Remembering. A beautiful word. And for the last decade, this was what Kathleen had done more often than during the years when most of her life remained ahead. Perhaps it was this afternoon’s dense fog, the gray whiteness that parched the color from the fresh green spring grass and the newborn leaves studding the oaks, beeches, and lindens; the fog which had abraded the sharp edges of the present and sent her gliding back in time.
She lay in her living room, on the hospital bed, thinking that what she mostly recalled from her childhood was entwined with two-dimensional images like photographs or from what she had been told about events and happenings by her parents, friends, or relatives, such as one night her mother had often described. They had been outside their oceanside house. Kathleen was a baby, unable to stand, and was being held in her father’s arms. The moon was full and bright, suspended over the water, and Kathleen reached for it, desiring this beautiful shining ball, wanting to make it her own, a prized toy.
This fascination with the moon had never ended, though she had no recollection of that night eighty-five years ago. Kathleen wished she did, because she would love nothing more than to see herself trying to pluck the moon from the blue-black sky and wrap its sea-crossed golden swath around her fingers like a luminescent ribbon. Interrupting her reverie, a woman leaned over Kathleen. Her face was lined and tired. A hospice aide? Gloria?
Kathleen knew nothing about Gloria. They had never engaged in a real conversation, although in the beginning, Kathleen had been able to utter a few phrases. This had shrunk to “yes” and “no” replies; then rarely that. While Kathleen had countless words in her head, they remained unspoken.
“Do you want some sorbet?” Gloria asked.
Solid foods had ceased being offered two weeks ago because the nurse feared Kathleen might choke. Kathleen didn’t mind not eating. Her passion for food was gone.
“Okay, let me go get some,” the woman said, although Kathleen hadn’t answered.
A few minutes later, a spoon piled with raspberry sorbet was thrust toward her. Gloria was waiting for Kathleen to open her mouth, but this act required more focus than she possessed. Pink sorbet trickled onto the white napkin below her chin. The aide dabbed at the spill, her mouth tight with repressed irritation. Because she herself had tended to three dying people—her parents and her partner—Kathleen sympathized with the woman and felt sorry to be uncooperative. Sorry, yes, but the feeling swiftly evaporated into the vaguest emotion, one that soon relinquished its perch on her consciousness.
“How about some applesauce?”
Kathleen closed her eyes.
“Water?”
She made no response. The morphine continued its infusion into her chest port. Although Kathleen couldn’t hear the clear liquid entering her body from the plastic bag hanging from the silver pole by the bed, she imagined a loud drip-drip-drip sound. She couldn’t hear the urine flow along the catheter ube to its bag, either, though she watched the aides remove the bag whenever it was full. In. Out. In. Out. That was her life’s reduction.
Kathleen opened her eyes. The fog had blown away as had the afternoon. The evening was wandering into night, minutes spreading silent wings into hours. She stared through the large picture windows at the ocean and the rising moon, which was tinged with orange as it lifted itself above the dark peninsula of land. She wondered if she could fall backward to that time when she tried to grasp the moon. Kathleen still wanted to hold it and decided now maybe she could.
Raising her hand, she stretched her fingers toward the window. But her arm was too heavy and fell limply by her side. She exhaled with disappointment; bewilderment cloaked her in confusion. Lying there, almost immobile, memories again flicked by. Brief moments that emerged along the lengthy tunnel into the past. A kiss on a balcony overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice. An award ceremony in New York, with photographers’ flashes lighting the crowd and
everyone’s attention upon her as she made her way to the podium. The breathtaking night on Santorini, when the full moon illuminated the sky over the black caldera, burnishing the dark lavender sea with copper. The transatlantic crossing aboard the majestic Queen Mary II, her lover’s last voyage and Kathleen’s last one, too, unless she was now on a voyage of a different kind. If all voyages have destinations, she wondered, where would hers end? Was she fast-
forwarding into a void or regressing to her beginning, to start life again? Or would she hover, never to alight? It wasn’t clear what was occurring, but Kathleen knew her box of recollections would hold no new memories.
Gloria had fallen asleep on the couch, a book open across her chest. A single lamp shone on the top of her black hair. In essence, Kathleen was alone with a stranger. There was no lover or friend to hold her hand, to observe her irregular breathing, to wait with her until Kathleen’s heart stilled to a stop. Most people would be disturbed by this solitariness. They might even think this was the worst way to die, but she believed this death befitted her life. Kathleen smiled or thought she was smiling. The moon, which she once tried to hold, would accompany her into the grand beyond, the place without a destination.
Laury A. Egan is the author of Jack & I, The Black Leopard’s Kiss & The Writer Remembers, The Psychologist’s Shadow, The Firefly, Once, Upon an Island, Wave in D Minor, Doublecrossed, Turnabout, The Swimmer, A Bittersweet Tale, The Ungodly Hour, The Outcast Oracle, Fog and Other Stories, Jenny Kidd, and Fabulous!; (poetry) Beneath the Lion’s Paw; Snow, Shadows, a Stranger; The Sea & Beyond; and Presence & Absence. Website: www.lauryaegan.com Social Media: LauryA.Egan@EganLaury https://www.facebook.com/laury.egan/
