The Empty Jar(43)

The doctors are limited. We have limited them. We’ve tied their hands. They will only be able to treat Lena the best they can with medicines and therapies that won’t harm the baby. She always seems okay with that, though. More than okay, actually. It’s from her, from her calm certainty, that I’ve been drawing a lot of my strength lately.

I don’t ever feel completely convinced that we’ve made the right choice. Then again, it was never really mine to make. Not totally, anyway.

Each day, we make at least one video for the baby, transferring them from phone to computer and then saving them to a flash drive for safekeeping. I admit that I’m almost obsessive about backing up those precious moments. Each time I download one and save it to the external drive, I watch it over and over a few times, falling more and more hopelessly in love with my wife as I do. I’m not sure how smart that is, signing up for even more pain when there’s plenty to go around already, but it’s out of my control.

Lena is irresistible.

Still, some small, overly-rational part of my brain thinks it might be wise to try to distance myself a little bit as time goes on, but I refuse to back away from Lena no matter how much grief it might save me in the end. I know perfectly well that loving her so much knowing that I will surely lose her will be the hardest thing I’ve ever have to deal with in my whole damn life. I also know, however, that I wouldn’t trade these last days, weeks, months with her for all the gold (or comfort and painlessness) in the world. I’m content to throw myself wholly into our life, into our love, and into the growth of our baby until the very last day.

Until the end.

So I continue taping and downloading, taping and downloading, watching the videos over and over and over again on nights when I can’t sleep, knowing that one day the short clips will be all that I have left of my wife besides our child and the memories I have stored away in my mind. None will be as clear as the videos, though. That’s why I protect them fiercely.

One beautiful spring-like morning in early March, Lena and I are enjoying our morning ritual of coffee (decaf for Lena) with our breakfast of eggs and toast when the back door bursts open. I’d been reading the financial section of the paper, which I lower casually. I’m no longer surprised by Nissa’s odd and early visits. Neither is Lena. She just throws up her hand and mutters “good morning” around her toast and continues to browse the Internet looking for baby things.

“Video up!” Nissa shouts as she comes sailing across the tile floor and plops a black, shag-cut wig on Lena’s head. “She’s Monica. I’m Rachel,” she explains to me, as if that makes her plan clear to us.

It does not.

I only know that when she comes in and yells “Video up!” it’s my cue to start filming. Beyond that, I never have a clue what Nissa is up to.

Obediently, I grab my phone, turn it toward my wife, and hit the record button. Nissa, also wearing a wig, hits play on her own phone, and the familiar guitar riff from the beginning of the Friends song fills the kitchen.

She takes Lena by the hand and pulls her to her feet, and the two begin to dance. When the lyrics start, both women sing along, stopping to clap at the appropriate times and then laughing when they do. I can’t help smiling at their antics. It makes my chest tight with a bittersweet happiness to watch them.

Speaking just loud enough that my voice can be heard over the music, I tell our baby, “I think this is your mom’s best friend’s way of saying she loves her. You’ll understand later, when I introduce you to the show Friends. When you’re older,” I add. “Much older.”

Nostalgia warms me as I record and listen. Lena and I watched the comedy together in our early years together. After all this time, we still quote things to each another occasionally. Little insignificant bits from the show like “It’s a moo point”, “What kind of scary-ass clowns came to your birthday?”, and “How you doin’?” which never fail to bring an answering smile. It’s one of the million-and-one things we’ve shared in our life together that once seemed silly and inconsequential, but now seems painfully profound.

When the song is complete, the two hug and laugh before Nissa yanks the wig off Lena’s head and vanishes, right back out the door she just burst through a few minutes ago. My guess is that she’ll go straight home and cry. We all deal with our grief in silence and in private, in deference to Lena.

But we still have to do it.

Lena is still grinning when she walks over to me and drops down onto my lap, wrapping her arms around my neck. “You’re my lobster,” she says, rubbing her cold nose against mine.

“And you’re my everything,” I reply, my gut constricting at the trivial yet meaningful phrase. She is my lobster. She is my everything, and she always will be.

Even after she’s gone.

I wish not for the first time that someone else were the videographer so we could capture moments such as these. I know there will come a time when these memories will start to fade, when I will forget what it feels like to hold her or what it feels like to look into her warm brown eyes, and the idea is crushing. I don’t want to forget, but I know that as much as I try to commit every tiny detail to memory, they won’t withstand the test of time with much clarity. At least not all of them. It’s just not possible.

But if I had my way, I wouldn’t forget one single second of the time I’ve spent with my wife.