A Widow’s Story: A Memoir

Dr. B_ orders the nasal inhaler to be removed, the oxygen mask to be resumed. Within a short while—it’s a miracle for which I will hide away in a hospital women’s room, to weep in gratitude—my husband has returned to normal—to himself.

Days, nights in giddy succession—like a roller coaster—at the hospital, at home—at the hospital, at home—driving into Princeton, driving out into the country from Princeton—this February has been a cheerless month yet this week—the final week of our lives together—our life—overcast mornings are suffused with a strange sourceless sunshine.

This mysterious radiance from within.

I am relieved—more relieved than I wish to acknowledge—that Ray’s mildly delusional state has faded.

Not in a mood to ponder reversible, irreversible—nor in a mood to consider what is normal, what is self. Harrowing to think that our identities—the selves people believe they recognize in us: our “personalities”—are a matter of oxygen, water and food and sleep—deprived of just one of these our physical beings begin to alter almost immediately—soon, to others we are no longer “ourselves”—and yet, who else are we?

Is the self the physical body, or is the body but the repository of self?

It’s the most ancient of all philosophical—metaphysical—paradoxes. You do not see a self without a body to contain it, yet you do not see a body without a self to activate it.

When my mother died at the age of eighty-six she had lost a good deal of her memory—her “mind.” Yet she had not lost her self, not quite.

She’d become severely forgetful, you might say a dimmer and less animated version of herself, as a monotype fades with repeated strikings, its subtleties lost. Yet Mom was never entirely lost. In a garden at her assisted living facility in Clarence, New York, we were sitting with her—my brother Fred and me—and Fred asked her if she remembered me—and Mom said, “I could never forget Joyce!”—and in that instant, this was so.

I loved my mother very much. Friends who knew us both have said how much of my mother resides in me—mannerisms, voice inflections, a way of smiling, laughing. I know that my father resides in me also. (Daddy died two years before Mom. Her mild delusion was that Daddy was living in a farther wing of the facility: “Over there,” Mom would say, pointing at a specific building. “Fred is over there.”)

Loving our parents, we bring them into us. They inhabit us. For a long time I believed that I could not bear to live without Mom and Dad—I could not bear to “outlive” them—for to be a daughter without parents did not seem possible to me.

Now, I feel differently. Now, I have no option.

Returning home!

What happiness—what relief—returning home!

As if I’ve been gone for days not hours.

As if I’ve traveled many miles not just a few.

Behind a ten-foot fence so faded you would not identify it as redwood—behind a part-acre of deciduous and evergreen trees—our house hovers ghost-white in the darkness—no lights within—but I thought I’d left at least one light on, that morning—I am so very very tired, I am so eager to get inside this place of refuge, I feel faint with yearning, I could weep with relief, exhaustion.

