Disintegrating
Dennis Donoghue
He was disintegrating. Like the ancient plaster on the attic ceiling he’d meant to replace years ago when he’d planned to finish off the space. Doctor Madden mentioned it as he removed a basal cell carcinoma from Kevin’s forehead. From what looked like an oil can he squirted liquid nitrogen in quick two blasts. Kevin jerked back as if stung by a wasp. Dr. Madden apologized. Kevin liked him but considered him on the spectrum because he didn’t laugh at his jokes. Neither did Rayna, for that matter.
You’re disintegrating, he’d said without explanation.
The kids were grown and out of the house, the house, too big to live in, contained himself, Rayna and the three cats. The girls had disappeared in what seemed like overnight–Chicago, Philly, Reno–pursuing careers, chasing lovers or whatever. It was what you were supposed to do as parents, give them wings and never see them again. He’d been a father and now he wasn’t, or at least the way he had been. He might offer advice over the phone, tips about when to get new tires or how many flashlights to keep around the house in the event of a power outage. They ignored him while Rayna handled the emotional stuff.
He hadn’t told her what Doctor Madden said. He didn’t exactly understand it himself. He assumed it had something to do with his being seventy. He hoped if he played his cards right he’d get another ten years. Friends and relatives his age had cancer, heart disease, strokes, all of it out of the blue. Fine one day, trips to specialists months apart the next. Any time now he expected to wake up with something. He wouldn’t be surprised. Once you hit a certain age look out. His disintegration was accelerating. That was what Dr. Madden had meant, like the science museum exhibit he’d seen when the kids were young, the one with the descending silver balls spinning around a hole. The closer they dropped the faster they spun. That was him, one of those silver balls, dropping toward the hole he’d feared and would have to reckon with sooner rather than later. He was going down that hole, period, along with everyone else. His current strategy, one he’d hope to have abandoned at this point of his life in favor of something more substantive, was not to think about it.
He had to be careful putting his feet under him getting out of bed. Once he moved around, brushed his teeth, had his coffee, he was good. He’d mentioned installing a grab bar in the shower, non-slip strips on the tub floor. Rayna wasn’t thrilled. It would indicate the start of something she did not want to be reminded of. He had eight years on her. Back when they’d met she said if anything happened to him she would wheel him up to his parents’ doorstep. He laughed and hoped she was joking. Their parents had died within six months of one another, first her mother and then both of his.They’d taken care of them, part of the sandwich generation, raising kids and caring for parents. He wondered how it would go with them, with him. Maybe he’d do her a favor and go fast, move on to the next phase without becoming a nuisance or a financial burden. That was the worst, to linger. They hadn’t really discussed pulling the plug on one another. He’d told her not to be afraid, to just do it. She said she wasn’t afraid if that was what he wanted. She’d said yes right away. She didn’t have to think about it. Not a word about soul searching or discussing it with the kids. She was clear-eyed, unemotional. Okay, if that’s what you want. If it was she he’d let the kids decide. He’d had enough guilt from the nuns. Besides, he’d done it already, twice, saying no to feeding tubes for both parents. His father fell and hit his head, got shipped to MGH, forearms lashed to bedrails, agitated, unconscious and sedated for three days. The neurologist expected him to come around provided he received nutrients. Even so, there’ll likely be brain damage and issues with speech and mobility. Kevin did not want his father back. He was ninety-three. The next day he was dead, nutrients denied, his demise was so sudden and unexpected his mother did not believe he was gone. After sixty-three years of marriage they had no chance to say goodbye. They’d gone for something to eat afterwards, the whole family. She told her fourteen year old grandson who sat next to her at Olive Garden she wanted to kill herself. She would call for her husband as if he was in another room playing a trick on her. When Kevin explained, her eyes filled bottom to top. Maybe he was the one playing the trick. After her stroke six months later he said no again. She lasted six days in hospice. He stayed with her the last two nights, lying on a cot staring into the dark, grieving, praying, relieved, too, the long stint of caregiving nearly over, just the small house to clean out and dispose of. He kept getting up for the nurse, thinking she’d died. He felt foolish, with no clue if his mother was breathing. When she stopped, two hours before sunrise, he remained by her bedside. It was too early to alert anyone. They’d said their goodbyes the night before. At first light he made calls, then walked outside and into the stand of woods next door. It was a bright clear morning in early June. He found a log and meditated. Birdsong was so distinct he could pick out every note. A soft breeze and sheer shafts of sunlight animated young leaves. He smelled a hint of the sea. The exuberance of his surroundings startled him. He tried to summon tears but couldn’t. He was sure something was wrong with him.
