Generations by Angenette Lilly

"Even after 45 years..." were the words Marla was saying when we first bumped our mindless, robotic bodies into each other outside of my husband's hospice room. I tried to grab my son to keep him from knocking one of us over in his rambunctious flight, but Lego jetliner in hand, he flew down the corridor in front of me.

"Excuse me," I said to her. "I didn't see you standing there."

"I saw the boy earlier," she responded. Her eyes were a vacant blue, bloodshot, and lined with dark circles--all visible beneath a layer of thin make-up. "He sure is a cute little thing. How old is he?"

My son tried to zoom quietly past me and back into the room, but before he could, the questioning smile of the gray-haired lady, along with an outstretched hand, caught his attention. "Nice to meet you," she said.

"I'm four!" he responded before retreating back into the room.

Marla's eyes drifted to the name on the clear placard on the wall beside of the door. "Is it one of your parents that's ill?"

"No." I felt the same bile rise that always rose every time I was forced to acknowledge my husband's declining health. "It's my husband."

"Oh." She did not shrink back or lower her head. "He must be much older than you."

"No. Less than a month older than I am."

"Really?" She sighed. "So young." She shook her head, inhaled deeply, and sighed yet again, a tire with a slow leak. "Johnathan and I, we've been married 45 years now--today. Can you believe that? Forty-five years."

The steady, annoying beep from an IV alarmed behind me, and a nurse shuffled past us, smiling at both of us. "Hi, Marla," she said. "I heard there's something for you at the front desk."

"Thank you," Marla replied, and to me, she said, "Everyone just calls me Marla." A deep wrinkle burrowed its way through the middle of her forehead. "Everyone except John. He called me Mar. He was always good about anniversaries; he's never missed the first one."

"I'm Amanda. Congratulations on your 45th," I said. "That's an accomplishment."

"Now is one of those times when I really wish we would have had children. We would have grandchildren by now, wouldn't we? And there would be generations of family upon generations of family--past to present-- to give us our history and carry our traditions, our ideals, our memories, and John's name. That would help, maybe, right now. Wouldn't it? If we had children? Maybe then I wouldn't be lost."

The look of torture on her face unsettled me. One hand settled over her chest, and she rubbed in slow circles over her heart.

"I'm very grateful for my son," I said. "I don't know what I'd do without him. But we all need people--others. Even friends are good. You have friends, certainly, who will be there for you. Right?"

"Friends... oh, yes, of course. I'm not worried. Everyone has friends. It just... not quite the same, I guess. Nice talking to you." She turned as if to leave, shuffling a few steps down hall A toward the end of the corridor.

But only for a few seconds. Before I could pull my gaze from her stooped form and take a step, she was back in front of me again. "John's not spoken in days, young lady," she said. "Tubes, needles, electronic devices--all of those things--I don't even know what some of them do! I don't know what to do!" Her voice went from soft to demanding like a child about to throw a terrible naptime temper tantrum. "No one seems to understand!"

"I'm sorry." It came out as a whisper, and I bit my lip, knowing that feeling of helplessness.

"I just want to hear it. I just want to hear it one more time. I don't remember when he said it last. I need to hear the words... just one more time... the way he used to say them. I can't hear it in my head anymore. It sounds different... it's not good enough. I say I love you over and over and over again to him, and he never says it back--never. He doesn't even try. He's empty... gone... like he's angry with me and not saying what he knows I want to hear... need to hear, like when we fight sometimes over Chinese or Mexican for dinner. No one understands. I just want to hear the words. Do you understand?"

I nodded and watched her tantrum fade into deep agonizing sobs. The rumbles of pain echoed down the hall and into the other wings, which I was sure would draw the attention of some of the nurses or aides. Surely they would come to help, to comfort. To my surprise, nothing happened, and I was left standing there, lost myself, not knowing what to say. I couldn't save someone from drowning when I was barely treading water.

"Do you believe in heaven and hell?" she asked.

It was a question I'd been asked repeatedly, one I usually ignored or avoided. A pregnant pause gave birth to: "I don't believe what some people believe. I don't believe in some place of torture or some place with streets of gold."

"What do you believe?" Her eyes fixed on mine as if I were about to repeat something she'd never heard before but something so important that she couldn't bear to miss a single word. It was as if she needed something to comfort her, something to help her. I couldn't make her promises or preach about things I didn't know though.

"I believe that death equals no more pain and suffering. I think it's sleep. Some define hell as a place of torture, and I believe that life is often like that--not death. Life can be like a nightmare, a torturous thing. We allow the nightmare to torture us, and it does. We let the pain, the suffering, and the disillusion swallow us instead of looking beyond that. Sometimes all we can see is the hell of it all. My husband thinks cancer is torture, and so do I. Then again, I think that any life that doesn't last forever is its own kind of hell. We live with a fear of death, have it hanging over us constantly. That's a special kind of hell, being aware we could die at any time, be hit by a train, die in a car accident, fatally succumb to some disease. I don't think it begins at death; I think we live with it all of the time. I think death puts a stop to it."

"And heaven?"

"My son is my little piece of heaven. Happy times I've spent with those I love, those are heaven-like. Life is nothing but small heavenly moments -- memories of moments filled with thousands of other little moments that are all pieces of what we think heaven could be, should be... moments when we are so happy, ecstatic, filled with joy and peace, feeling at one with everyone and everything in the world, including ourselves and God. And it's those little moments that we crave over and over again... our own personal minute pieces of heaven... John's 'I love you's' ... those are your pieces of heaven... and sadly, our special goodbye's, those last moments, so bittersweet but ours--all ours, I hope will be pieces of our heaven. Those moments are the kind that keep us living even when we want to die or feel we will. Those are the moments that help us survive like the generations before."

"But is that it? Is it all just moments and memories? There has to be something more... something else to hope for."

"Happiness... forgiveness... death... peace? I don't have any answers."

************************************

The next morning, there was a knock on the door of the room. One of the nurses slowly pushed the door open. "I saw you talking to Marla yesterday. I just thought I'd let you know that her husband passed away early this morning."

Twenty minutes later, I stood in the corridor outside of the room as Johnathan's body was honored in a slow procession of nurses holding lit candles as he was moved out of the building. Marla followed close behind, broken. Her head was lowered until she reached my door, but there she suddenly stopped, extending a hand, and I took it, and amazingly, she smiled a slight smile.

"I'm sorry for your loss." I said the stock words because those were the only words that came to mind.

"Don't be," she answered. "We had a good goodbye, and his suffering is over. And...." She opened her hand and handed me a card.

"What is this?"

"He knew. He sent me flowers, and this..."

In my hand was a simple card with two large, red, entwined hearts. In the center of the colliding hearts, in bold, cursive letters, were the words: 'I WILL LOVE YOU ALWAYS.'

"Oh! Marla!" I hugged her tightly, no longer able to hold back the tears.

"I told you he never missed an anniversary, didn't I? And this..." she smiled, taking the card from me and pressing it close to her heart, "this is my little piece of heaven. You go get yours."