Our Last Supper
I wound up writing this to this Sunday's prompt about sleeping and passing out. It's Tatja talking about her late husband, and not rp-ly, but hey.
He asked me to pass the salt. A simple gesture, our hands crossing the table as they had in so many years of marriage. Comfortable, repetitive.
He had survived the cancer so far. Frail yes, but there was hope- he was in remission, the last of treatments. He shaked the salt onto his steak, little crystals standing out like snow on the gray backdrop of meat.
"I think tomorrow I will walk in the woods," he said, and I smiled. It is good, I thought, that he feels well enough to walk.
We chewed our steak in comfortable silence - this too from years of marriage, no need to fill those moments where we took pleasure in just being together.
He asked for dessert, but I had made none, so he said he would go to lie down a while.
Had I known he would not wake up from that lying down, I would have given him fruit. Cake. Cookies. A multitude of last sweet things.
But our last supper ended there, him wiping his mouth and smiling before standing from the table to head in to our bedroom. Me, smiling back as I gathered the dishes.
I should have said "I love you". I should have gone in to lie with him, when I heard his heavy sigh and the squeak of the mattress.
Should have held his hand as he slipped from this life into the next. But he alone lay there, as I washed each plate and cup. Dried them, stacked them away in the cabinets, unknowing.
Did he say any last words? Did he call for me, and the water overrode the sound? Or did he simply sleep, belly full of steak and heart full of hope at the thought of tomorrow's walk? Perhaps his body gave out while his mind dreamed.
This is what I hope for him. All we can any of us hope for, to slip peacefully from one world to the next, never knowing we have passed between.
He asked me to pass the salt. A simple gesture, our hands crossing the table as they had in so many years of marriage. Comfortable, repetitive.
He had survived the cancer so far. Frail yes, but there was hope- he was in remission, the last of treatments. He shaked the salt onto his steak, little crystals standing out like snow on the gray backdrop of meat.
"I think tomorrow I will walk in the woods," he said, and I smiled. It is good, I thought, that he feels well enough to walk.
We chewed our steak in comfortable silence - this too from years of marriage, no need to fill those moments where we took pleasure in just being together.
He asked for dessert, but I had made none, so he said he would go to lie down a while.
Had I known he would not wake up from that lying down, I would have given him fruit. Cake. Cookies. A multitude of last sweet things.
But our last supper ended there, him wiping his mouth and smiling before standing from the table to head in to our bedroom. Me, smiling back as I gathered the dishes.
I should have said "I love you". I should have gone in to lie with him, when I heard his heavy sigh and the squeak of the mattress.
Should have held his hand as he slipped from this life into the next. But he alone lay there, as I washed each plate and cup. Dried them, stacked them away in the cabinets, unknowing.
Did he say any last words? Did he call for me, and the water overrode the sound? Or did he simply sleep, belly full of steak and heart full of hope at the thought of tomorrow's walk? Perhaps his body gave out while his mind dreamed.
This is what I hope for him. All we can any of us hope for, to slip peacefully from one world to the next, never knowing we have passed between.