There wasn’t a plug. If he found himself hungry or thirsty he would go without, as his parents had, the decision made without him. Or perhaps he might ease into eternal rest at home, in bed next to Rayna, pass peacefully into the night. He’d known a guy, a retired teacher like himself, who’d gone to bed perfectly healthy, his body cooling beside his wife at five in the morning. He saw her walking around the neighborhood and would speak to her. A full year later she was still in shock, a haunted look on her face. He’d been seventy-two and played in a rec basketball league with guys ten years younger. No, he wouldn’t do that to Rayna. A short illness would suffice. He’d hang on for a few days, nothing too painful, the old man’s friend pneumonia, allow everyone a chance to say they loved him, remind him what a difference he’d made, how it was okay to move on. He’d nod, just perceptively, squeeze a hand, release a tear they’d have to look for, listen to how he’d held it together whatever the circumstance and now here he was no different, a far cry from those whimpering about the unfairness of it all, the Why me? crap.
It was a hurdle, death, and, like any hurdle, surmountable. He would find an answer sitting in silence for as long as it took. According to Buddhism this was a bad idea. By looking for an answer, demanding something in return for his sitting, he would give legs to his disintegration, validate it by forming an attachment. Attachments were a definite no-no. He might as well ask for a Bentley or his Roth to return twenty percent. No, the idea was to think of death not as a hurdle to bound but the same as whatever came before, and whatever came before the before, waves breaking on the shore, no different from any other transition in his life he didn’t give two shits about. His problem was that he thought of death in the first place, let it consume and overpower him. Meditating for clarity’s sake only indicated he was knee deep in his own obsessive compulsion. For him it was always grab, grab, grab.
He understood he was not strictly a body nor a mind. For reasons he did not fully grasp, his soul required housing while he walked the earth. Upon birth it entered his body which doubled as a vehicle for transportation, allowing it to interact with its environment. His soul also required a mind to tell the vehicle what to do, think, feel, etc. Its job was to learn what it needed to learn, whatever that was. Being eternal, a part of The Source, it would never disintegrate. Upon his death it would rejoin The Source or find another body/mind and incarnate all over again to learn more of whatever it was it was supposed to learn. He was along for the ride, or rather his soul was along for the ride, until his death, whereby it would discard him like his thirty year old suit with the wide lapels and double breasted jacket Rayna had been after him to get rid of. Then it would get fitted for a new one like the kids wore these days, the narrow waisted jacket snug across the chest, the stovepipe trouser fit an inch above the ankles.
They’d been married twenty-nine years. Rayna was practical and down to earth, having grown up on a dairy farm. She’d done chores from the time she was three, gathering warm eggs and chasing wandering calves. Everyone on the farm did chores seven days a week. Even vacations were a chore. Her father, a Holstein breeder, took the family to cattle conventions and county fairs to advertise his brand and check out stock. Chores kept Rayna from obsessing over that about which she could do nothing. Most of Kevin’s thinking involved obsessing over that about which he could do nothing. She was always in the middle of something–a painting project or planting bulbs, walking seven thousand steps or leading a book club. Chores were good, according to Buddhism. Chores for chores sake, like monks sweeping spotless floors in temples. Had she been told she was disintegrating she would have gone grocery shopping without giving it a second thought. When her mother received news lung cancer had spread to her spine and left her months to live, the oncologist asked if she had any questions. Yes, said her mother, could you tell me if there’s a Market Basket nearby? I’m making my eggplant parmesan tonight. She didn’t give a rat’s ass. As the calendar pages dwindled she cooked, watched soaps in her recliner, gabbed on the phone, took painkillers. You’d never know the difference, death just another wave breaking on the shore. A week from the end she went to the hospital, slept, came to, recognized him as he thanked her for everything, fell back asleep. She was his hero.
His therapist once told him he was on the back nine. Kevin was fifty or so but it struck him. When he’d asked his therapist what he meant he shrugged. Because you are. Now he was on the back nine of the back nine, even closer to the hole, or whatever metaphor best illustrated he was nearing the end. It wasn’t death that frightened him, really, as much as the getting there. Years ago he’d gone to see a swami who ran an ashram in Porter Square and gave talks on Sunday mornings. He was an American from Indiana who’d played football. His audience was white, professional, living in Cambridge and Somerville, dour overthinkers riddled with anxiety like Kevin. They had questions about death and the point of life the swami would dismiss. He would look out at all the glum faces and laugh. The Mantra of Stupidity, he would tell them. What’s going to happen to me? Kevin was the only one who laughed back.
