garbage

All the blinds are down, the curtains drawn. It's five in the afternoon, and Rich is wondering why it isn't yet dark because it must be night, why is the clock a lie.

I'm squeezed onto the edge of the bed, my head on his shoulder. His door opens, and the nurse's aide comes in, just to empty the garbage, she says. Rich shakes his head, disgusted. I pass her the mostly-empty bin over the bed. It's on her list, I say. She's doing her job.

"They're bothering Rich and Candace," he whispers. "For garbage."

Once, he called garbage his life. A world of work, achievement, fulfilling obligations, meetings, plans.

It's wearying to explain to visitors that, no, he doesn't want entertainment, or distractions, or the latest on their lives. He needs help dying. Few want to hear this. Fewer know how.

I don't know much, but I'm learning. I know small talk is now more than annoying pinpricks, they're bullets. And so I filter the nonsense I almost say, which is mostly everything I read or write or do. Only those at the edge know how to die, and I'm not there yet, and can't pretend. But I can look at my life, and know its worth is measured in what is not said.

So I touch him, I love him, I watch him crawling into another world, as the garbage flies over our heads.

Candace