fat and sugar

Sunday 3 a.m.

I'm falling off the edge. Awake, heart racing, I cool down, drink water, answer Thunder's howls. I breathe, I think, I decide: Let the garbage fly. I'm taking a vacation. Not of the Disneyland sort -- though a pretty good scene could be written with this as backdrop -- but in the vacare sense, the original meaning: To vacate, to empty, scything through the noise while focusing on my life and death, Rich's death and life.

Sunday 6 p.m.

Four of us are in the Hospice kitchen -- myself, the nurse, the nurse's aide, and the graduate student volunteer. At last, a resident has moved in who can still eat "real" meals -- Rich's had been supplied by his private brigade -- and the kitchen smells of garlic and onion, vegetables in the pan, brownies in the oven. We're talking about some of my favorite topics -- Broadway, food, travel, while I boil water and rip open a packet of "Hot Cocoa with Dark Chocolate Flavor."

"This is destroying my real food bona fides," I say, adding a few ice cubes to this Frankenfood mix, a bastard offspring of cocoa and milk.

While I measure the drink into a sippy cup, the volunteer shows me a list he's made.

"Everything I Should Have Asked Candace First," he calls it. Grammatically, not a perfect sentence (unless First is my last name, or I'm royalty, or a pope), but I'm flattered that I'm his go-to guru for places to go, shows to see, careers to consider.

I'm more than a slave of the chordoma, more than a pit bull protecting Rich.

"Rich never liked hot cocoa," I say, preparing to return to his room, leaving laughter behind. "But at the end, it's like the beginning, just like mother's milk. Fat and sugar, that gets us going and takes us out."

The volunteer grabs a pencil.

"I have to write this down," he says.

I laugh. This is proof I'm alive. And this will change as soon as I reach the end of the hall, as soon as I position the straw for Rich, as soon as he says, this place is a zero...why did you put me here...

Then, he offers me his drink.

I shake my head.

Why are you starving...I can't figure out...

Vacare. Harder to get to than Disneyland.

Candace