Lonely Day

OR "How I Learned To Love My Own Company".

Today B stayed home sick. With the house so quiet last night, and nothing going on, illumination seems to occur. I was frustrated, I admit.

B slept in; I went outside after my cup of coffee and began busting a move on all the outside things that I'd put off after Saturday. I stayed in all day Saturday, unable to make a move without B. "It's too hot out there" he'd say every time I headed outside. "Wait a little bit, M." I waited a little bit and waited a little bit and pretty soon the day was gone. After I spent the two hours that he spent napping playing Civ III on the puter, I was frustrated and bored, feeling all the free time that we'd looked forward to and cherished pass me by.

I got up before he did, seeking that window of cool before the record heat. While I was outside attacking the pile of dirt that had to be moved, he came out. I saw him but kept at it, knowing that it would be all too easy for him to tell me to quit. But he picked up a rake and trudged resolutely into the fray. He moved enough of it for me to feel guilty, as the heat rose to eightyish and climbing around us.

And I was ashamed to feel the irritation I felt as he hacked and coughed his way around the yard. He should have been inside, in the cool, taking care of himself. Instead, somehow I had guilted him into coming out by my own fervor. I quit and we went back inside. He spent most of the day outside in the garage, as he had on Saturday, out in the muggy flashbox-heat of the little enclosed area, taking in cigarettes in between paroxysms of coughing. "Please come in.." I pleaded over and over, but he was holed up in his den like a sick animal, wanting neither comfort nor contact. My efforts to touch him were met with stiffness and a cheek turned away.

"I don't want you to get my germs." he said, but they were only words. There was something else between us, something unspoken.

We were islands in the afternoon, lonely planets orbiting but never touching. And I became aware of how dependent upon him I've become, how large he is in my world. I noticed a few times as we passed in the space that his eyes were on me when I was somewhere else; when I would turn to him he'd look away, as if ashamed to be caught staring.

We sat out in the swing glider finally, when the shadows were long at dusk. And as the sunset slid over the tops of the trees, lighting up the sky in pink and gold, it felt like all of the barriers dropped away. And we talked.

About how he was afraid that it would be too much for me. About how he felt like he was cheating me. His concern that I would be bored in my life, with him unable to participate. And I was ashamed again, for eliciting this thing that has gone unspoken. But this time God unlocked my tongue, gave me back my heart through my words. "You can't protect me from growing and learning, B" I said softly. "I'm still learning to be comfortable in my own skin. It will take some time, and some patience. But I will never NEVER regret where we are, or how blessed I am for being here."

And I told him the thing that's been on my mind for so long. I told him I was sorry if it upset him, but that I had to say it anyway. "The way I see it," I said, "this is a debilitating disease. Not a terminal disease. Things will change, yes... and we will change right along with them, together."

And then he laid on me the bombshell that has reverberated for the last seventeen hours, haunting my sleep and everything I do today. "I'm sorry." he said, "I just feel punky. And I get distant when I feel punky." He leaned back in the glider, eyes closed. "I've felt bad for the last couple of months. I've just been trying to soldier through it. I didn't want you to know... to feel like I couldn't keep up."

I didn't quite know what to say. We would have talked more, but he was too tired, and on his way to bed. He made some frustrated comment about how he was sorry about having to go to bed so early, and that he knew I'd be up since I couldn't sleep, but I shushed him. We went to bed together, though I was sure I couldn't sleep. We fell into our comfortable entwine, but the coughing set him off again, and he had to pull away. In the end, we lay with toes touching, and I listened to him breathe as the world outside tried to storm, the great clouds soughing and shuddering outside the open window and the ozone smell of rain on the breeze.

Overcome with the thoughts of the evening: of B and his depression, of the revelation that all that's come before in the past few months has been a painful playact of strength and optimism on his part, of the loneliness for my kids gone for two weeks vacation away and the knowledge that somehow I will have to learn to cope without them in three short years when they leave the nest, that somehow I will have to learn to love my own company and to make myself content. I don't think he heard my silent tears because his sleep was blessedly silent, the damn cough keeping its distance for a few golden hours.

I will cope. I will learn. It will be difficult, but life is difficult, isn't it? And all good things must come with a cost. My treasure, my precious, my beloved B. I will grow and this good thing will evolve, and we will be the better for it, tempered by these challenges like steel by the fire.

Today I'm at work by myself, and lunch was lonely. But I got to finish two more chapters of "A Tale of Two Cities". And B waits for me at home. I will make more time to learn who I am, and how to fill my time with things I love, that enrich me. And like a tiny plant just breaking the soil, I will grow.