Snow Globe

After three years of fighting, Charlie has had enough. His reserves are in tatters; the enemy is advancing. Dr. Chandra, whose sad brown eyes bear the accumulated weight of countless moments delivering such news, lays it out for Charlie.

“At this point, another round of chemo will only amount to needless suffering,” he says, “and will shorten what time you have.”

Charlie looks at Linda, silently crying beside him. He rests his hand on hers, and she nods at him. Meaning she agrees.

“How long?” Charlie manages to ask.

A shrug. “Two months. Maybe three.”

Charlie swallows, nods. “Okay.”

He remains lucid and ambulatory for five weeks, and then, all at once, everything goes to hell. Before long, he’s wasting away in a hospice bed at home.

Rounds of visitors come by, till he tells them to stop. Now it’s just the two of them, Linda by his side every second, dispensing his Ativan and liquid morphine and helping him with his memory, which he is determined to hold on to as long as he can. Regrets begin to amass: he never reconciled with his brother; he had that ridiculous affair; he never saw snow or stepped foot in a foreign country.

Linda tells him she forgives him for his affair. The rest she can’t help with.

At the very end, the tumors in his brain have taken most of his mind. He begs to see snow, obsesses over it, right down to the moment his organs begin shutting down. Desperate to give him some measure of peace, Linda finds a snow globe of children ice skating around a giant snowman. She shakes the globe and holds it to Charlie’s one working eye.

And that’s when he passes, seeing his first snow, a smile of aching beauty on his lips.