house—in an “apartment” in her house—and Shannon laughs and says yes, “your husband who is such a sweet man” has been saying that to me, too—it’s better not to upset him, just humor him for the time being.
Humor him. For the time being.
How embarrassed Ray would be, to know that he is being “humored”—this is very upsetting.
I seek out one of Ray’s doctors—Dr. B_.
Dr. B_ is Ray’s admitting physician. Dr. B_ is better known to Ray than to me, a very nice cordial man of early middle age. Dr. B_ will be the Certifying Physician on my husband’s death certificate.
Dr. B_ too tells me not to be alarmed—“delusional thinking” isn’t uncommon when a patient’s brain isn’t receiving quite enough oxygen.
My husband, Dr. B_ assures me, is only “mildly delusional”—the nasal inhaler isn’t working or he’s breathing through his mouth and not his nose as he’s been instructed. That’s why it’s good for me to remain with him as long as I can, Dr. B_ says, to “anchor” him to reality.
I am relieved—Ray is only “mildly delusional.”
I am relieved—Dr. B_ is so matter-of-fact, even a bit bemused. As if, if he had but the time, he could entertain me with any number of comical delusions of patients he has known—very possibly, previous patients in room 541 being treated for pneumonia.
Dr. B_ tells me the condition is reversible.
Reversible?
How casually this crucial term is uttered. Reversible!
Yes, Mrs. Smith. Reversible, usually.
Dr. B_ orders the nasal inhaler to be removed, the oxygen mask to be resumed. Within a short while—it’s a miracle for which I will hide away in a hospital women’s room, to weep in gratitude—my husband has returned to normal—to himself.
Days, nights in giddy succession—like a roller coaster—at the hospital, at home—at the hospital, at home—driving into Princeton, driving out into the country from Princeton—this February has been a cheerless month yet this week—the final week of our lives together—our life—overcast mornings are suffused with a strange sourceless sunshine.
This mysterious radiance from within.
I am relieved—more relieved than I wish to acknowledge—that Ray’s mildly delusional state has faded.
Not in a mood to ponder reversible, irreversible—nor in a mood to consider what is normal, what is self. Harrowing to think that our identities—the selves people believe they recognize in us: our “personalities”—are a matter of oxygen, water and food and sleep—deprived of just one of these our physical beings begin to alter almost immediately—soon, to others we are no longer “ourselves”—and yet, who else are we?
Is the self the physical body, or is the body but the repository of self?
It’s the most ancient of all philosophical—metaphysical—paradoxes. You do not see a self without a body to contain it, yet you do not see a body without a self to activate it.
When my mother died at the age of eighty-six she had lost a good deal of her memory—her “mind.” Yet she had not lost her self, not quite.
She’d become severely forgetful, you might say a dimmer and less animated version of herself, as a monotype fades with repeated strikings, its subtleties lost. Yet Mom was never entirely lost. In a garden at her assisted living facility in Clarence, New York, we were sitting with her—my brother Fred and me—and Fred asked her if she remembered me—and Mom said, “I could never forget Joyce!”—and in that instant, this was so.
I loved my mother very much. Friends who knew us both have said how much of my mother resides in me—mannerisms, voice inflections, a way of smiling, laughing. I know that my father resides in me also. (Daddy died two years before Mom. Her mild delusion was that Daddy was living in a farther wing of the facility: “Over there,” Mom would say, pointing at a specific building. “Fred is over there.”)
Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad—I could not bear to “outlive” them—for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.
Now, I feel differently. Now, I have no option.
Returning home!
What happiness—what relief—returning home!
As if I’ve been gone for days not hours.
As if I’ve traveled many miles not just a few.
Behind a ten-foot fence so faded you would not identify it as redwood—behind a part-acre of deciduous and evergreen trees—our house hovers ghost-white in the darkness—no lights within—but I thought I’d left at least one light on, that morning—I am so very very tired, I am so eager to get inside this place of refuge, I feel faint with yearning, I could weep with relief, exhaustion.
This nightmare vigil! The smell of the hospital clings to me—that distinctive smell as of something faintly rotted, sweetly rotted beneath the masking odor of disinfectant—as soon as you push through the slow-revolving front door and into the foyer you smell it—the smell of hospital-elevators, hospital-restrooms, hospital-corridors—the smell of Ray’s room—(what a quaint sort of usage, Ray’s room—until it is vacated and Ray’s bed filled by another)—this smell is in my hair, on my skin, my clothing. I am eager to get inside the house and tear off my contaminated clothing—I am eager to take a shower—to scrub my face, my hands—my hair that feels snarled, clotted—But no first: phone—I must check phone calls on Ray’s phone, and on my own—No first: cats—I must feed the cats, let them outdoors—skittish and distrustful they prefer to be let outside than to eat in their corner of the kitchen—No first: mail—but I am too tired to run outside to the mailbox, the very thought whirls in my brain shrinking to the size of a dot, and vanishes—No first: lights—for the house is so very dark—a cave—a sepulcher—like a crazed woman who has thrown off her manacles I run through the rooms of the house switching on lights—living room lights! dining room lights! hall lights! bedroom lights! Ray’s study lights!—I turn on the radio in the kitchen—I turn on the television in our bedroom— can’t bear this silence—you would think possibly I am rehearsing Ray’s homecoming—the entire house lighted as if a party were taking place within—No first: clean with manic energy I will vacuum the rooms of the house, lingering over the carpets, of all household tasks it is vacuuming I most enjoy for its brainless thumping and the immediate gratification it yields—there is something especially gratifying about late-night vacuuming—vacuuming into the early hours of the morning which one could not do, surely, if one’s spouse were home and trying to sleep—inspired then I will polish a selection of the household furniture—though it doesn’t really need polishing, I am eager to polish the dining room table for it’s at this table that Ray will eat his homecoming meal in a few days—I am not sure which of his favored meals I will prepare—must discuss this tomorrow—what a pleasure to polish the dining room table which can be polished to a ravishing sheen though it’s but mahogany veneer—No first: Ray’s desk—this is crucial!—I will remove the accumulation of mail from Ray’s desk—both Ray’s desks—I will polish both desks with lemon polish, to surprise him—I will straighten the items on Ray’s windowsills which include such curiosities as semi-used Post-its, ballpoint pens whose ink has
