His Wife Leaves Him

some weird ones today too.” “Same with me,” Maureen says. “Thanks,” he says. “That reassures me, for you girls are anything but…well, something. You’re commonsensible and sane. I guess we should tell them we’re done with the room. We’ll all go?” They head for the nurse’s station, but a man comes up to them and says “Mr. Samuels? And I assume these are your daughters,” and gives his name and says he’s an administrator for the hospital. “And of course my condolences for your terrible loss, and from the entire hospital,” and his daughters thank him. “I know it’s so soon after, but we have to think about what you want done with Mrs. Samuels’ body. Do you have a funeral home to contact? If you don’t we can provide you with a list of reputable ones: nondenominational, religious, whatever you prefer.” “Not necessary,” he says. “She specifically asked me, though I’ve no documents to prove it — not that I’d think I’d need them — that she be given to science,” when she’d told him a couple of times the last two years that if she dies before him, and it’s almost certain she will, she said, she wants to be cremated and a box of her ashes buried in their garden under the star magnolia tree where the boxes of her parents are. “No monument; no marker; just that,” she said. “If you can’t or won’t do it, ask the girls to.” Rosalind says “Didn’t Mommy want to be cremated? That’s what she told me. And her ashes buried near the ashes of Grandma Gita and Grandpa under…what’s that white-flowering tree in the garden by the circular driveway called?” “Star magnolia?” he says. “That’s it. The flowers come up early and sometimes stay around for only a week. But that’s what she told me. I quickly cut her off and changed the subject because I didn’t want to think of her dead and her ashes and all that, but I remember.” “Did she say that to you too?” he asks Maureen. “It seems familiar,” she says, “but I can’t say for sure.” “It’s something you don’t forget,” Rosalind says, and Maureen says “I think it was you who told me she said it.” “When did Mommy say this to you?” he says to Rosalind, and she says “A while back. I believe it was right after her first stroke. She was feeling very vulnerable then and she also said she didn’t think she’d live that long, another thing I didn’t want to hear. Poor Mommy.” “She was wrong, though, wasn’t she? She didn’t live long enough, that’s for sure, and ‘poor Mommy’ is right, but she lasted much longer than she thought she would and her last two years weren’t entirely morbid and empty. In fact, we had plenty of good times together. Anyway, that’s what I meant when I asked when did she say that. She might have expressed an interest in being cremated at one time. But the last year or so she told me numerous times — I don’t know why so many, for it wasn’t as if I wasn’t going to do what she said — that she wanted her body, for whatever good it’ll do organ recipients and research scientists, and she was dubious it’d do any good to either, donated to science.” “So,” the man says, “unless there’s any disagreement on this, I think your father should have the last word. But we have to move fast. Several of her organs need to be removed within hours and frozen or put on ice or they can’t effectively be transplanted.” “Okay with you girls?” he says, and Maureen says “If that’s what Mommy said she wanted, it’s all right with me,” and Rosalind says “I have a bit of a problem with there being nothing left of her to cremate and bury, which means nothing in the garden for me to go to when I want to be close to her like that, but I’ll go along with the two of you.” “We could arrange something to be picked up by a funeral home and delivered to a crematory,” the man says, and he says “Let’s leave it as it is. It’s sort of against what she wanted — which was, all of her donated — and it also sounds too gruesome. I wouldn’t be able to get it out of my head, knowing the ashes of a cut-up part of her were down there. I’m sorry, girls, if I’m being too graphic here, but that’s how I feel.” He goes with the man to an office to sign release papers. Leaving the office, he thinks Should he go back to the room and see her alone a last time? No, they’ve probably wheeled her away by now and he’ll never be able to find her, and the kids are waiting. Now she’s really gone, he thinks when he leaves the hospital with his daughters. “What do we do now?” Maureen says; she’s holding on to Rosalind’s arm as if if she didn’t, she’d fall. “Are you okay?” he says, and she says “I’ll live.” “Are you angry at me for some reason?” and she says “Why would I be angry at you?” “Just, your tone. I was mistaken. Well, as awful as this might sound to you both, we still have to eat. I know I’m so hungry I feel sick again. We’ll go to a quiet restaurant, if we can find one, and talk about Mommy and what a horrible two days it’s been, or just not say anything.” Rosalind says “It was all so cut-and-dried — whatever that dumb expression is…settled, final, so soon after she died, in like two hours. And now there’s no more of her, or will be, and she’s gone forever, and it upsets me. I couldn’t eat.” “I was thinking the same thing about the swiftness of it,” he says, “but what could we do? That’s how hospitals operate. Let’s go home, then, and find something, or