He’d gotten a peek at something which chilled him so he tried never to think about it. Twelve years ago while jogging he’d slipped on mud and broken a couple of ribs. For weeks he couldn’t cough, laugh or sneeze. He’d slept on the couch and crawled to the bathroom. He’d been given a prescription for Vicodin after being told the ribs would heal faster if the pain was diminished. He took one and had a nightmare. In the nightmare all of him–mind, body, soul–was being consumed by Pac-men. But it wasn’t only him. It was all the invisible forces inside and out which made him who he was. Not only was his existence being devoured but the existence of his existence along with it. He was absolutely terrified and thought he might have gone crazy, that this was what mental illness was like, psychosis or schizophrenia or whatever, his broken mind capable of producing such a hallucination, his every day existential angst a walk in the park compared to the terror and hopelessness he’d experienced in the dream. He’d tried to tell Rayna but when he mentioned Pac-men his recounting was drained of its tension and seriousness. He could not convey how he’d felt. Not only was he heading toward oblivion with every chomp but that very oblivion (consisting of forces which had created it) was also being extinguished. He prayed to God this was not a precursor to his death and dying.
Humor would save him. It had gotten him through parochial school, twenty-nine years of marriage, his sixth grade teaching career. Sometimes Rayna would catch him laughing to himself, having a really good chuckle for no apparent reason that she could determine. When he did this out in public she would elbow him. She asked what was so funny except what was funny to him would, in all likelihood, not be funny to her. She did not desire to be accompanied by a man laughing to himself. Sometimes he kept laughing after the elbowing. He also made noises he was not aware of, a humming sound she could hear but which he could not, like a dog whistle. When she pointed this out he would tell her he was well aware he was making the humming sound even if he wasn’t. Then he would laugh about it.
He had to watch himself, make sure not to leave the house with blood on his face after shaving or with his fly unzipped. He was stumbling too, not lifting his feet like he once did. He had to remind himself to pick his feet up. Pick your feet up, he would tell himself, sometimes aloud. He avoided uneven ground. When you hit seventy you were supposed to spend time performing various exercises like balance and resistance training. On Youtube videos seniors with six packs did sets of chin-ups and burpees. They flipped truck tires and generated waves with battle ropes. It was considered a character flaw if you did not join a Crossfit gym and go on a raw meat diet. At one time, only a few years ago, doctors recommended having a couple of beers a night to reduce stress. Then, seemingly overnight, alcohol became the new Pall Malls, every beer a cruise missile to the internal organs. Still, research or not, he refused to quit drinking. Every night he popped open a can, one can only.
Had his mother-in-law been born with some mechanism whereby she could ignore her impending death, some governor regulating her anxiety? Or could he train himself to be like her? He imagined getting the news, thanking his doctor for his forthrightness, saying he’d love to discuss it further but he was having his septic pumped in half an hour and had to get home. No, most assuredly he’d grow faint. He recalled the times he’d passed out in Mass as a kid, buttoned up in his winter coat in the overheated church, one of the nuns hauling him upright from under the pew and directing him to get some fresh air. Down the center aisle he would proceed during the Consecration (it was always during the Consecration), steadying himself by focusing on the light of the vestibule, his back to the priest as he transformed bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the parishioners eyeballing him leaving at this most sacred of moments. He was seven, the age of reason, and he was going to hell.
He didn’t want to be told. He didn’t want the truth. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does that mean you have terminal cancer? His whole life he’d been scared shitless of doctors. For years he’d refused blood work until Doctor Madden told him straight out he could not provide effective treatment if he did not submit to a lab panel once a year. So he went and had his blood taken, a plastic tray locking him in, a tourniquet snapped tight on his bicep. He made a fist and opened it. He looked away while blood flowed out of him, listened to the click as the phlebotomist exchanged one vial for another, racking up half a dozen on the tray. He attempted levity but got nowhere. If he stood up too quickly he would pass out like in Mass and ruin the phlebotomist’s day. The results would arrive in his portal within twenty-four hours. He would not look at them. Doctor Madden would have to break the news in person. Kevin would sit and meditate in the waiting room, hoping Doctor Madden was running late.
