did she know that?”
This time we don’t laugh.
“I am in pain,” I say. “I’m sad about everything.”
Glenn takes my hand.
“I wish this weren’t happening. I wish you weren’t sick.”
“I won’t be sick much longer.”
For a second I think she’s telling me that she’s getting better, that a scan I didn’t know about has come back showing unexpected improvement and recovery. But then I realize what she’s really saying. That it won’t be much longer.
I put the crayons—a fistful of blues and pinks and greens and reds—down. I watch Glenn, with both dogs asleep next to her on the bed, close her eyes.
“It looks like I’ll probably be leaving soon, a little earlier than we thought, so like you said the other day, we need to make our plans.”
I start to cry. I don’t want to make plans. I don’t want her to go. I don’t want her to leave early.
“I’m not ready,” I sob.
“I know. But I am.”
* * *
The plans we make are short and simple; the basics. I know the drill, the order of what’s needed at the end:
We will call for a hospital bed to be delivered; we will call a home hospice service to visit and start their services; a palliative “comfort kit,” with liquid morphine, will be stored in the refrigerator. I’ll print out and tape her DNR—Do Not Resuscitate order—to the refrigerator so there won’t be any misunderstanding should someone—Daisy, me, Glenn herself—panic and call 911. Gary and I will come by daily, but it will be Daisy, technically her cousin’s daughter, who will come down from Portland, Maine, and be on call for the duration and then pack up the house and settle things after Glenn is gone.
“But you’ll take Lucy,” she says, an urgent reminder.
“Of course I will.” I show her the pictures on my phone that I’ve already taken of Lucy’s cabinet in the kitchen: the food she eats, the treats she likes, all the supplies—her crate, her bed, her leash, her brush, her toys. “I’ll bring everything with me so that our house feels like home.”
We look at the dogs, lying next to each other, similar enough in their coloring and shape and size to almost look related. I picture myself walking Lucy on a leash while still carrying Charlotte, just for a few days, until I give up the sling for good.
“Gary doesn’t mind?”
“Of course not. He’d do anything for you.”
“He’d do anything for you, too.”
“I know. But maybe it’s time we let each other go.” I think, but don’t say, that maybe he’d be happier with the girlfriend whose name I don’t even know.
“He doesn’t love her.”
I turn to her. “He told you?”
She nods. “He came yesterday, by himself.”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“He doesn’t tell you a lot of things.” I stare at her as she closes her eyes. “He doesn’t want to leave. He’s not ready yet. And he doesn’t think Teddy is ready, either.” She takes my hand and holds it. “I told you long ago that I was happy to be wrong about you and Gary, and I was wrong. Loss has made you afraid of life, but you have to stay open. Porous. You have to let all the available light—all the tiny shards of joy—still flow through you.” She closes her eyes. “Who knows what beauty the rest of the way will bring.”
Glenn leans her head back, lets out a long slow sigh. “I wish I’d had children. I wish I hadn’t lost two husbands. I wish . . .” Her voice trails off until it is just breath. There is a long silence when we say nothing, when the enormity of where we are and how surreal it is to know that she will soon be gone hangs in the air—taken from the world any day as if by the rapture, with those of us left behind gaping in grief. “I wish,” she whispers, reaching out for Lucy, “I could see how all of this turns out.”
Spotlight
We dress, Gary and I, in our casual best—he in the khakis and button-down chambray shirt he hates, which is what he’s forced to wear to work now after a new Dockers Dude dress code was announced—I in an obligatory black Eileen Fisher pantsuit, either from 2006 or 2016, impossible to date, since each piece is so minimal it can’t possibly ever be in style or out of style.
Teddy has stayed at school, where he’ll be forced to change into whatever costume they’ve decided to dress the