Slowdown, sundown

He drew back the curtains to reveal the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, in front of the wooden decked balcony, overlooking the lake. The lake was surrounded by a majestic snow-capped mountain, like the embracing arms of a mother protecting her child. Around the edges of the lake emerged a clean sandy beach with a distinct two-shade, which was created by the ebbing tide. The sky resembled a painter’s palette of orange and yellow, splattered with streaks of blue and violet, changing shape and intensity, as the sun rose slowly from the rim of the mountain-top and bathed the bedroom in its warm hues.

He turned to look at her lying on the bed, wrapped up to her neck in a duvet covered by a thick purple blanket; purple being her favourite colour. She was facing the window and her large sunken eyes glistened with moist, as tears trickled down her cheek. He had feared for this moment every day for the past ninety-nine days. Ninety-nine days since her diagnosis; the doctor ending it with the words that still echoed in his head: I am so sorry. There is nothing more we can do.

Her right hand reached out and beckoned him to come forward to her. He wanted every single second of the day to count and stretch as far as his imagination would allow. Her eyes followed him, then looked at the empty space next her. He sat down, took her left hand, and covered it with both of his hands and gripped it gently. Where he would have expected to feel flesh, he felt nothing but bone.

“The lake. The beach. It’s still the same as it was all those years ago. Do you remember it?"

“Of course, darling. It’s a sight I’ll never forget.”

He struggled to keep himself together. He could not reveal to her that he was seeing her disappear from earthly life right before his eyes. He patted her hand, stood up and made an announcement.

“It’s time to get some breakfast. I’ll have room service bring up anything your heart desires”, he said with a smile.

She turned her head towards the sunrise, “What’s the use in that, darling? I can’t hold down a thing and I’m past feeling hungry.”

“Hey, now. Don’t say that. A little bit of your favourite morning delights will cheer you. You’ll see.” He wagged his finger at her, as if admonishing a moody teenager.

She looked at him and studied every deep line etched on his face like a crevice. She had known that face for over fifty years now. She could still see the bold youth who approached her on the beach of the lake and planted a cheeky kiss on her lips. She was so shocked, but he just giggled and took her by the hand and walked her along the shoreline.

“You are incorrigible. Do you know that? Absolutely incorrigible. Always have been. Nothing gets you down. Nothing’s a problem.”

“And where would I be if I thought otherwise? There’s a solution to everything. Well, just about everything”

“Exactly my point! Just about everything. This is one of those things where there is no solution but still, you’re upbeat and take it in your stride. Just be angry. Rage against whatever is out there. God, the universe, whatever! Ok? This isn’t fair. Not for me and not for you.”

He knelt next to her side of the bed and pressed his warm hands against her cool cheeks and kissed her forehead lightly.

“Yes, you’re right. It is not fair at all. It’s not your fault that you are this sick. It’s nobody’s fault. The doctors have done all that they could. They really tried. You can see that, can’t you? Now, there is no point wasting your precise time being angry. Let’s use it to celebrate the wonderful years that we’ve had together, the beautiful children we raised together and now, our sweet grandchildren. We got lucky, dear. We got lucky. So many people never get that. And you know it. So, let’s put aside the anger and see if we can put a smile on your dial.”

She knew he was right, but it was irritating, nevertheless. Mr know-it-all. She picked up a glass of water from the bedside table and took a sip. Next to the glass was a plethora of pills, every colour of the rainbow. She had wanted to stop taking them, but he made sure she washed them down in his presence.

“When are the kids arriving? Is everyone coming?”

“They are all making their way over as we speak. It’s a long journey. So, we’ll see them tomorrow at some point.”

“Another whole day. I know I shouldn’t complain. I’m grateful they have all paused their crazy busy lives to see me. Its selfish of me to think otherwise.”

“No, it’s not selfish. How can they not make the effort to see you now?”

He smiled inwardly. Lately, she had only spoken about the past, trying to eke out as many memories as she could, as if to validate her life. To hear her have a thought of the hour or day ahead took him by surprise. She sat up as upright as she could upon the bank of pillows mounted behind her, reminding him of the sandbags they used to barricade their house against a fiery flood two winters ago. She was so alive and vivacious then, helping with the heavy lifting without a complaint. Now, she was like a withered flower in the sunlight, revealing how much life had seeped from her body. 