Though he could not stop or even slow his disintegration, he felt essentially the same week to week, even month to month. At some point the acceleration would speed up even further, the silver balls blurring right before they dropped into the hole. At least with Rayna and the kids he would not die alone. He wondered if they would feel as he had about his own mother, that sense of relief now that things were wrapping up. He did not want to overstay his welcome though he imagined he would try to hang on. It was human nature to cling to life while friends and loved ones maintained a vigil, another day off from work or having to find childcare for the grandkids while he took his sweet time, a lost cause inconveniencing everyone. The doctor would remind them it was an inexact science, promising the end would come, if not tonight or tomorrow, the next day or certainly the day after. There were definitive signs but the precise moment was anyone’s guess. So they’d put their lives on hold, make small talk, sip coffee, wait for him to make up his mind. He wouldn’t do it if the kids were there. He’d decided that much. His mother-in-law had passed just minutes after he’d dragged Rayna down to the cafeteria to get a pastry and a cup of tea. She hadn’t eaten in days. They were at the cashier when her phone rang. Mommy’s gone, said one of her sisters. It happened right this second. Rayna looked at him. It was unforgivable, his pulling her away at the exact wrong time. They dropped everything and rushed back to the room. He felt horrible. He’d meant well but she would never see it that way. Her sisters, bless them, saved his ass. She wouldn’t leave until you were out of the room, they told her, the four of them collapsing in tears. She was waiting for you to step out. She couldn’t die in front of her baby girl. It would be too much for you. He was elated. He hugged everyone. He didn’t cry, not in front of them. He was starving. He couldn’t eat if she couldn’t eat. At a time like this you weren’t supposed to have an appetite. He would never taste his mother-in-law’s eggplant parmesan again. He’d had an everything bagel and a container of cream cheese in his hand but left them by the cash register. They would sit for a while, maybe hours. Food was out of the question except for orange flavored Lifesavers provided by one of the sisters. He’d already had four.
He sat with his legs hanging over the end of the exam table, his scalp on fire. Words had meaning, so everyone said, and shouldn’t be thrown around lightly. And yet maybe Doctor Madden, as a person on the spectrum, as someone who did not get Kevin’s humor, had not thrown those words around lightly. He could have well said decomposing, or even rotting, all three words meaning essentially the same. Or he could have kept his mouth shut. What benefit could be gained by telling a patient he was disintegrating? He’d said it with a straight face, without winking. He doubted Doctor Madden had ever winked in his entire life. It was the same tone he used when he told Kevin to cut out processed carbs. Was he disintegrating at a faster rate than his other older patients and so ought to be made aware of it? But Doctor Madden hadn’t suggested taking niacin or cutting out caffeine, both of which in Kevin’s mind might slow the process. He should have followed up Doctor Madden’s comment. Do you mean me specifically?
When he left the office he noticed red maples lining a drainage ditch on one side of the parking lot. Yellowing scarlet leaves spun in the brisk October wind and clotted the pipe at one end. The medical building was just a few years old and Kevin thought a drainage ditch next to a row of red maples didn’t make much sense. Water would overflow onto the pavement and turn to ice once the temperature dropped. When he pointed this out to Rayna she said she’d been to the same medical building countless times (they had different doctors) and never once had such a thought occurred to her. That parking lot, as far as she was concerned, was always clear of snow and ice. Wouldn’t it be ironic, he said, to break a leg in the parking lot of your doctor’s office? She ignored him as she was already on about what had happened on her walk that morning. Something crazy was always happening.
“You know the old guy with the terrier/chihuahua mix who carried a stick in case of a hawk attack, the one who thought seagulls were hawks until I corrected him? And how he stopped carrying that stick because of me? Well guess what. Yesterday the dog found a discarded Cheetos bag and didn’t a seagull swoop down and nearly take the dog’s eye out. He told me this not twenty minutes ago. He said from now on I should mind my own f-ing business. Can you believe that?”
Kevin laughed. It was one of the greatest stories he’d ever heard, top ten for sure. Rayna was pissed at him for laughing. She’d tried to do the right thing and almost got the dog killed. Now the old man refused to speak to her. Kevin kept laughing. You couldn’t make a story like that up. Years from now he would laugh to himself about it and when she asked him what was so funny he would of course say nothing was so funny.
The story had everything: characters (both human and animal), plot (good deed gone awry), climax (seagull attack), resolution (old man no longer speaking with Rayna). Kevin listened with rapt attention, mesmerized. He and Rayna had lived under the same roof for nearly thirty years and still loved one another. In the moment of her telling, just as she was reaching the climax, he understood the connection he felt for her and she for him would continue long after his total and absolute demise, that this connection was eternal, like his soul, and that the disintegration he obsessed over was just another wave breaking on the shore.
