Belgian Lace

Every day, every hour you can do less and less. I find that love strengthens me to do what I never imagined I could for you. You say to me "Jessica can't do that OK? And I kiss you and I say, "As long as she can't kiss you either." We smile and it fills the moment with our love.

Your mind once as vibrant as a summer symphony under the stars complete with fireworks (remember how we enjoyed those on the Fourth of July?) is now weary. Yet you light up softly to share your geeky, gentle humor (remember how you would always say to me "I love how you enjoy my humor?). The nurse says to me that at a point you will just sleep (remember how you could sleep anywhere, anytime even on trans-global flights as I sat there fretting, uncomfortable, and jealous?). I fear that coma state—a small step to the sleep of forever. So I sit besides you, my skin against yours committing to memory, weaving now into the past and future.

Mostly that's the thread of our days. I watch you sleep, today waking for Tegan's visit and her gift of your meal—vanilla creemee in a cone upside down in a dish with chocolate sprinkles. We will bring you whatever you will eat (like a bird or merely precisely like the bird my mother became in the last year of her life—tablespoons of soup, one egg, your childhood favorite from your grandmother—pastina with butter and milk, morning grape juice for a parched body). Your choices change by the day sustaining yourself on only one bird meal a day. Yesterday you surprised us eating half of a hamburger from Joe's (remember how you use to eat two, with fries, and a milkshake?).

This new you (and my new me as caretaker-nurse) is woven through like fine Belgian lace with our former selves. You have become quieter, stiller, resigned—twining through my heart and watchful hours what is essential to love.