A rat-a-tat knock on the door startled them. He held the door for a young woman, who could not have been beyond her first out of secondary school, to push the breakfast trolley forward. The huge trolley was laden with an array of berries, nuts and pancakes with maple and strawberry syrups and scrambled eggs, a steaming hot pot of freshly brewed coffee and a jug of squeezed orange juice. He cut her food into small pieces and fed her one forkful at a time. After each bite, she had to have some of her juice to help ease the food down her oesophagus, which was so painful that she winced until fresh tears formed in her eyes. He persevered until she literally put her hand on her mouth to resist any more food being fed to her.

He cleared up the breakfast and put the trolley outside their door and arranged for it to be taken away. He then brought her a toothbrush with the toothpaste on it, a bowl and a small towel. He helped brush her teeth and used the towel to clean her face. She was ready to rest and awoke as the embers of twilight began to appear. He had been reading a book, whilst sitting on a chair in the corner, facing her. Putting down his book and spectacles, he looked at her, taking a picture in his mind of his lovely wife, his best friend, savouring the making of the memory of her just being there at that very moment.

“Did you have a good sleep?”

“Not bad as it goes, thanks. I had a strange dream. I was standing on the edge of a tall structure, I couldn’t quite work out whether it was a cliff, a mountain, a bridge, a skyscraper or something else. I just felt it was so high that I could see the clouds in front of me and just below. I was looking down and I couldn’t see anything but the white puffy clouds moving with the wind. I was frightened and kept looking around and behind me. In the distance, I saw this little dot moving towards me. It became bigger and bigger as it got closer. It was you but not as you are now. As you were when we first met. Six years old. You had a lollipop and held it for me to take. You said:

‘Don’t be afraid. Everyone loves a lollipop, especially the strawberry one. And when you’ve finished it, don’t be sad. Just remember the taste’

Now, what do you suppose the dream means?”

“I’m no Sigmund Freud. But its sounds like a perfectly sweet dream to me.”

“Well, I think its ominous. The last thing I could taste from breakfast was the strawberry syrup. In the dream, you told me to remember the taste and not to be sad, implying that I won’t be tasting it again. And let’s not forget that I was standing on the edge of something, about to fall off into the abyss.”

She began hitting the bed as hard as she could, but her tired and stiff fingers would not form a fist, let alone make an impact on the blanket. Frustration rumbled from her toes all the way up to her mouth then erupted as a fierce growl that became a screech, followed by wracking sobs. She crumbled into his waiting arms. He remained still until her cries became a whimper, then he lifted her body, weighing no more than a young girl, and carried her to a chair that had been placed by him earlier to face the breath-taking vista. He sat in the chair next to hers and held her hand. Silently, they drank in the view, the gravitas of their predicament.

“You know, when I was a teenager, my father was made redundant from his job after working there for twenty years. He didn’t like the job, but it paid well, and he did it well enough to be promoted several times. The times were hard. There was a major recession, and no one knew how things were going to pan out. He had only ever trained to be one thing and there were no job openings. He had a wife, two daughters and a mortgage and he wasn’t getting any younger. He came home the day he got the news, closed the door quietly, sat on his chair in the living room, stared for a while then sobbed a bit and stared some more. Darkness came and my mother got worried and fretted at us girls.

‘Where on earth is your father? It’s so late and the dinner is getting cold. How could he be so thoughtless. It’s not so hard to pick up a telephone and call.’

We must have sat there at the dinner table for about ten or fifteen minutes then I just got up and walked over to the living room. I got such a fright. He was just sitting there like a statue. His eyes were glazed over. He looked pale and almost lifeless. I’ll never forget that look. The look of complete utter defeat. He’d been home for over two hours and none of us had noticed. His world had fallen apart, and we carried on ignorantly with ours. He never really recovered from that. He died aged forty-eight. So young and, I believe, so unhappy. He had tied his self-worth to his job, his ability to provide financially.”

Her face contorted as pain washed over her. She asked for a blanket then wrapped it tightly around her wasting frame and fixed her gaze over the shore of the lake and the craggy mountain. 