Dennis Donoghue
He was disintegrating. Like the ancient plaster on the attic ceiling he’d meant to replace years ago when he’d planned to finish off the space. Doctor Madden mentioned it as he removed a basal cell carcinoma from Kevin’s forehead. From what looked like an oil can he squirted liquid nitrogen in quick two blasts. Kevin jerked back as if stung by a wasp. Dr. Madden apologized. Kevin liked him but considered him on the spectrum because he didn’t laugh at his jokes. Neither did Rayna, for that matter.
You’re disintegrating, he’d said without explanation.
The kids were grown and out of the house, the house, too big to live in, contained himself, Rayna and the three cats. The girls had disappeared in what seemed like overnight–Chicago, Philly, Reno–pursuing careers, chasing lovers or whatever. It was what you were supposed to do as parents, give them wings and never see them again. He’d been a father and now he wasn’t, or at least the way he had been. He might offer advice over the phone, tips about when to get new tires or how many flashlights to keep around the house in the event of a power outage. They ignored him while Rayna handled the emotional stuff.
He hadn’t told her what Doctor Madden said. He didn’t exactly understand it himself. He assumed it had something to do with his being seventy. He hoped if he played his cards right he’d get another ten years. Friends and relatives his age had cancer, heart disease, strokes, all of it out of the blue. Fine one day, trips to specialists months apart the next. Any time now he expected to wake up with something. He wouldn’t be surprised. Once you hit a certain age look out. His disintegration was accelerating. That was what Dr. Madden had meant, like the science museum exhibit he’d seen when the kids were young, the one with the descending silver balls spinning around a hole. The closer they dropped the faster they spun. That was him, one of those silver balls, dropping toward the hole he’d feared and would have to reckon with sooner rather than later. He was going down that hole, period, along with everyone else. His current strategy, one he’d hope to have abandoned at this point of his life in favor of something more substantive, was not to think about it.
He had to be careful putting his feet under him getting out of bed. Once he moved around, brushed his teeth, had his coffee, he was good. He’d mentioned installing a grab bar in the shower, non-slip strips on the tub floor. Rayna wasn’t thrilled. It would indicate the start of something she did not want to be reminded of. He had eight years on her. Back when they’d met she said if anything happened to him she would wheel him up to his parents’ doorstep. He laughed and hoped she was joking. Their parents had died within six months of one another, first her mother and then both of his.They’d taken care of them, part of the sandwich generation, raising kids and caring for parents. He wondered how it would go with them, with him. Maybe he’d do her a favor and go fast, move on to the next phase without becoming a nuisance or a financial burden. That was the worst, to linger. They hadn’t really discussed pulling the plug on one another. He’d told her not to be afraid, to just do it. She said she wasn’t afraid if that was what he wanted. She’d said yes right away. She didn’t have to think about it. Not a word about soul searching or discussing it with the kids. She was clear-eyed, unemotional. Okay, if that’s what you want. If it was she he’d let the kids decide. He’d had enough guilt from the nuns. Besides, he’d done it already, twice, saying no to feeding tubes for both parents. His father fell and hit his head, got shipped to MGH, forearms lashed to bedrails, agitated, unconscious and sedated for three days. The neurologist expected him to come around provided he received nutrients. Even so, there’ll likely be brain damage and issues with speech and mobility. Kevin did not want his father back. He was ninety-three. The next day he was dead, nutrients denied, his demise was so sudden and unexpected his mother did not believe he was gone. After sixty-three years of marriage they had no chance to say goodbye. They’d gone for something to eat afterwards, the whole family. She told her fourteen year old grandson who sat next to her at Olive Garden she wanted to kill herself. She would call for her husband as if he was in another room playing a trick on her. When Kevin explained, her eyes filled bottom to top. Maybe he was the one playing the trick. After her stroke six months later he said no again. She lasted six days in hospice. He stayed with her the last two nights, lying on a cot staring into the dark, grieving, praying, relieved, too, the long stint of caregiving nearly over, just the small house to clean out and dispose of. He kept getting up for the nurse, thinking she’d died. He felt foolish, with no clue if his mother was breathing. When she stopped, two hours before sunrise, he remained by her bedside. It was too early to alert anyone. They’d said their goodbyes the night before. At first light he made calls, then walked outside and into the stand of woods next door. It was a bright clear morning in early June. He found a log and meditated. Birdsong was so distinct he could pick out every note. A soft breeze and sheer shafts of sunlight animated young leaves. He smelled a hint of the sea. The exuberance of his surroundings startled him. He tried to summon tears but couldn’t. He was sure something was wrong with him.