This nightmare vigil! The smell of the hospital clings to me—that distinctive smell as of something faintly rotted, sweetly rotted beneath the masking odor of disinfectant—as soon as you push through the slow-revolving front door and into the foyer you smell it—the smell of hospital-elevators, hospital-restrooms, hospital-corridors—the smell of Ray’s room—(what a quaint sort of usage, Ray’s room—until it is vacated and Ray’s bed filled by another)—this smell is in my hair, on my skin, my clothing. I am eager to get inside the house and tear off my contaminated clothing—I am eager to take a shower—to scrub my face, my hands—my hair that feels snarled, clotted—But no first: phone—I must check phone calls on Ray’s phone, and on my own—No first: cats—I must feed the cats, let them outdoors—skittish and distrustful they prefer to be let outside than to eat in their corner of the kitchen—No first: mail—but I am too tired to run outside to the mailbox, the very thought whirls in my brain shrinking to the size of a dot, and vanishes—No first: lights—for the house is so very dark—a cave—a sepulcher—like a crazed woman who has thrown off her manacles I run through the rooms of the house switching on lights—living room lights! dining room lights! hall lights! bedroom lights! Ray’s study lights!—I turn on the radio in the kitchen—I turn on the television in our bedroom— can’t bear this silence—you would think possibly I am rehearsing Ray’s homecoming—the entire house lighted as if a party were taking place within—No first: clean with manic energy I will vacuum the rooms of the house, lingering over the carpets, of all household tasks it is vacuuming I most enjoy for its brainless thumping and the immediate gratification it yields—there is something especially gratifying about late-night vacuuming—vacuuming into the early hours of the morning which one could not do, surely, if one’s spouse were home and trying to sleep—inspired then I will polish a selection of the household furniture—though it doesn’t really need polishing, I am eager to polish the dining room table for it’s at this table that Ray will eat his homecoming meal in a few days—I am not sure which of his favored meals I will prepare—must discuss this tomorrow—what a pleasure to polish the dining room table which can be polished to a ravishing sheen though it’s but mahogany veneer—No first: Ray’s desk—this is crucial!—I will remove the accumulation of mail from Ray’s desk—both Ray’s desks—I will polish both desks with lemon polish, to surprise him—I will straighten the items on Ray’s windowsills which include such curiosities as semi-used Post-its, ballpoint pens whose ink has long dried up, small boxes of paper clips, coiled-together rubber bands, a small digital clock with red-flashing numerals like demon-eyes glowering in the dark—charged with the urgency of my mission I will gather Ray’s scattered pens and pencils—as an editor, Ray indulges in crimson, orange, purple, green pencils!—and arrange them in some sort of unobtrusive order on his desks; I will Windex his windows, what a pleasure to swab at the glass with paper towels, as beyond the glass-surface there hovers a ghost-woman whose features are lost in shadow—it is very dark outside—moonless—somehow, it has come to be 1:20 A.M.—no more am I inclined to lie down in that bed in that bedroom than I would lie down in a field in glaring sunshine—as a traveler in even quiet surroundings I am wracked by insomnia—the slightest alteration of my life, I am wracked by insomnia—impossible to sleep while Ray is in the hospital, and distasteful somehow—for What if the phone rings? What if—but housecleaning is an antidote to such thoughts, next I will peruse Ray’s closets, bureau drawers—or maybe I should sort books in the guest room, which have begun to spill over the white Parsons table—No first: flowers—as Ray welcomes me back home from a trip with flowers on my desk so I should welcome Ray back from the hospital with flowers on his desk, must remember to buy flowers at a florist—potted begonias? Cyclamen?—but which florist?—you can buy flowers at the Medical Center but—maybe not a good idea, what if they are suffused with the dread hospital-smell—thinking such thoughts, plotting such stratagems drifting through the rooms of the brightly lighted house singing to myself—humming loudly—talking to myself—giving detailed instructions to myself—for when there is no one to whom one can reasonably speak except two wary and distrustful cats, one must address oneself—in my heightened mood of anxiety commingled with relief—the relief of being home—my uplifted sparkly voice reminds me of no one’s so much as Jasmine’s—now I remember Mail!—it’s urgent to place Ray’s mail in rows, neatly—for a magazine editor receives many items of mail daily—this mail I will sort: personal, business, important, not-important—all advertisements discarded—like a diligent secretary I open envelopes, unfold letters so that at a glance Ray can absorb their contents; since Ray entered the hospital I’ve been paying bills, a household task Ray usually does, and these bill stubs I will set out for Ray to see, and to record; for Ray keeps assiduous financial records; you will say But it isn’t necessary to pay bills immediately when they arrive—you can wait—you can wait for weeks!—but in waiting there is the threat of forgetting, there is the threat of chaos—there is the threat of totally losing control; now in the snowy courtyard there are shadowy hulks like crouching animals, these are UPS and FedEx deliveries for Raymond Smith, Ontario Review, Inc. which I haven’t noticed until now—2:20 A.M.—it seems to me urgent to haul these packages inside the house, struggle to open them—several are deliveries Ray has been asking about, and so tomorrow I must bring them to the hospital—page proofs, galleys—proofs of book jackets—there is a special pleasure in bringing Ray something he has requested—something attractive, striking—page proofs for the May issue of the Ontario Review cover feature on the artist Matthew Daub whose watercolors of small Pennsylvania towns and rural landscapes Ray so admires—something that will be cheering to Ray in his grim hospital room, something we can share—as for more than thirty years we have shared planning issues of Ontario Review and books published by Ontario Review Press—in my dreamy state staring at reproductions of Matthew Daub’s watercolors—thinking how much happier visual artists must be, than writers—writers and poets—we whose connections to the world are purely verbal, linear—through language we are beseeching others who are strangers to us not merely to read what we have written but to absorb it, be moved by it, to feel—then with a jolt I remember—Postpone trip!—this is urgent—I must postpone our upcoming trip to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas where our writer-friend Doug Unger has invited Ray and me to speak to graduate writing students—this trip, long-planned, is within two weeks—impossible so soon; maybe later in the spring, or maybe in the fall, Ray has suggested—Tell Doug I’m really sorry, this damned pneumonia has really knocked me out—I will send Doug an e-mail for I can’t force myself to telephone anyone, even friends, especially friends—abruptly then another thought intrudes—even as I am preparing to write to Doug on my computer—No: “Vespers”—at 2:40 A.M. I am moved to play a CD—Rachmaninoff’s “Vespers”—one of Ray’s favorite pieces of music—sonorous choral music of surpassing beauty which Ray and I heard together at a concert years ago—it might have been in Madison, Wisconsin—when we were newly married—when the great adventure of accumulating a record collection together had just begun—beautiful haunting wave-like “Vespers” which a few months ago I’d heard, returning home from a trip climbing out of the limousine in the driveway and smiling to hear this thrilling music from inside the house where Ray has turned the volume up high, to hear in his study, and thinking Yes. I’m home.

