!A wake of smiles
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agk's diary
10 February 2022 @ 18:22
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written on GPD Win 1 at College of Nursing
in a study room: boots off, feet on table
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Sloum@colorfield wondered about gopher writers'
physical culture. This week I walked four miles up
the creek to the cow pasture and home again. I held
my 20 lb baby in one arm, spouse held other hand.
We walk often, and wrestle now and then.
I walked down from hospital 11th floor to ground,
up to College of Nursing 6th floor, down again.
It's a mile to where I park. Danced up a lather in
the kitchen with baby. Slow-dance hefted patients
to and from beds, commodes, and recliners. Ran
across a snowy courtyard to help break up a brawl
between children.
In the hospital I get to be in the presence of love
that lends humor, grace, generosity, and sweetness
to every little thing. Mom's parents loved like
that. So do Charlie and Lynn.
> When I tell hospital stories, I invent composite
> patients. You can't ID who I assembled them from.
Lynn, in camo jacket and bluejeans, watched while
physical therapy carefully ambulated her husband in
the hall.
"He's doing good," I said. "You taking him home to-
morrow?"
"He ain't got long, does he? The cancer went from
his kidney to his liver and lung, maybe his brain,
doctor said."
I confirmed her understanding of what the doctor
said.
"I need a hospital bed. Can't get him in and out of
ours by myself," Lynn said. She described her house
and how Charlie'll live in it as he is.
We celebrated when she, surprised, learned the bed
was being delivered. We celebrated and laughed when
Charlie finally had a big bowel movement and wryly
farted a lot. His abdomen deflated some from the
procedure that inflated it with air and distended
it so grotesquely.
Lynn's phone rang: now her sister's in the hospital
too. Covid and bad pneumonia. Charlie, sclera and
skin jaundiced yellow, told me haltingly about the
plant employed his dad and him; how his dad died of
kidney cancer last year. Charlie and Lynn are
brightly, sweetly in love no matter what. They
chuckled and marked events together, structuring
time. They delighted in one another.
The day he dies will be like a leaf reaching the
forest floor where it may rest. I hope to live and
die like them: gruff, chuckling, unpretentious,
leaving a wake of smiles.