There wasn’t a plug. If he found himself hungry or thirsty he would go without, as his parents had, the decision made without him. Or perhaps he might ease into eternal rest at home, in bed next to Rayna, pass peacefully into the night. He’d known a guy, a retired teacher like himself, who’d gone to bed perfectly healthy, his body cooling beside his wife at five in the morning. He saw her walking around the neighborhood and would speak to her. A full year later she was still in shock, a haunted look on her face. He’d been seventy-two and played in a rec basketball league with guys ten years younger. No, he wouldn’t do that to Rayna. A short illness would suffice. He’d hang on for a few days, nothing too painful, the old man’s friend pneumonia, allow everyone a chance to say they loved him, remind him what a difference he’d made, how it was okay to move on. He’d nod, just perceptively, squeeze a hand, release a tear they’d have to look for, listen to how he’d held it together whatever the circumstance and now here he was no different, a far cry from those whimpering about the unfairness of it all, the Why me? crap.
It was a hurdle, death, and, like any hurdle, surmountable. He would find an answer sitting in silence for as long as it took. According to Buddhism this was a bad idea. By looking for an answer, demanding something in return for his sitting, he would give legs to his disintegration, validate it by forming an attachment. Attachments were a definite no-no. He might as well ask for a Bentley or his Roth to return twenty percent. No, the idea was to think of death not as a hurdle to bound but the same as whatever came before, and whatever came before the before, waves breaking on the shore, no different from any other transition in his life he didn’t give two shits about. His problem was that he thought of death in the first place, let it consume and overpower him. Meditating for clarity’s sake only indicated he was knee deep in his own obsessive compulsion. For him it was always grab, grab, grab.
He understood he was not strictly a body nor a mind. For reasons he did not fully grasp, his soul required housing while he walked the earth. Upon birth it entered his body which doubled as a vehicle for transportation, allowing it to interact with its environment. His soul also required a mind to tell the vehicle what to do, think, feel, etc. Its job was to learn what it needed to learn, whatever that was. Being eternal, a part of The Source, it would never disintegrate. Upon his death it would rejoin The Source or find another body/mind and incarnate all over again to learn more of whatever it was it was supposed to learn. He was along for the ride, or rather his soul was along for the ride, until his death, whereby it would discard him like his thirty year old suit with the wide lapels and double breasted jacket Rayna had been after him to get rid of. Then it would get fitted for a new one like the kids wore these days, the narrow waisted jacket snug across the chest, the stovepipe trouser fit an inch above the ankles.
They’d been married twenty-nine years. Rayna was practical and down to earth, having grown up on a dairy farm. She’d done chores from the time she was three, gathering warm eggs and chasing wandering calves. Everyone on the farm did chores seven days a week. Even vacations were a chore. Her father, a Holstein breeder, took the family to cattle conventions and county fairs to advertise his brand and check out stock. Chores kept Rayna from obsessing over that about which she could do nothing. Most of Kevin’s thinking involved obsessing over that about which he could do nothing. She was always in the middle of something–a painting project or planting bulbs, walking seven thousand steps or leading a book club. Chores were good, according to Buddhism. Chores for chores sake, like monks sweeping spotless floors in temples. Had she been told she was disintegrating she would have gone grocery shopping without giving it a second thought. When her mother received news lung cancer had spread to her spine and left her months to live, the oncologist asked if she had any questions. Yes, said her mother, could you tell me if there’s a Market Basket nearby? I’m making my eggplant parmesan tonight. She didn’t give a rat’s ass. As the calendar pages dwindled she cooked, watched soaps in her recliner, gabbed on the phone, took painkillers. You’d never know the difference, death just another wave breaking on the shore. A week from the end she went to the hospital, slept, came to, recognized him as he thanked her for everything, fell back asleep. She was his hero.
His therapist once told him he was on the back nine. Kevin was fifty or so but it struck him. When he’d asked his therapist what he meant he shrugged. Because you are. Now he was on the back nine of the back nine, even closer to the hole, or whatever metaphor best illustrated he was nearing the end. It wasn’t death that frightened him, really, as much as the getting there. Years ago he’d gone to see a swami who ran an ashram in Porter Square and gave talks on Sunday mornings. He was an American from Indiana who’d played football. His audience was white, professional, living in Cambridge and Somerville, dour overthinkers riddled with anxiety like Kevin. They had questions about death and the point of life the swami would dismiss. He would look out at all the glum faces and laugh. The Mantra of Stupidity, he would tell them. What’s going to happen to me? Kevin was the only one who laughed back.
