David Haight Grace
“Tell him you love him,” they insisted. We were huddled around the large hospital bed which had swallowed my husband. He was scarcely conscious, eyes no longer open, his mouth nothing more than a pink paper cut, and that once prominent barrel chest sunk. My five children were crowded behind me, urging me forward. I stiffened my back and held my ground. They were all in various states of hysterics, even my boys. Swollen eyed and convulsing they caressed his hands and face. They thought they were saying goodbye. They weren’t. They were clutching a drowning man, an already dead man, trying to memorize his fading features, watching his torso with its fragile movements for that moment when it would rise no more, mixing like the sun and the sea their memories of who he was and who he
would be, desperately trying to force themselves to come to terms with his death that hadn’t yet come. “Tell him you love him, mom,” they insisted again. They were convinced he was at the gates that separated this life and the next and my words were the ticket that would allow him to pass. They thought I was grace. Even as grown adults their sentimentality was breathtaking. What was now happening was between Bill and God and there was no space between them. As far as my husband of fifty odd years, we said our goodbyes before this final bit of theater at home, in our bedroom, where I was unable to let him take in his last breath and which will be my last regret as a married woman. But I knew I’d have to do this. He knew too. Even now, lying their slipping away he was