Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman Read Free Book Online

to call some funeral homes for me while I stayed put on the end of the bed. I heard them as they whipped out their phones, eager to help, reaching the same few late-shift funeral home employees who would say, “Didn’t somebody else call about the same guy a couple minutes ago?” Nobodyknew quite what to ask, and everybody learned the same few things, which they reported back to me. Yes, someone would come to pick up the body, later that night or in the morning. Yes, they all would charge a ridiculous sum for this service. You’d think they were sending him to Tierra del Fuego and back. And they would all like to know what sort of funeral I was planning. I didn’t know. I didn’t know what to do.
    It began to look as if the nurses might call security to give me the heave-ho, except someone finally showed up to break the stalemate. David Goldenberg was a psychiatrist who had managed a complicated cocktail of medications intended to keep Bernie’s mind on track as the cancer wreaked havoc in his brain, causing memory loss, confusion, anxiety, and sleeplessness. It was a wretched existence, profoundly dispiriting to a man who prided himself on reading obscure books on public policy and knowing every sideman who ever played with Ben Webster. Most people with brain metastasis live for only a few months. Bernie had lasted more than two years in this state, and the drugs helped keep him on an even keel. Dr. Goldenberg turned up at the hospital that night for a visit, and I took an easier breath. He would know what to do.
    “How are
you
doing?” he asked briskly as he strode into the room. He pulled up an ugly plastic chair and sat opposite me. If he found it strange to speak to a woman who was perched on her deceased husband’s bed, her knees hugged to her chest, his face did nothing to betray it. I had drawn a sheet over Bernie by now to spare everyone from seeing him.
    I told Dr. Goldenberg about the remote control running amok in my head.
    “That’s actually quite normal at a time like this,” he said. I foundthat information comforting. I might have been a mess, but I was a
normal
mess.
    I told him I didn’t know what to do. “I feel guilty leaving Bernie in the hospital,” I said. “He hated it when I’d leave him here. He kept fighting, no matter what horrible procedures got thrown at him, so we wouldn’t be apart. I can’t walk away from him now. It seems my end of it shouldn’t be so easy.”
    “It’s normal to feel guilty,” Dr. Goldenberg said. “There’s no avoiding it.” Then he got down to practicalities. “You don’t have to make any decisions right now,” he said. “You’re exhausted. Go home, get some rest, make some choices tomorrow. Your friends are all here. Let them help you. This isn’t a time to insist on doing every thing yourself.”
    Granted, it didn’t take a medical degree to come up with this advice, but it had enough ring of authority to give me some backbone. Maybe a copy of the Yellow Pages would have accomplished the same thing.
    After Dr. Goldenberg left, I took a crack at pulling myself together. I might have lost Bernie, my trusted guide, but I knew I couldn’t remain frozen forever in this void between what my life had been and the scary territory that lay ahead. Immobility was the act of a coward. I also knew that I’d have to push back against the guilt I would feel walking out of there. For some time to come, I could see, I would have to contend with this guilt, this new unwanted companion of mine, whenever I did what was necessary to keep on living myself.
    I stood up, stepped out the door, and informed my little group of supporters that I would go now. They told the nurses I would arrange for a funeral home to come for Bernie tomorrow. Back atthe bedside, I said a few words to him, feeling the full absurdity of talking out loud for the first time in my life to someone who wasn’t there. I gathered his things, his glasses and his keys and his clothes, no