He’d gotten a peek at something which chilled him so he tried never to think about it. Twelve years ago while jogging he’d slipped on mud and broken a couple of ribs. For weeks he couldn’t cough, laugh or sneeze. He’d slept on the couch and crawled to the bathroom. He’d been given a prescription for Vicodin after being told the ribs would heal faster if the pain was diminished. He took one and had a nightmare. In the nightmare all of him–mind, body, soul–was being consumed by Pac-men. But it wasn’t only him. It was all the invisible forces inside and out which made him who he was. Not only was his existence being devoured but the existence of his existence along with it. He was absolutely terrified and thought he might have gone crazy, that this was what mental illness was like, psychosis or schizophrenia or whatever, his broken mind capable of producing such a hallucination, his every day existential angst a walk in the park compared to the terror and hopelessness he’d experienced in the dream. He’d tried to tell Rayna but when he mentioned Pac-men his recounting was drained of its tension and seriousness. He could not convey how he’d felt. Not only was he heading toward oblivion with every chomp but that very oblivion (consisting of forces which had created it) was also being extinguished. He prayed to God this was not a precursor to his death and dying.
Humor would save him. It had gotten him through parochial school, twenty-nine years of marriage, his sixth grade teaching career. Sometimes Rayna would catch him laughing to himself, having a really good chuckle for no apparent reason that she could determine. When he did this out in public she would elbow him. She asked what was so funny except what was funny to him would, in all likelihood, not be funny to her. She did not desire to be accompanied by a man laughing to himself. Sometimes he kept laughing after the elbowing. He also made noises he was not aware of, a humming sound she could hear but which he could not, like a dog whistle. When she pointed this out he would tell her he was well aware he was making the humming sound even if he wasn’t. Then he would laugh about it.
He had to watch himself, make sure not to leave the house with blood on his face after shaving or with his fly unzipped. He was stumbling too, not lifting his feet like he once did. He had to remind himself to pick his feet up. Pick your feet up, he would tell himself, sometimes aloud. He avoided uneven ground. When you hit seventy you were supposed to spend time performing various exercises like balance and resistance training. On Youtube videos seniors with six packs did sets of chin-ups and burpees. They flipped truck tires and generated waves with battle ropes. It was considered a character flaw if you did not join a Crossfit gym and go on a raw meat diet. At one time, only a few years ago, doctors recommended having a couple of beers a night to reduce stress. Then, seemingly overnight, alcohol became the new Pall Malls, every beer a cruise missile to the internal organs. Still, research or not, he refused to quit drinking. Every night he popped open a can, one can only.
Had his mother-in-law been born with some mechanism whereby she could ignore her impending death, some governor regulating her anxiety? Or could he train himself to be like her? He imagined getting the news, thanking his doctor for his forthrightness, saying he’d love to discuss it further but he was having his septic pumped in half an hour and had to get home. No, most assuredly he’d grow faint. He recalled the times he’d passed out in Mass as a kid, buttoned up in his winter coat in the overheated church, one of the nuns hauling him upright from under the pew and directing him to get some fresh air. Down the center aisle he would proceed during the Consecration (it was always during the Consecration), steadying himself by focusing on the light of the vestibule, his back to the priest as he transformed bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, the parishioners eyeballing him leaving at this most sacred of moments. He was seven, the age of reason, and he was going to hell.
He didn’t want to be told. He didn’t want the truth. If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it does that mean you have terminal cancer? His whole life he’d been scared shitless of doctors. For years he’d refused blood work until Doctor Madden told him straight out he could not provide effective treatment if he did not submit to a lab panel once a year. So he went and had his blood taken, a plastic tray locking him in, a tourniquet snapped tight on his bicep. He made a fist and opened it. He looked away while blood flowed out of him, listened to the click as the phlebotomist exchanged one vial for another, racking up half a dozen on the tray. He attempted levity but got nowhere. If he stood up too quickly he would pass out like in Mass and ruin the phlebotomist’s day. The results would arrive in his portal within twenty-four hours. He would not look at them. Doctor Madden would have to break the news in person. Kevin would sit and meditate in the waiting room, hoping Doctor Madden was running late.
