Thirty-three

She stood across the room, watching him, as if she saw him for the first time. It sure felt like it every time she looked at him now. He was near unrecognizable. Chemotherapy tends to do that to anyone. It's not really the hair loss or the assimilated look one gets while under treatment. It's not so much the glazed over eyes from the strong narcotics that make being in a body that is dying barely bearable. No, there's something about walking in the shadow of ones own death that changes people's faces. Knowing any day could be the day. Any minute could be the last. Of course that's true for all of us, yet when the vibrancy of health belies that fact, it is so much easier to ignore. They divorced a couple of years back. Their marriage an empty shell from the promise of their youth. She couldn't make their boys stay in touch with him even before they split. He had become just as estranged with them as he had with her, but not as estranged as he had become with himself. She had known him since her youth, married him while they were still in college. Starting their family at a young age. She had always wanted to have a family. A home to take care of. She was happy then. And so was he. At least that's what she had always believed. There was no dividing line from their happy years into their miserable years. No specific event that drew a distinctive line into a before and after. The insidious gray shadows of unfullfillment and dissatisfaction had slowly seeped into his pores. Grinding him ever so slowly from slightly jaded into that sort of bitterness that marks a face permanently. Thirtythree years of doing nothing but working and coming home to bitch, as he would say, and now there was nothing left but to die. He had his share of regrets. He wished he would be closer to his sons, but he was glad that they at least started talking to him again, now that he had been given only a few months to live. He was even more grateful that she decided to be there for him after he called her to tell her his diagnosis. He looked back at her when he became aware that she had been watching him. He gave her a faint smile. The blood transfusion he was receiving didn't put any color to his face. He looked just as washed out and tired as ever. But he didn't see that as much as he saw her grief in her face. He wished she didn't have to go through what she was going through, that gave her face a permanent expression of terror. It was as if her face was unwilling to relax the grip of fear that had been struck into it. Not even the divorce distorted her once beautiful features in such a rather grotesque way. E

ven with such an extremely stressful event as a divorce, there always remained possibilities. Death, on the other hand, leaves none. It is an absolute. Thirtythree years of ungratefulness and it took for him to lay on his dying bed to come to appreciate every moment that had seemed to be nothing but struggles at the time. "I love you" he said, still smiling. A tear rolled down her face, she wiped it away quickly as she cleared her throat "I love you, too" she replied. His eyes closed slowly as he spoke "I never said it enough. I'm sorry for that. But I have aIways loved you, even when I couldn't show you." He still had that smile on his face when she realized that he wasn't going to open his eyes anymore.