A Deep River Year
March 26,  2014

He leaned forward in his wheelchair, his eyes hidden behind an enormous pair of sunglasses as a protection from the bright sunlight streaming through the window.   So I could not see the grimace, or the tears, as he told me the briefest story of their life together of over sixty years.    They had met once upon a time at a silver factory where she worked, and where he drove a delivery truck.   From the first he had loved her,  had set his sights on marriage.  

On the wall was a photo of their wedding, she in her long white gown, he in a suit that seemed like an extravagance--something awkward and out of the ordinary for him.    We do things like that--the fancy clothes, the flowers--out of sheer love.   And that is what it was, all those years, Art and Jean, husband and wife.   "Wasn't she beautiful," he said.   I turned to see her twisted on an institutional bed, her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth open, trying to die.     She could not answer now, could not tell her version of the story of this life.   "Yesterday," he said, "I woke up in the night because I heard her calling me:  Artie!  Artie!"   The nurse’s aide had come to him, helped him up from the wheelchair, held him by the waist as he leaned as far over the bed as he could reach--far enough to press his lips on hers, to answer her cry in the night with one last kiss.

Before I left Art there, in the room beside his dying wife, he shared a last confession.   "You know she was married before-- when she was very young.   He went over to fight in the war, and died in the Battle of the Bulge.  She never saw him again."   He paused, swallowed hard.   "And now she'll be back with him."    I took his hand, and we sat in silence for a moment, balancing in the space between us the weight of sixty years as a fragile treasure.

Holy Ground

We should not see some things, perhaps:
the stranger's tears that flow 
in some unguarded moment
when joy or loss or hurt
tears open the silent heart;
the most private touch
of hand to face of lovers
in their delicious, tender darkness;
a mother grasping  a child
in their first or last parting.
These things happen on holy ground,
bidding us to silence, or awe.
So when this once most eager groom
bends to kiss
this aged, broken bride--
still in his fading eyes
the most beautiful of mortal souls--
I turn away.
And this I know:
If she should die
in this one moment,
it would be love itself that wraps
them both around,
filling this antiseptic room
with some wild incense--hyacinth or sweetest rose--
and I would have to bend in reverence,
remove my shoes,
and thank the sun and stars
that this old world may wear us down
and tear our hearts apart,
yet  also give us this.

--Timothy Haut, March 26, 2014