ple 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 wrong now? Always something,” and seeing her plastic mug on the bathroom floor and juice or tea around it and her dress wet in front. “It fell out of my hands while I was drinking from it,” she said. “I think you’ll have to change my dress.” “One thing at a time,” he said. “First the floor, then you, or else my feet will get wet from your mess and track up the bedroom carpet when I walk on it.” He took a towel off the shower rod and she said “Don’t use a clean towel.” He said “It’s not clean; you used it yesterday,” and she said “Then a ‘good’ towel. Use paper towels or a rag.” “I’ll use what I want to; I want to get this over with. What the hell you think we have a washing machine for?” and she said “Please hurry, then, and take care of me. I’m getting cold I got myself so wet.” “Want to know something? It’s what you deserve for being so clumsy.” He thinks: “Did I really say that? I said it.” “It’s what you deserve for being so clumsy. Maybe next time you’ll be more careful, though I’m not counting on it.” And he wiped up the juice or tea on the floor, went into the kitchen with the towel and put it in the washer, came back and got her dress off and said “Let me get rid of this.” “Is that what you did with the dirty towel? I’m cold. Get a dress on me first and then deal with the wash. You’re only trying to punish me for the mess I made,” and he said “I’m not. I don’t know where to put the wet things.” “In the sink here.” He put the wet dress in the sink and got a clean dress on her, pulling her head forward to get it through the neck hole and tugging the dress down in back too hard and tearing it a little. “That was smart,” she said. “How many dresses of mine do you want to ruin?” and he said “I’m sorry. It was an accident.” He didn’t act like that all the time, he thinks. Most of the time he wasn’t rough and did what she asked without complaining, or not out loud. “Martin will you help me, please?” she said another time. He was working in the dining room and said “Damn, ‘Will you help me, will you help me, will you help me?’ I help you all the time. All right; coming.” And he went into her study — he didn’t think he said any of that loud enough for her to hear, except the “All right, coming,” and said “So what’s wrong?” She was using her computer’s voice-recognition system and said “My computer froze. Could you press the reset button, please?” and he said “Sure,” and did it, and she said, “Thanks. A kiss, a kiss,” and he pulled her chair back and moved the microphone away from her mouth and kissed her and then wheeled her back in front of the computer. He left the room and thought her computer’s just going to freeze again and she’s going to ask him to reset it and this is what happens five to ten times a day when she’s using it. “Get a new computer,” he should tell her, “or stop using them.” But this is the way he should treat all her requests: don’t argue or look like he’s cross or say he hasn’t time. Do it quickly and without protest or sarcasm so she doesn’t feel she’s a burden on him. Remember that next time. Another time, she was in the wheelchair and said “Can you change me, please?” he said “You always need changing. Do you realize what it entails?” “Of course I do. It’s a lot of work and I wish you didn’t have to do it, but it needs to be done.” “It entails getting you on the commode, taking your pad off without hurting your crotch, maybe cleaning the piss off the floor that leaked out of the pad before I could get it into the trash can, waiting around for about five minutes till you’re done peeing and sometimes a lot longer, putting a new pad down on the wheelchair if the towel on the cushion isn’t wet. If it is, changing the towel, and if you’ve soaked through the towel and the cushion cover’s really wet, getting a clean cushion and putting the soiled cover into the washer. Then lifting you onto the new pad and getting it to fit around you and you set up in the chair. I forgot that I also have to take the legs off the chair before I get you on the commode, and after you’re back in the chair, putting the legs back on and also your slippers, sandals or shoes, which, in all the hoisting and moving and setting you down, usually fall off.” “Good, now I know,” she said. “But no matter how much time and effort it takes you, why can’t you help me without always trying to make me feel I’ve done something wrong?” “I do that?