The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

The Sort of Night You Fear

Sometimes, you just get a feeling. It nags, it pulls, it makes your body cold.

M's mother isn't doing well, apparently. The nurse has called twice to update our machine (M. is nursing a cold which has him croaking rather than speaking, and he's phone-phobic anyway) that his mother has a fever, that her blood pressure is low, that she's speaking but not eating.

Uh-oh.

She's ninety, it's not surprising that she'd be having trouble fending off whatever it is that she is dealing with at the moment. She's been brave for so long, one shouldn't expect her to keep finding reasons to keep going. There's no disease, no spectacular happening, only agedness and a loss of interest. She used to find life so interesting, she'd said to me. The war, she'd smiled, now that was a wonderful period in my life. I had smiled and raised an eyebrow. I am a different kind of cat altogether. Someone as fascinating as she would certainly be bored with life if confined to a bed in a pictureless room. I can't imagine why she has made a go of it for this long, except she once told me that getting old was an impressive experience. She was almost amused by it, felt as though she were enduring one of life's strangest actualities. Perhaps, then, she's bored.

I don't know, I don't know...M. has come up the stairs after forcing himself to call back and he's teary-eyed. He is preparing for the worst and I'm trying to find words of wisdom, though in a situation like this they're never available. Should he go hold her hand to give her comfort in the event that she's dying? Would it be as traumatizing to him as the death of his father was, sixteen Decembers ago? The drive is two hours, he's ailing, and if he went, his virus would surely wipe out the remaining residents. I told him all of this as he sat on the edge of the bed, rocking back and forth in confused presumption. Their relationship has never been predictable, so giving advice on the subject is challenging. He loves her but he has always kept a distance. He wants the phone call, but he fears it. He has decided that she has died so many times before that this time, with all of its sharp-edged newness, is jolting him.

Why December? He shook his head and lamented that this will finish the month forever.

She's not dead, though. Not yet. Not at this particular hour.

I won't make predictions on this. I have tears in my eyes and I can't explain why. I suppose it's the first time in my life that I've actually been made aware of the imminent passing of someone close. Every death to this point has been sudden, relatively speaking. There have never been bedside vigils or nights lost to watching telephones. I am feeling the pressure of it, watching my love turn into a small boy as he shakes and quivers with indecision. What regrets will he have when it is all said and done? He asked me this and I could not answer. I have my own regrets about some of my dead, and they shift in importance from day to day.

Diana! Is it time? Isobel, is anyone waiting?

He loves you, Diana/Isobel. He is hurting with that love as I type here, waiting for word of your decision. He is crying over a cup of tea. I can hear him.

Isobel, can you hear him?