Some time after her husband was diagnosed, she took a picture of him, his gaunt smiling face like a beacon, or omen, she couldn’t decide.
When he went into the hospital for good - the end game he called it - she found herself keeping the photo with her at all times, looking at it at odd moments: on park benches, on the bus, at night. But the more she looked at it, the less it gave her.
One day a gust blew it out of her hands into some thistle. As she moved to retrieve it, it blew away. She thought: I’m losing him.
She sat for hours on end looking at him propped up in his stiff blue gown, a glass of stale water on his bedside table.
His skin was yellow, and a chemical odour rose from his body. The disease was spinning its cocoon around him. He’s falling through the veil of the world, she thought; breathing himself out and away.
He looked at her with a faint smile. The morphine drip gave his eyes a remote look: she wasn’t sure whether he recognised her.
When the end game had been played out, she stole his glass, brought it home and placed it on what had been his bedside table. She watched it grow grimy and studied the fading marks of his fingers and lips. For a while it was saturated with his lost presence, until its meaningfulness evaporated and it became just another object.