“My mother, on the other hand, was a different story altogether. She was stoic to a fault. She suffered as much as my father did, but it carried her forward. In the years after my father’s death, she pulled out every canning trick in the survival book and we girls wanted for nothing. She was a remarkable woman. She wasn’t perfect and she pushed my sister and I to our limits at times. Other times, she was careless with her words to the point of cruelty. But her heart was in the right place. I’m glad she’s gone before me. I wouldn’t want to burden her with this kind of grief a second time. She deserved the peaceful ending that came to her.

It’s funny how, in the end, we look to our parents. But I look at you and the children too. I’m so proud of the way they have turned out. Even after all the dramas we’ve had with the boys over the years, they’ve turned out to be kind and warm, ambitious yet always balancing their needs with those of their own family. They learned well from you.”

She pushed her hand out from her comfortable cocoon and clutched his hand with as much strength as she could muster.

“I find myself looking back upon my life and wondering if I’ve done everything I could have done. What I did do, did I do it to the best of my ability? Did I leave any loose ends? I can’t bear the thought of there being any unfinished bits for you to deal with after I’m gone. If there are any, I truly apologise, darling. You might grieve over me, but you’ll be alright after a while. You must go on and live a fulfilling life. Promise me, you will be happy and content and smile every day. Then I’ll make peace with the fact that I have to go so soon. I hope what I’ve done has been ok for you. I can’t do any more now.”

She looked into his eyes, imploring him to live up to her wish. He made his promise. Satisfied, she turned to the calming scene out of the window. After a long pause, he broke the silence.

“Do you remember the first words I ever said to you? I brought you from the sandcastle that you were making with your sister over to my sandcastle and told you that this is where you belong, with me. To some, it was a sweet notion. To others, it may have seemed a creepy thing for a six-year-old to say. But to you and me, it was a premonition and a statement. Just how it was going to be. Just right. Twelve years later, we met again at university, and it felt like we had come home. You got your degree, and I got my mine. As soon as we could, we got married, despite my father and your mother objecting to it. I never did figure out why. Could you have done better? Maybe. Could I have done better? Never. Every day since you said ‘Yes’, I’ve been thanking my lucky stars that you never changed your mind. Sometimes, I’ve been an ass and I was thinking you should leave me. But, mercifully, you didn’t. You are crazy, do you know that?

We did the right thing, taking a couple of years for ourselves before the kids came along. The moment our beautiful firstborn arrived, it was a damn circus – non-stop nappies, crying, feeding, cleaning up, sleep deprivation. Then, so soon afterwards, came our second and third child. I always felt guilty that there wasn’t much of a break in-between. But my oh my! You handled it all so well. Like it was nothing. But I was damn fool and sought to medicate with a bottle of bourbon until you sat me down after one too many nights of coming home in bad shape and you made me grow up, face my responsibilities like a man. I’ll never forget that. It put me on the road to achieving everything a man could ever want to achieve.

I did well in my career. I went as far as I could. I provided well for you and the boys along the way. I’m not boasting. I think by anyone’s definition, I did. The credit has to go to you. You were unbelievable. A highflyer yourself and you were always there for our sons, making sure they were learning, growing and becoming decent human beings. I don’t know how you did it. But you did. Against the odds you broke the glass ceiling and made hard-nosed philistines see the light. All the while never losing your femininity or maternalistic instinct.

It’s bothered me for a long time now that I have never taken the opportunity to just sit down and talk. Every time I’ve tried, I either get tongue-tied or distracted by some work thing that pops up. But then I regret the lapse in time, and I try again. Well, now, come hell or high waters, I’m telling you that I am a blessed man to have you as my best friend, my partner-in-crime, my everything. We only get one shot in this life and so many people never find joy, love, contentment but with you, I’ve found all of that. I just hope I haven’t let you down.”

He turned his head to look at her. Her eyes were closed and her looked serene. He moved her hand, but she did not respond. He knew she had gone. What the last words she heard were, he would never know.

Outside the window, the waxing moon’s light was shimmering off the still lake, as he closed his eyes for the last time as a complete man.