NON SUM QUALIS ERAM

They die in tiny steps. Some days greater leaps. One lid no longer opens as brightly as the other eye's. The words of still delightful conversation often made thick and slurred by tongues forgetting their skill. She phones five times in ten minutes to ask the same simple question and to say "just thinking of you." When we hug goodbye she always whispers "I love you" as if to help me store the phrase for the coming time when she will no longer remember who I am.

His stoicism and sharpness are eroding to a softer, almost boyish round-edged affability. He dotes on her. Once a gruff and surly husband now become devoted servant, secretary, housekeep. He makes her milkshakes with hidden doses of protein and calories to slow the evaporation of her muscles. He plays a game of grouchily demanding she remember this or that, slyly coaching her to refuse to become resigned to forgetfulness. He demands she continue to fight this already lost war until there's nothing left. They strive to push back against the inevitable for as long as possible. Soon the day will come when even her muscles forget, forget how to walk, how to chew, even to swallow. But for now it's time to fight and keep the bastard back. Even if by millimeters keep back the goddamn thief that will sooner or later steal one of them from the other. Knowing, too, that one of them won't know no matter who is taken first.

They rise with pain, bent, walk with a small, weaving gait that still carries a faint sheen of the polish and pride of coming from two proud ancient lines. Their bodies bend more and more over time, but not their dignity.

Broken skin, numberless spots and causeless wounds now lay siege to her once delicate face. Still, the blemishes of age have not yet fully breached the soft, thin skin above her cheeks. Her eyes can still flash an imperious, scolding glance or earnest, childlike want. When something unwelcome is said they still wound with shocking immediacy. But death's power of imminent domain is always laying claim, marking its increase with the spotty toe prints of infiltrating demise, clawing toward her lids, annexing the once pale, ivory, silken skin around her eyes, eyes that could always soothe or savage with the slightest shift of her mood.

He goes to bed early. He escapes in sleep the grinding endless end that is unfolding. And alone he rises in the darkness before dawn to sip coffee and read the paper while she sleeps later and later each morning. Last month she left a small foot stool in the middle of the floor. No reason. Before she went to bed the stool just came to mind and so needed to be brought out. In the dark the next morning he tripped on it, fell full on his head. Five small gashes, a concussion, maybe a small fracture and bleeder. But, "it is nothing and no I won't go to the goddamn Dr."

So I watch him during each day's visit. Watch behind our chatter for signs of an emergency. He is afraid. Afraid he may have to be hospitalized. Afraid that she will not have him for a day or even two. He knows she will dissolve into panicked terror. We've seen it before during a dawn to midnight hospital stay for his eye surgery. Even though I stayed with her every minute, sat with her at the hospital, would've slept at their house, his absence was horror itself. Her confusion instantaneous. The hours before his surgery, the wait during. She became more and more afraid, even hostile. "Why are we here? Where is this place?" Soothing words, distracting questions about long dead relatives brought quick laughter, but, only distracted for a moment, a moment that shrank more with each passing moment. She clutched my hand and said "You're my good scout" a dozen times. A second later almost wailing, desperate to bolt, and yet even more terrified by not knowing where to run or why.

When she is sick in the ER I hold her head and coo "this is normal, try to relax into it" when the morphine makes her vomit. I slip her boney hand, delicate, transparent skin above blue veins and tendons, under my shirt when the IV solution makes her so cold her hand and arm ache like they're broken. I speak with a calm and cheerful lie of panic when I call the nurse in to control her pulse and plummeting pressure. As if to reassure him I wink at my father who is rubbing her always freezing feet and pressing them against his belly. Though calm and placid to others I see him numb with desperate terror. He is nearly deaf and the isolation adds to his horror. I am there to hear for him. I corner the haughty Dr who ignored her nurse and then my questions. I berate him for his ignorance and sullen, casual disregard. He's upset his Fourth of July has been interrupted. I bully him. I have him barred from the hospital when he asks if I'd "prefer her conscious or knocked out while she's at home."

I think of my secret muse. The goddess faced one. A friend I have only met in notes exchanged. I think of her and her own friend who would've died alone but for the night-long race to reach her before the last breath. She held her friend's hand, hugged her body close while she died. My lovely muse spent herself, drained herself of all she had to spend the last hours of a life in stories and laughter and songs and sadness. She came to her friend whose own ugly children ignored her. Petulant fools made bitter by some meaningless bruise they chose to treasure up and are now made irreparably poor, shabby, odious.

And after it all, and now "it" is every day in one form or another, after it all I paint. I paint and I beg the color to rise and sharpen. I push back to ponder and stare and curse my own illness and pain and fatigue. I plead with the paint to rise to the intensity I want to feel. I am rich with life because I am cursed with the great good fortune to be the one who gets to be here, to see, to help my parents die as well as they deserve. I'll draw on these foul, sweet days of ending for as long as I paint. And I hate it. And I am grateful for it.