I’ll get some prepared foods for us at Graul’s and whoever wants to eat with me, can. But I know I need to be with you girls today and I’d think you’d want to be with me.” “We do,” Rosalind says, “and I might have something.” Lying, lying, that’s all he can do and what he’s best at, he thinks, driving them home. He should have done what Gwen wanted, but couldn’t. He’d look out at the garden or walk along the driveway and see the spot her ashes were put and think of what he yelled out about her that night and how sad and demoralized she must have felt and what her face must have looked like hearing it. All because he couldn’t keep his big stupid mouth shut. She’d be alive now if he had, he’s almost sure of it. “Anyway,” he thinks, “I’ll never be sure if what I said didn’t kill her.” His daughters want to have a memorial for her, invite relatives and friends here and in New York. “It’s too much to ask of people,” he says to Rosalind on the phone, “to come that far, if they’re in New York. And if we don’t invite them and they get wind of the memorial, they’ll feel left out.” “We’ll leave it up to them,” she says, “but her friends and some of her former colleagues in Baltimore will want to come.” “Besides, Mommy didn’t want a memorial, funeral, anything like that.” “She said so?” and he says “Not recently, but one time. The subject of cremation came up, but not depressingly. This was, of course, long before she said she wanted to be donated to science — maybe even before her first stroke. I joked ‘Dump my ashes into a storm drain during a heavy storm, or down a toilet and then keep flushing till they’re all gone.’ And she said something like ‘Mine you can scatter around the garden as fertilizer, but first find out if it’s good or bad for the plants. If it’s bad,’ she said, ‘then just leave the ashes at the crematorium for them to throw out.’” “She said that? It doesn’t sound like her.” “I said she said something like it. I forget her exact words, but the ones I used were close, or at least the idea of what she said is there.” “Probably like you, she was joking. Mommy could be very funny.” “Nope, she was serious but only might have said it in a jocular way. I remember then saying something to her like ‘Really, what do you want done with your ashes if it ever has to come to that?’ and she said ‘Just what I said.’ Strange conversation to have but we had it.” “Okay, but we’re not talking about a funeral or burial, Daddy, or what she wanted done with her body after she died — we covered all that when we left her at the hospital. What Maureen and I want is a memorial for her, something simple and tasteful where people speak about her and perhaps Maureen and I can read some of her poems, and then refreshments after at the house, if that’s all right with you.” “You didn’t let me finish,” he says. “Or let’s say, I wasn’t finished. After your mother said that about her ashes, or her cremains, I think they call them, she said she also wouldn’t want there to be any kind of memorial for her either. ‘Nothing programmed or ritualistic,’ she said, ‘where people have to come together over me. If they want to do that,’ she said, ‘they can do it in a natural and less formal setting and where their feelings and thoughts about me come out spontaneously.’ Those were almost her exact words — maybe exactly what she said. No, that would be impossible. But I remember saying ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me this. Because I’m so many years older than you and don’t take as good a care of myself as you’—so this would have to have been before her first stroke—‘I’m sure to be the first one to go, much as I’d hate,’ I said, ‘leaving you and the kids.’ Then, like you, sweetie, I said ‘Let’s stop talking about this. It’s too damn depressing and macabre!’” “Maureen and I sort of anticipated how you’d take to the memorial idea,” she says, “so we’ve already decided to have one, with or without you. I’m sorry, Daddy.” “It’ll have to be without me, then. I love you girls and respect what you’re doing and see the value in it for you and everybody who’d want to attend, but I don’t want to go against your mother’s wishes and what she specifically asked me not to do.” “Then we’ll rent out a private room in a restaurant for the memorial and refreshments, which could be done informally,” and he says “No, that’ll be too expensive. Hiring out a room in a restaurant? Hiring out any place. And the high cost of restaurant food and booze, for they won’t let you cater it from the outside or bring in your own food and beverages. Okay, I’ll come and you can use the house and I’ll pay for all the food and such if you take care of cleaning up after. Nah, I’ll use Dolores, the woman who cleans the house every other week; I’m sure she’ll be free on a weekend. You just arrange the memorial and buy all the stuff you need and tell me what it costs and then see to your guests. One thing, though: don’t expect me to say anything at it, please.” While a few of Gwen’s friends reminisce good-humoredly about her at the memorial in his living room and his daughters talk about her and read some of her shorter poems, he remembers how terribly he treated her, not just that last night with what he shouted out, but for months, maybe a year, before she died. At the table, when she dropped a