Ernie

Ernie

And on the radio the orchestra was playing "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" (the year 1939), while I tried to hear what the girl was saying bending down where I was eating at the big table in the dining room with the rest, everybody curious, the doctor wanted to see me. Surprised? No cause to be surprised, knowing that death was in the offing, but somehow it just hadn't registered that you are crying inside over and over , oh not now, not today, not tonight. And finally it was tonight There would be no tomorrow.....

And yes he did want to see me privately, he said , and this was the only time he had, and there is only one question you need to answer. How, I ask myself now so many years later, now that I am old and lived past worse things, would I have felt had I been him, a new doctor and had to ask it : "Where do you want us to send the body?" And he was speaking of a living man who was not yet a body and to the one nearest and dearest to that man.

And what was the shock I felt then when I knew this would be the night, that it had finally come and the next time I entered that sick room would be the last time, and the words I heard there would be the last words. I did not dream either that when his sister entered she had been sent for, she had not just dropped in as she did from time to time, but there was an agony in me that must have been matched in her, as she rose to go, went to the door, paused and came back several times.

He did not die until 10 o'clock the following morning, and from time to time in the soft darkness he slept. And by and by he said, I'm cold" and I closed
the French door to the patio, and a few minutes later"It's so hot in here" and I opened it. Then at breakfast time they brought in tea and toast, and a few swallows from the cup I held, then "give the crumbs to the birds" (we saw them hopping outside on the patio. Feeding the birds, and then again: It's cold." and I shut them out. We could no longer see the birds eating crumbs. We had something else to attend to.

And a delirium of half sleep and half wake while we tried to imagine why the radio would not play any music and I kept turning station to station but there was nothing but static all over the many stations that usually came in so strong. And my throat began to ache and I sat beside him and just held his hand, and I never knew when he was "gone". He was just not there any more. I was twenty-four that year.

What did I feel when it was all over and how did the day go that found me so late in the night climbing that hillside to my little.