Chapter 11 E-mail Record (#ulink_b49eb608-76b7-5c88-9dff-8bb90daf0579)

February 16, 2008.

To Richard Ford

Ray is definitely feeling better but I am not going to tempt fate by going on too long optimistically. Thanks, Richard, for your moral support. It is greatly appreciated . . . Maybe you could (come down from Maine) and drive all the Princeton afflicted around. That could be your “new phase.” Biographers would be thrilled. How much easier than writing . . .

Much love to both,

Joyce

(Richard Ford, hearing that Ray was hospitalized, very gallantly offered to fly down to Princeton and “drive me around”—an offer of such generosity, I was deeply moved even as common sense advised me to decline.)

February 17, 2008, 4:08 A.M.

To Emily Mann

Ray is said to be improving—and I think that this is so—but he has such a long way to go & is so weak & prone to fevers, I’m dreading the future; somehow I don’t think that he will ever be “well” again—this experience has been so ravishing. And in any case I have to see it as a presentiment of what lies ahead, unavoidably. I can’t sleep for thinking of all that there is to do, that I doubt I can do . . .

However, you did get through a worse and more protracted experience so I suppose that I will, too. Night thoughts are not productive but—how to avoid them?

I put together a little packet of snapshots to bring to Ray, to cheer him up, and came across the most beautiful photo of you and Gary, taken some years ago by Ray at one of our parties. . . . I’m sure that I’d given you a copy at the time.

Much love,

Joyce

(Emily Mann’s husband, Gary Mailman, stricken by a virulent infection following a medical procedure by a physician associated with the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City, was hospitalized for ten days at about the time Ray was in the Princeton Medical Center—Emily’s and my hospital vigils overlapped by a few days. Gary nearly died and recovered slowly afterward at home, over a period of several months. But he did recover.)

Chapter 12 Memory Pools (#ulink_c36c58f7-72bd-5f48-92dc-69b708629c83)

Forever after you will recognize those places—previously invisible, indiscernible—where memory pools accumulate.

All waiting areas of hospitals—hospital rooms—and in particular those regions of the hospital reserved for the very ill: Telemetry, Intensive Care. You will not wish to return to these places where memory pools lie underfoot treacherous as acid. In the corners of such places, in the shadows. In stairwells. In elevators. In corridors and in restrooms, you have memorized without your knowing. In the hospital gift shop, at the newsstand. Where you linger staring at news headlines already passing into oblivion as you peruse them while upstairs in your sick husband’s hospital room an attendant is changing bedclothes, or sponge bathing the patient behind a gauze screen, unless the patient has been taken to Radiology for further X rays shivering and awaiting his turn in another corridor, on another floor. Memory pools accumulate beneath chairs in waiting areas adjacent to Telemetry. It may be that actual tears have stained the tile floors or soaked into the carpets of such places. It may be that these tears can never be removed. And everywhere the odor of melancholy, that is the very odor of memory.

