It is barely 9 a.m. My Dunkin’ Donuts extra-large cream and sugar (treats I give myself for the pain I’m enduring) isn’t half sipped yet. We have a doctor’s appointment in less than an hour for the Mrs.’ flu shot. During the early evening hours she’ll gather with some “gals” from church for a Bible Study that meets once a month. Now that summer is on the wane, things are getting rolling again.
There were some moments of panic last week as we tried to find the assigned book. I don’t know what I’d do without the interwebs at my finger tips when I’m there and she is here. I called up her local bookstores and no copies were to be found. They’d be in next week. She had chapters to read and had to get at that NOW. Amazon came to the rescue and little does Best Boy know that he bought her the book. While gathering the parts and pieces of the former life fun-box (xBox) that was recently sold to a cousin at a greatly reduced price…I found an Amazon gift card tucked in the black hole of the coffee table drawer. Surely it was an abandoned gift left behind on his quick escape to new vistas and a new LA life.
Screaming, “FINDERS KEEPERS” I got on line and ordered the book – even paid for 2 day shipping so that she’d have plenty of time to ponder. But we were somewhat screwed by the Labor Day holiday that left us without mail delivery. It wasn’t in Tuesday’s mail either. But later in the day, via Fed-Ex or UPS (she never told me which) she called me to excitedly announce that she’d be able to get her homework done.
All she does is read. She reads like a fiend. In another stroke of luck, her brand new blended lenses came in from the eye exam she had two weeks ago. She’d had an exam a year ago and spent the majority of the following 12 months closing one eye to read because something was wrong with one of the lenses. She was just pulling in the driveway coming from the eye doctor’s office when I arrived yesterday. My brain being double dumbed down from life…it never occurred to me to call the doctor and complain six months ago. What kind of a caregiver am I??
Anyway, sitting beside me in her blue recliner I notice that she is stifling some sobs. Something in that 10 page chapter on Joseph has her thinking about Billy I’m sure. She wants to make sure she has time to absorb it and she’s read the same chapter three times in a day and a half. Even though she’s done so well this year, I feel that her loneliness is heavy right now. She keeps finding Billy scribbles – little notes that don’t mean anything but they are daily proofs that he existed and still walks beside her in some strange fashion.
I’m in a hurry to get home. I did some basement duty yesterday and I want to get back to my own world of messes. But today I give pause. Before my own world spins into new galaxies in a month or so with the arrival of the Awaited, I try to be unselfish and sit here quietly talking about her behind her back. Just me sitting in the chair keeps her quiet, reading with reddened, watery eyes. She needs that but maybe doesn’t know it. And I need to be quiet, beside her and maybe I don’t know that either.
1eyedmonkee 