fork with food on it and then her spoon, he said “Can’t you hold a simple eating utensil anymore? Look at all the crap you spilled on the table and floor, and on your clothes,” and he slapped some food off her lap. “I can’t keep getting on my knees and cleaning up after you.” “I’m sorry, I can’t help it,” she said. “My hands aren’t working.” “Well, get them to work,” and she said “Wouldn’t I love to.” “So what does that mean, I have to feed you from now on?” and she said “For the time being, I’m afraid you’ll have to if you don’t want to keep cleaning up the mess I’ve made.” “But I do enough. This, that and the other thing, and then something else. You’ve got me coming and going all day. But I especially don’t want to get into the habit of feeding you because you’ve given up and expect me to do everything for you and you don’t concentrate on doing the easier little things like sticking your fork into a piece of sliced-up meat or even signing you name. Concentrate harder and you’ll be able to control your hands better,” and she said “That’s ridiculous, contrary to everything you know about my condition. All right, I won’t eat,” and she pushed her plate away. He said “Forget it; you always win. Have I said this before? Even if I have a dozen times, I’ll say it again: ‘The tyranny of the sick.’ Here, let me help you,” and he got some spinach and chicken salad on a tablespoon and shoved it into her mouth. She said “Too hard; you hurt me, and you’ll break my teeth,” and he said “Sorry, didn’t mean to,” and fed her that meal and most of the ones after that, and from then on usually had to stick her pills into her mouth and hold her special large-handled plastic mug to her lips so she could drink them down or just when she wanted something to drink. “Uh-oh,” she said another time, and he looked up from the newspaper he was reading and saw she’d torn the temples off the eyeglasses she was trying to put on. “God, nothing’s safe in your hands,” he said. “Now I have to take you to the eyeglass place for new frames, and also the goddamn expense. Why didn’t you break the lenses while you were at it?” and she said “I tried but it was too hard,” and smiled. “Big fucking joke,” he said, “big fucking joke,” when he knew he should just smile back to make her feel better, and she said “You used to have such a good sense of humor. It helped us both in situations like this. I even remember my mother saying ‘You married a real funny guy,’ and that my own sense of humor had improved since knowing you. What happened? Where’d it go?” and he said “I don’t find much that’s funny anymore when it entails more work for me and time. Let’s get the damn frame business over with, what do you say? If we leave in a few minutes, we can be there before six, when I think the place closes.” “Good, because I’m lost without my glasses. But there are some preparations we have to do before I’m ready.” “Preparations, always more preparations. Always more work; always more for me to do, till I have no time for myself. And these chores are never when the caregiver’s here, or hardly ever.” “That’s not true,” and he said “Yes, it is. It’s almost as if you plan it that way so I can work my ass off for you. Oh, how did I get myself into this?” and she said “If you stop complaining and help me, we can be ready in half an hour and we’d make it in time. Though maybe you should call the place first. It could be a late night for them and we wouldn’t have to rush and you to get all upset.” “I don’t want to call. I don’t want to do anything. What I want is for you to stop making me do all these things.” And she said “I’ll try but there’s no guarantee. In fact, the opposite might be the case.” “What’s that supposed to mean? Not only your coordination and dexterity, but get your head under control too.” She shut her eyes, turned the wheelchair around and wheeled herself out of the room. “You can wheel yourself okay, when most times you say you can’t, so why you telling me you’re having such a tough time with your hands?” How could he have acted like that? How could he have? Getting her dressed — something like this happened a number of times — he’d say something like — she’d be in her wheelchair or on the commode—“Try to get your arm through the sleeve,” and she’d say “I can’t; it’s stuck inside.” And he’d say “Damn, can’t you help me even a little with this?” and pull her hand hard at the other end of the sleeve and she’d wince from the pain and say “What are you trying to do, wrench my arm off? Go easy, will you?” Or he’d put her shirt over her head and jerk her head or neck forward so he could get the shirt all the way down in back, and she’d say “Don’t pull me so hard; I’m in enough pain without you straining my neck.” He’d say, he almost always said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” when he knew sometimes he did because of something she’d said to him before or because he wanted to get these chores over with so he could get to or go back to his work. She’d yell from their bathroom — this also happened a number of times—“Martin, can you come here, please?” He’d usually yell back “Give me a few minutes; I’m right in the middle of something,” and she’d usually say “I need you right away; please.” He remembers one time going to the back, telling himself “What the fuck is wr