Remembering Joy
September 2006It was a long drive home. Eight long, long hours, and that counts only the time spent actually driving, not the stops to walk in circles, trying to get circulation back into my butt and my brain. It was a drive that seemed to go on forever, and every mile, every hour took me farther away from my son.Peter is dying.It has been the hardest thing in the world for me to learn to say that. First I could manage only, “Peter is ill.” Then . . . “He has a terminal illness.”Now . . . “My son, my only son, my brilliant, challenging, deeply loving son is dying.”Peter is dying.I said it all the way home.I was returning from a visit to my daughter-in-law, Katy, and my three grandsons. Peter’s father had been visiting, too, from California, and we drove together to the nursing home to see Peter. Ron and I have been divorced for twenty years, but it seemed right that we should be together for this.That, too, was a long drive, because finding a place for Peter closer to his home had proven impossible. The last time I saw him was over Mother’s Day weekend. The last time his dad saw him was in January. Peter’s descent in the last months has been both inevitable and astonishing, though, of course, we talk with Katy often and had heard it all. Hearing is not the same as seeing, as being there.
We took turns sitting on the side of the bed Peter was slightly turned toward, talking to him, rubbing his arm, his shoulder. Touching his face. Peter attempted to say only a few words, none of which we could understand.No, that’s not right. He said one thing we both understood clearly. Ron made some joke about parents to an attendant, and Peter said, “Parents are good.”Parents are good! Even when they are totally, completely, absolutely helpless?Even when they live hundreds or even thousands of miles away?Even when they must go months without any contact?And what about Peter as a parent, his own three boys ricocheting through their lives, bereft?Nonetheless, we carried away the gift of those words: “Parents are good.”Our son says so, our only son, who is dying.A friend sends a poem every week to those of us on her e-mail list, and some time ago she sent “A Quiet Joy” by Yehuda Armichai. The last lines are these:And late in life I discovereda quiet joylike a serious disease that’s discovered too late:just a little time left now for quiet joy.Those lines are taped to the side of my printer, next to where I sit at my work. Day after day I read them.“Just a little time left now for quiet joy.”“Just a little time . . .”
I think of Peter and remember the precious fragility of my own life, every single hour of it.I think of Peter and remember holding him, my firstborn, in my arms.I think of Peter and remember joy.