Nowhere in a hospital can you walk without blundering into the memory pools of strangers—their dread of what was imminent in their lives, their false hopes, the wild elation of their hopes, their sudden terrible and irrefutable knowledge; you would not wish to hear echoes of their whispered exchanges—But he was looking so well yesterday, what has happened to him overnight—

You would not wish to blunder into another’s sorrow. You will have all that you can do to resist your own.

Chapter 13 “I’m Not Crying for Any Reason” (#ulink_0013a79c-ad77-5a71-820e-5c23970f9a20)

February 17, 2008. This morning at 7:50 A.M. arriving at the hospital—ascending in the elevator—at the fifth floor turn left, to Telemetry—breathless/hurrying/eager to see my husband—(for always the first glimpse of a hospital patient, in his room in his bed unobserved, is fraught with meaning)—carrying the hefty Sunday New York Times for us to read together—and at the farther end of the now-familiar corridor—past the now-familiar nurses’ station—there is room 541—there is Ray’s bed—empty—just the stripped, bare mattress.

“Mrs. Smith?—your husband is in room five thirty-nine. Just this morning he was moved. We tried to call you but you must have left home . . .”

And so entering this room—which evidently I’d passed a moment ago without glancing inside—I am trembling so visibly that Ray wonders what is wrong with me—the blood has drained from my face—I am trembling in the aftermath of a shock as profound as any I’ve ever experienced, or am I trembling in the aftermath of relief—for here is Ray in the new bed, in the new room—a room identical to the previous room, with the identical bedside table and on this table the vase of flowers from friends—Ray is no longer wearing the oxygen mask, nor even the nasal inhaler—since his oxygen intake has improved, and there is the possibility of his being discharged from the hospital this Tuesday— he smiles at me, greets me—“Hi honey”—but when I lean over the bed to kiss him a wave of faintness sweeps over me, suddenly I begin to cry—uncontrollably crying—for the first time since bringing Ray to the hospital—my face is contorted like a child’s, in the throes of an agonizing weeping—“I’m not crying for any reason, but only because I love you”—so I manage to stammer, to Ray, “—because I love you so much”—and Ray’s eyes well with tears too, he murmurs what sounds like, “Something like this—I’ll be knocked out for two months—”

Like drowning swimmers we are clutching at each other. Someone passing in the corridor outside sees us, and looks quickly away. Never have I cried so hard, so helplessly. Never in my adult life. And why am I crying, is it purely out of a sense of relief . . .

Something like this. Knocked out two months.

Always I will remember these words. For this is how Ray assesses the situation: pneumonia has interrupted his life. These days in the hospital and his weakened state will result in his editing-work being slowed, delayed.

He isn’t thinking of the future in the way that I have been thinking of the future—he’s thinking of the May issue of Ontario Review, the responsibility he bears to the writers whose work he’s publishing. Meeting a deadline. Paying his printer. Paying his contributors. Mailing, distribution. He isn’t thinking of anything so petty as himself.

Maybe Ray isn’t capable of thinking of himself, in the terms in which I can think of him.

Maybe no man is capable of thinking of himself, in the terms in which a woman can think of him.

“Lean on me, Mr. Smith. That’s good. Good!”

A physical therapist named Rhoda, very nice woman, is walking with Ray in the corridor outside his room, in the effort of exercising his leg muscles. Lying in bed for several days has weakened Ray’s legs—it’s astonishing how quickly muscles begin to atrophy. Earlier this morning I’d been encouraging Ray to push hard against my hand, with his foot—to exercise his leg muscles in this way—and he’d pushed hard, very hard it seemed to me; but Rhoda is telling Ray that when he’s discharged from the hospital it won’t be to his home but to Merwick Rehab Center, not far from the Medical Center. Not only must Ray regain his ability to walk normally, he must regain his ability to breathe.