Imagine you’re 75 and you’re wife is lying down on her death bed.
She’s not going to make it, maybe has a week left. But you know better, she only has enough strength until midnight.
It’s, say, 7:00 in the evening. Christmas evening. The snow is falling outside. It’s cold and brisk but warm and tender on the inside.
You walk up next to her at her bedside, cane in one hand and your other hand stretched out to meet her’s. You’re wearing the Christmas themed sweater she made when she also made your Thanksgiving sweater, just about a month ago. Your legs feel weak and your metal knees are doing what they can but that fatigue you got two years ago never really left.
Your hands meet. Her eyes smile with familiarity, yet she does not know who you are. Her dementia started to kick in five years ago and the only things she remembers is the faces but not the memories connected with them.
She’s always been like this. Always the feeling type. Ten years ago she found a new soup that she hasn’t stopped making since. Twenty years ago, both of you were about to lose all your life savings. Thirty years ago, you both were living the life you collectively wanted. Forty years ago you got married. Fifty years ago, half a century ago, you first laid eyes on her and that song you danced to that very night plays in the background on this final day.
She can’t hear anything, but you do. She can’t remember anything, but you do. You can’t feel anything, but she does. You have life after today, yet she doesn’t.
How odd it is, to be alive and yet feel like there is no more time. There are more memories, more feelings, more laughter, more crying and yet, who am I to share it with?
Oh how I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time.