Lost at Sea

Kitchen-nighttime feels different than bedroom-nighttime, Maria thought. Like drifting over dark water. She sat with a straight back, a black figure between dark grey shapes. She reached for another cigarette and noticed that the pack was almost empty. Her lungs had started to tingle already. She lit the cigarette and took a drag. Rearranged the ashtray on the kitchen table. Waited. Waited. Scratched her temple. Waited. Neatly placed the half smoked cigarette on the ashtray. Her eyes wandered to the window. The outside-dark feels different than the inside-dark, Maria thought. It crushed the ice cristals into the window.

Marias pupils dilated, as if she was expecting something, someone. A knight in shining armor maybe or some angel with soft golden hair and a blissful smile who would take her anywhere. "chhhrrRRRRRH!" She jumped up, almost tipping the chair. Then ("chrhrrr") another snore from the bedroom, softer. Roland. Her shoulders relaxed. The knight and the angel had collapsed into a lump of cigarette ash. You could stuff his throat with documents and he would cough out shredded paper, she thought. The cold air didn't help with his condition, neither did the morphine. Or the cigarette smoke that had settled in floors and walls. Then another thought, cold and sharp: He is not dying fast enough. My husband is a stubborn bastard.

A wave of guilt hit her, but it had lost its intensity over the last years. Tonight it was followed by a smaller, colder one, which was contempt-shaped. She was 66, a third of her life still waiting for her. Who could blame her? She hadn't chosen a man who shat his pants and regurgitated food on her helping hands. She had married a strong, intelligent man, a loving father and husband whose eyes would shine when he built tree houses for his grandchildren and bird boxes for the blue jays. A tiny city had filled the garden before he had smashed all of it to pieces in a tantrum. 

Roland had become a bottomless pit, a zombie, a hollow tree without roots. Had gone to a place where nobody could follow - least of all the people who loved him the most. Had loved him.

Of course Maria knew about dementia and degeneration in the brain and all of this fancy medical stuff, up there in their ivory towers, but what difference did it make? The membrane between humanity and pathology was gone. She was married to illness and isolation. Roland had faded away. And she couldn't blame her children to turn their backs to this tragedy, with their own struggles and the heavy burden of broken genes.

Her head grew heavy and she sank to the chair again. The glowing cigarette cast the tiniest shimmer on the table. The smallest lighthouse in the world. Maria laughed a single humorless "heh". She had built up a plan, her own lighthouse, for weeks and weeks. She would find solid ground tonight and abandon this erratic, pitiful ship.

Maria took the last drag and smothered the smallest lighthouse in the world. Strangely, it felt colder now. She glanced at the thermometer next to the window. - 8°C - the coldest night of the year the neat young man on the TV had announced. 

She got up and listened, but now the house was silent. Her red down jacket hung by the door on a wooden rack, next to a calendar, dating back to 2013, carefully crafted by her granddaughter. Rolands blue parka had fallen to the ground half a year ago and never been picked up. It was so dusty the color looked faded. She grabbed her jacket and passed the parka on her way to the bedroom.

The dark in the hallway felt dense, an ocean of resentment, frustration and vague hope. Her body automatically prepared to boot a program of tiny habits: Heavy steps to announce her coming and avoid startling him. Lighting the dim bulb in the hallway so she wouldn't have to use the bedroom uplights and make him stare into the cold white. Preparing for the putrid smell of his excretions and the whiny "Charlotte, I'm hungry" that was his way of saying Hello beautiful, it's good to see you. But Charlotte was his mother and also he was never hungry. Maria had patiently and painfully slowly fed him high caloric drinks that made his stomach rumble and the room gassy, but still he was down to 55 Kilos. 

She resisted all of that now, making her way in the dark and listening to the arrhythmic sound of his breathing. She had listened to his breath for so many years, full of love when it was still strong and steady ... Stop. No more of this. 

Roland was entangled into the blankets, lying on his back with an open mouth. His tongue looked fissured and dry. His remaining hair barely covered the flaky scalp. Maria felt a swell of deep pity and pushed it away. She opened the drawer next to the bed yet so softly and extracted the morphine. The green lights of the alarm clock were enough to find the infusion that provided him with saline solution. The syringe went easily through the membrane. Then she waited. 

15 minutes went by until she gave in and lit a cigarette. It felt wrong. She had never smoked in Rolands room since he had seized to leave the bed by his own. This hit her harder than everything before. The smell would be stuck for days. Roland would be coughing ... Well, that wouldn't be a problem anymore, would it? And so the dam finally broke. Maria cried, silently sobbing into her sleeve, while Rolands breaths got softer. She almost stumbled when she finally got up with shaky legs.

Rolands heartbeat was slow and almost unpalpable now. He was ready and she was, too. The rest was routine. She removed the infusion. Some of the saline wet his thin short sleeved pyjama and added a dark stain to the brown and yellow ones. The wheelchair stood by the bed, patiently waiting his turn. She carefully untangled the sheets and propped her husband up against her shoulders, slack and soft. Usually he helped with the transfer, confused yet obedient. It took all her strength and potentially some slipped discs to heave him into the chair, but there he sat now, limp and salivating. 

"Fancy a walk, honey? It's cold but I think you won't mind. You never did." She wiped the saliva from his chin, then grabbed the handles and set the wheelchair in motion. It glided easily over the PVC floor. Thank god they had removed all the door thresholds with the accessibility renovation. 

Down the hallway, through the kitchen. This time, they proceeded in silence. No marvelling looks when they passed the marble countertop ("Made from one block, tellyathis, Egbert!") or demands at the fridge ("More peanutbutter, Charlotte. More!"). When they reached the screen door she stepped around the wheelchair to swing it open. A freezing gust swept through the kitchen and somewhere in the house a door slammed shut. She could see the sparse hair on Rolands arms straighten up. Maria got behind the handles again and pushed. The tires bumped over the small threshold between kitchen and garden and sunk into the snow outside. As the left front tire hit a hole, the wheelchair including Roland tilted to the side. Maria reflexively moved forward, but then she stopped herself. The complex train of thought in her head that took only a fracture of a second to form might be summarized as: "Let him fall. Let the cold ground speed up this disgraceful process. Let it look like an accident. You left no footsteps yet. Let them think you found him like this in the morning." And so it was decided.

Roland hit the ground face first, dusting up fine snow clouds. The wheelchair stroke his back and came lying down next to him, one wheel turning. Maria knew that every minute detail she could see in the vague light of the night sky would be engraved into her mind forever: A wrinkled hand, oddly bent beneath his face, a slightly opened mouth, emitting tiny clouds, the crisp air that already swept the first ice cristals over his naked arms. 

She stepped back and closed the door, softly. Then sat on the chair again. Outside-cold always feels different than inside-cold. But tonight both seemed to merge in her heart.