A Flash of Chrysanthemum
J. A. Jance
The year goes out in a flash of chrysanthemum:
But we, who cell by cell and
Pang upon pang, arc dragged to execution,
Live out the full dishonor of the clay.

 I first heard those words in a college auditorium on a January night alive with orange blossoms and promise when C. Day-Lewis, the English Poet Laureate, came to the University of Arizona to read his work. Bauds and Philemon, one of the poems he read that night, was delivered to an audience made up primarily of English Major, poetry devotees.
Only nineteen at the time, it was hard for me to imagine what those words meant. Oh, maybe my hips and waist would thicken one day, making my figure match my fifty-year-old mother's, but in reality that possibility seemed remote. In fact, it wasn't until I hit fifty myself when the idea of aging gained an actual foothold in my consciousness.
At fifty-one and finding myself beset with nights of sleep-depriving hot flashes, it was far easier to imagine what might happen. I could see then how that single troublesome molar—the lower left-hand one that for years had shied away from everything cold—might one day do something so drastic as to simply fall out. Or else have to be pulled. Or that my chins—all several of them—would gradually subside into the suddenly excess folds of skin that now flowed down what was once a reasonably slender neck.
It even crossed my mind at times that fading into what I imagined to be the gentle haze of Alzheimer's-induced forgetfulness might be simpler, for me, than dealing with either the ongoing battles between my two feuding daughters or with the once-favored son who hasn't spoken to Ted and me since two years ago last Christmas.
Those ideas came on gradually, creeping up almost imperceptibly over a period of time. But what I never imagined, not in all my wildest dreams— nigntmares, if you will—was the appalling reality of what was actually to be. Or what is. No, I didn't see that coming, not in a million years.
We talked about it, Ted and I, when the diagnosis first came in during those stunned but strangely intimate and innocent days when Lou Gehrig was still a baseball player whose life and death had nothing whatsoever to do with me. We started out by reading all the available books and literature on the subject and by trying to imagine what it would be like. No matter how many books we read though, we weren't really prepared. Nobody ever is.
In our naivete, we didn't nearly grasp the grimly inexorable way in which my limbs would be deprived of all usefulness; how they would gradually give up the ghost while still apparently attached to what passes for a living, breathing body. We reassured each other, saying that we understood and that it would be all right. We were in love and we would get through it together somehow. But now, as my ruined body lies virtually helpless on a rail-lined hospital bed or sits trapped as a strapped-in prisoner in this damnable chair, my mind still roams free.
In my imagination I am once again a carefree child, clambering over the dusty, ocotillo-punctuated hills of my Arizona desert youth, leaping off rough burgundy chunks of long dead lava, or wading in the murky depths of some slime-bottomed, polliwog-teeming pond. That's part of the irony of it all. The body perishes but the mind persists, as though the stillness of the one somehow drives the other further and further into frantic hyperactivity.
In the beginning I thought that having time on my hands would be an unheard-of luxury, that I would find solace in doing some long-delayed reading or maybe in listening to books on tape. But that whole idea was an outright lie, a cruel hoax. Time is now my enemy—there is far too much of it—and I no longer have any patience for other people's words. As for my own words, the laborious process of typing them out, one arduous letter at a time, using the computer and my one big toe, takes too long. Far too long.
As I said, Ted and I talked about it all in the beginning. Now I can't talk anymore, and he barely does. At the onset, we both thought we were being very straightforward. And honest. And brave. Ted promised me then that he would gather up a cache of pills—enough to do the job—and that he would put them in a safe place so I would have them "when the time conies." That's how we always put it back then. "When the time comes."
It sounds now as though we more or less expected a timer to go off somewhere in the vast universe announcing that I was ready for the next step. Like a school bell ringing in an almost empty corridor, or like the stove-top timer that used to announce, with an annoying, noisy buzz, that it was time to take the cookies or the loaves of bread or the pumpkin pies out of the oven. Come to think of it, there's not that much baking going on in our house these days. I don't believe I've heard that buzzer sound once during the last two years. I don't suppose I'll ever hear it again.
But getting back to Ted and me, between the two of us, we never actually spoke about death or dying. Those words were far too blatant. Too blunt. Too coarse. They were always there between us—assumed but unacknowledged—like the stifling but unspeakable odor of a first-date fart. Except Ted and I weren't on a first-date basis anymore, not by a long shot. We have three grown children between us and two grandkids. We've barely seen them—the grandchildren, I mean—and I sometimes wonder if they'll even remember me when they're grown. Probably not. Maybe that's just as well.
The problem is the time for decisive action came and went. The bell rang and we did nothing. Ted probably still has that deadly assortment of pills, squirreled away somewhere out of sight if not out of mind, but they're useless to me now—useless to both of us. I can no longer swallow. If he gave them to me now—if he mashed them up in a selfless act of love and somehow mixed them into the gray gruel that flows through my feeding tube, the authorities would have him up on murder charges so fast it would make his head swim.
At the time we were discussing the pills, back when we both still believed them to be our option of last resort, I guess we both thought they would be a blessing for me, an escape that would allow me to dodge the worst of what was coming. I know now, that isn't true, either. At this moment, the pills would help me and I would welcome them, but Ted's the one who really needs them. Not for him to take himself, of course, but for me. He needs to be set free of me and of everything that goes with me—of all the unrelenting labor and responsibility. And of the awful sores. But most of all, of the smells.
