forever.
She thinks about the act that had created her son, an act of the past at this stage her marriage. It had lasted 14 minutes, from start to finish. She had looked over at his alarm clock, the fluorescent green numbers casting an unforgiving glow across her pale, unshaven knees. She wasn't surprised, even if it had felt like an hour.
It is maddening to her how bright they make the rooms for the dying. Clean shades of yellow and blue. A forced bliss. Like the framed paintings of flowers on the wall is going to remind you of the time you actually stopped to smell that flower only because that stupid adage came into your head and suddenly you would feel some overwhelming happiness just remembering and be okay with dying. The failing are placed in rooms that face the back of the hospital, so they can look at the forest. A group of doctors keep the deer fed and they show up often, along with the squirrels and the birds and the rabbits. It leaves her bewildered. So few have the vision to see that far. These rooms should be for those who need to keep on living.
Time spent with Jimmy Larson is the worst. Sometimes, she wants to phone in and say she is sick. Maybe call in her vacation days. There are just enough people in the town, so that someone is always dying, but there’s not enough to have a back-up for her. The others are glad she is there; no one else wants to do her job. They call her in the middle of the night to avoid it and she always answers. She's missed less than a handful since she started nine years ago. She is good at it. She knows her silence is their greatest comfort. But with Jimmy Larson she feels compelled to make sound. Read stories. Clap her hands. Sing songs. Seven days now since they took him off life-support, after three months in a coma. She has slept here beside him for the last four, in a little cot, with the quilt they keep here for her up at the front desk. Seconds stopped ticking in this room a long time ago.
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