I'm sitting here at Ruth and Ellen's dining room table. Ellen's been on the phone with her sister, the sister who considers it her job to muck everything up as much as possible.
Ellen's just hung up.
I'm hungry. There's an apple in my bag, but I don't want that. I'll eat a banana from the bunch on the kitchen counter. I wish I had a big cup of very strong coffee.
On the table: A pink hyacinth. Its smell is very strong, sickeningly sweet. There's a dead rosemary plant here, too. It only smells if you break off one of the leaves and crush it between your fingers. There's a selection of tchotchkes, a carved seal, two pottery fishes from Mexico, a paper angel, a table runner decorated with singing and dancing mice. There's a postcard for a breakfast that's being held in honor of cancer patients who are participating in research studies. The breakfast is on April 3. Ruth says Ellen probably won't make it 'til then. There's a yellow and lavender brochure for hospice care. "You matter to the last moment of your life..." printed across the cover.
I just went into Ellen's bedroom and gave her the morning's second handful of pills, at least one of them for pain, and I offered to make her some breakfast, an offer that prompted her to talk vaguely of oatmeal and of the origin of Ruth's anxiety and of her own feelings of being attacked. We raised the window shade so she could see outside and I fetched a glass of milk at her request and she drank about half of it and we talked about the effects, wanted and unwanted, of hydrocodone. She said that maybe later she might want a sandwich. Peanut butter and raspberry jelly. Perhaps.
It's not fair, I know, to write about Ellen, is it?
I woke up about 3:30 this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep. I was hungry so I had a handful of crackers and I drank some water. I started reading one of the novels that I found on Judi's nightstand, a Patricia Cornwell piece of crap novel, one of those novels you read when you have to kill a layover in an airport in a strange city. I read a bit and put it down and tried to sleep. Picked it up and put it down again. At 5:00 a.m. I decided to substitute coffee for sleep, so I made an espresso using the espresso machine that I found in a kitchen drawer. Who keeps their espresso machine in a drawer?
I had a very strong espresso, then another. I tried to read some more then I gave up and just lay in bed not sleeping. It was all as tedious as it sounds. At 6:00, I got up and fed Crunch and Betty and myself and I took Crunch for a walk.
It was very cold and very clear and very, very cold. We made it to the park and came back. I had another espresso, then two more, trying to get my energy level up so that I could come and sit quietly with Ellen.
Ruth says that there is no more talk of recovery. The oncologist told them yesterday that she was no longer going to treat Ellen and Ruth's response was, "Are you quitting to go to another hospital?" When she told me that story, Ruth put her hand to her forehead, like, can you believe what a dunce I am?
It's not fair, I know, to write about Ellen, is it?
I remember years ago reading an essay by a woman whose friend died of AIDS. (Oh, you know what I mean. He died of some illness associated with AIDS.) The woman who wrote the essay was not a good person and she knew it. She shied away from her friend as he became sicker and sicker and after he died, she tried to make up for some of her regret by becoming a hospice volunteer. It wasn't what she expected. She found herself becoming exasperated with the man who she was helping to care for. He asked her to do things like clean his bathroom and do his laundry and he was short with her when her efforts weren't up to par. He was not as grateful to her as she wanted him to be. She complained that he seemed healthy enough to take care of himself. She was angry when she showed up to find him high or stoned on drugs. She hung on though, helping to care for this ungrateful stranger until the end. She hung on because she kept thinking of her friend and how she had failed him while he was dying. She knew there was no way to make up for that, but she had to do something with that knowledge, so she cared for a dying stranger and then she wrote her confessional essay. There was one line in that essay that I will never, ever forget. She wrote: "Over and over again, I am reminded that I am not good enough."
Today is like that for me. I am not good enough. Over and over again, I am reminded that I am not good enough and that I never will be. What do I do with that knowledge?
It's not fair, is it, to write about Ellen? I know.
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