Though he could not stop or even slow his disintegration, he felt essentially the same week to week, even month to month. At some point the acceleration would speed up even further, the silver balls blurring right before they dropped into the hole. At least with Rayna and the kids he would not die alone. He wondered if they would feel as he had about his own mother, that sense of relief now that things were wrapping up. He did not want to overstay his welcome though he imagined he would try to hang on. It was human nature to cling to life while friends and loved ones maintained a vigil, another day off from work or having to find childcare for the grandkids while he took his sweet time, a lost cause inconveniencing everyone. The doctor would remind them it was an inexact science, promising the end would come, if not tonight or tomorrow, the next day or certainly the day after. There were definitive signs but the precise moment was anyone’s guess. So they’d put their lives on hold, make small talk, sip coffee, wait for him to make up his mind. He wouldn’t do it if the kids were there. He’d decided that much. His mother-in-law had passed just minutes after he’d dragged Rayna down to the cafeteria to get a pastry and a cup of tea. She hadn’t eaten in days. They were at the cashier when her phone rang. Mommy’s gone, said one of her sisters. It happened right this second. Rayna looked at him. It was unforgivable, his pulling her away at the exact wrong time. They dropped everything and rushed back to the room. He felt horrible. He’d meant well but she would never see it that way. Her sisters, bless them, saved his ass. She wouldn’t leave until you were out of the room, they told her, the four of them collapsing in tears. She was waiting for you to step out. She couldn’t die in front of her baby girl. It would be too much for you. He was elated. He hugged everyone. He didn’t cry, not in front of them. He was starving. He couldn’t eat if she couldn’t eat. At a time like this you weren’t supposed to have an appetite. He would never taste his mother-in-law’s eggplant parmesan again. He’d had an everything bagel and a container of cream cheese in his hand but left them by the cash register. They would sit for a while, maybe hours. Food was out of the question except for orange flavored Lifesavers provided by one of the sisters. He’d already had four.
He sat with his legs hanging over the end of the exam table, his scalp on fire. Words had meaning, so everyone said, and shouldn’t be thrown around lightly. And yet maybe Doctor Madden, as a person on the spectrum, as someone who did not get Kevin’s humor, had not thrown those words around lightly. He could have well said decomposing, or even rotting, all three words meaning essentially the same. Or he could have kept his mouth shut. What benefit could be gained by telling a patient he was disintegrating? He’d said it with a straight face, without winking. He doubted Doctor Madden had ever winked in his entire life. It was the same tone he used when he told Kevin to cut out processed carbs. Was he disintegrating at a faster rate than his other older patients and so ought to be made aware of it? But Doctor Madden hadn’t suggested taking niacin or cutting out caffeine, both of which in Kevin’s mind might slow the process. He should have followed up Doctor Madden’s comment. Do you mean me specifically?
When he left the office he noticed red maples lining a drainage ditch on one side of the parking lot. Yellowing scarlet leaves spun in the brisk October wind and clotted the pipe at one end. The medical building was just a few years old and Kevin thought a drainage ditch next to a row of red maples didn’t make much sense. Water would overflow onto the pavement and turn to ice once the temperature dropped. When he pointed this out to Rayna she said she’d been to the same medical building countless times (they had different doctors) and never once had such a thought occurred to her. That parking lot, as far as she was concerned, was always clear of snow and ice. Wouldn’t it be ironic, he said, to break a leg in the parking lot of your doctor’s office? She ignored him as she was already on about what had happened on her walk that morning. Something crazy was always happening.
“You know the old guy with the terrier/chihuahua mix who carried a stick in case of a hawk attack, the one who thought seagulls were hawks until I corrected him? And how he stopped carrying that stick because of me? Well guess what. Yesterday the dog found a discarded Cheetos bag and didn’t a seagull swoop down and nearly take the dog’s eye out. He told me this not twenty minutes ago. He said from now on I should mind my own f-ing business. Can you believe that?”
Kevin laughed. It was one of the greatest stories he’d ever heard, top ten for sure. Rayna was pissed at him for laughing. She’d tried to do the right thing and almost got the dog killed. Now the old man refused to speak to her. Kevin kept laughing. You couldn’t make a story like that up. Years from now he would laugh to himself about it and when she asked him what was so funny he would of course say nothing was so funny.
The story had everything: characters (both human and animal), plot (good deed gone awry), climax (seagull attack), resolution (old man no longer speaking with Rayna). Kevin listened with rapt attention, mesmerized. He and Rayna had lived under the same roof for nearly thirty years and still loved one another. In the moment of her telling, just as she was reaching the climax, he understood the connection he felt for her and she for him would continue long after his total and absolute demise, that this connection was eternal, like his soul, and that the disintegration he obsessed over was just another wave breaking on the shore.