They say you can't smell yourself, but that's not true. I wake up sometimes in the middle of the night with my heart pounding in my chest and feeling as though I'm drowning. When I come to my senses and can finally breathe again, the first thing I notice is the odor. What is it? I wonder. Is something rotten? What can it be? Eventually I realize that what I'm smelling is me. I can't get away from that appalling stench, and neither can Ted. There's no perfume strong enough to disguise it or to cover it up, and there's no escape from it, either.
Did I mention before that I am writing this with my big toe? Poor, patient, loving Ted never said a word about how much it cost to rig this keyboard so I could use it with my one good foot, but it does take forever, tapping out one paltry letter at a time. In the good old days, I used to be a touch typist. Sometimes, in my dreams, my fingers still fly over the keyboard. The letters appear on the screen seemingly by magic, almost as fast as I can think them.
It's a wonderful dream when it happens. It reminds me of one I used to have when I was a child—a dream about running side by side with a guy named Jim Thorpe. He would smile down at me encouragingly and say, Come on, kid. You can do it. We'll run fast enough to catch the wind."
Moving fingers. Moving legs. Catching the wind. They're all just dreams now. Figments of my imagination. Pieces of a long-lost if not forgotten past.
But where was I? Oh, I remember, Ted—poor Ted. Sometimes I feel more sorry for him than I do for me. Back in the old days, when sticky murder plots still leaked out through my fingers as easily as a slender thread of spun-glass Karo Syrup flows out of its crystal clear bottle, I could have told him how to do it. I probably could even have given him some pointers about how to get away with it. But Ted's beyond that now. I can no longer swallow, and he's too worn out with taking care of me to think about doing anything else.
I've been busy dying, and so has he. I don't think he even has enough strength left over to consider how life will be for him once all this is over; once I'm gone and he no longer has to spend every waking moment worrying about me—worrying and taking care.
I started writing this weeks ago, whenever Ted was out of the room and unable to see what I was doing. Now's the time to finish it.
It's our wedding anniversary today—our thirty-fifth. Yesterday, just as I asked, he brought me here to the same place we came years ago on our wedding night. We were both beginning teachers then, with matching first-year contracts in Bullhead City. It was semester break, and we had been on our way to the Grand Canyon. We had honeymoon reservations in Bright Angel Lodge, but we never made it there. A sudden late January blizzard closed roads all across northern Arizona and New Mexico. We spent both days of our two-day honeymoon stranded in a godforsaken place called Kingman.
I think we must have rented one of the last rooms left in town. We spent the whole time in an upstairs room in this same motel, although now there's a different name on the sign out front. Tonight we're in a downstairs, wheelchair-accessible room. On our wedding night, we had a glorious dinner in the dining room—prime rib and baked potatoes, followed by baked Alaska. We spent the rest of the evening in the bar dancing to a three-piece country combo.
It wasn't until we went upstairs to bed that we discovered how close our room was to the railroad tracks. Freight trains came rumbling past at least three times overnight and woke us up. Each time that happened we made love. It was wonderful.
Things are different now. The trains still run, but making love is out of the question. The motel is a little rundown. No band in the bar. I couldn't eat the food, of course, but Ted said it wasn't all that good anyway, certainly not as good as he remembered. After dinner, he asked me what I wanted to do. He offered to put me to bed and turn on the TV He was being so nice about it—so good and patient and loving—that it took a while for me to pick the necessary fight. It's hell starting a fight when you have to squeeze the ugly words out through your body one impatient letter at a time.
GO AWAY, I told him. LEAVE ME ALONE. He read the words I'd written on the screen, but even then he was still willing to get me ready for bed before he went out. I told him, NO. JUST LEAVE. Finally he did.
He must be mad or hurt or maybe both, because he's been gone for at least two hours now. That's longer than he's ever left me alone before. And that's exactly what I've needed—time alone.
The wheelchair runs on commands from the same keyboard I'm typing this on. G is for GO and S for STOP. This is a handicapped room, so the door has a handle rather than a knob. After half an hour of terrible struggle, I've finally managed to pull it open.
The air outside is cold as I sit here drenched in sweat with the door wide open and with the wind whistling in. I know timing is everything. Last night I stayed awake all night and clocked the trains. The next one is due in twenty minutes. The track is just a little more than a block away. If I go too soon, someone might see me at the crossing and try to pull me out of the way. If I arrive too late, I'll miss it—miss my only chance. My last chance.
I've come as far as I want to down this miserable road. I don't want to travel any farther—not for me and, even more so, not for Ted.
It can't be too much longer now. I wish I could leave the computer here in the room and out of harm's way, but it's attached to the chair and so the machine has no choice. Whither I go, it must go too—sort of like Ruth and her mother-in-law.
It's cold now. Dreadfully cold. And the light blanket Ted draped over my legs when we were inside isn't nearly enough out here in the freezing night air.
Back when we were here before, the whole building shook each time a train came through town. That was what woke us up—the shaking. I'm shaking now. I don't know if it's because I'm cold or if it's because the train is finally coming. If it is the train, it's still so far up the track that I can't see the headlight. But it will have to come soon, looming up over me out of the darkness, turning night to day. And, like Philemon's chrysanthemum, changing my life—or what passes for it anyway—into something else entirely.
Thank you, Ted. Thank you for everything, and especially for the flash. I love . . .