4. THE COUNSELOR OF GRIEF

Wrapped in an anoetic fog of mindless consciousness, Solitaire lay waiting beside her husband’s corpse.  Eyes shut, her right arm angled across his girth to clasp his hand, she pressed her face against the immobile bulwark of his chest.

Through the closed door,  she heard the nurses noisily chattering and clattering away, apparently setting out medications for morning dispensation.  What a racket they made -- enough to wake the dead.  But, in fact, it wasn’t.  She peered at Em in the gloom and saw him still lying stone cold beside her.  A pale haze of first light filtered through the scrim of white curtain, backlighting his form and giving the crowded cubicle an unlikely aura of religiosity.  Carefully disengaging her hand from his stiff fingers, she tentatively placed it on his unbeating heart and felt only the hard shell of his pacemaker.  Was it still working?  Does a pacemaker stop when the heart stops?   She guessed not.  Perhaps it did not even  know that its host had died and that it was a superfluous guest in an empty house.   It repelled her to think that though Em's heart had shut down, his pacer, the last straggler at the party, danced on without him.   

Solitaire wondered if Em’s soul had left his body.  She thought that it had, but who can say?  The ancient Greeks, who practiced precise burial rituals, believed that it was necessary to close the mouth and eyes of the deceased so that the psyche or soul would not escape and wander off in disconsolate confusion, but would stay home, as it were, remaining safely within the body during the two-day laying-out period prior to the funeral.  It was, in effect, a security device, in lieu, she thought, of a motion sensor.

In her minimal reading on the migration or transmigration of souls, Solitaire has noticed a curious gender discrepancy in the depictions of psychic travellers.  In the older paintings and drawings, the soul, whatever the sex of the deceased, is depicted as a female, whereas in the more modern imagery, the departing soul is a male -- often attired in a business suit and tie.

This slavishness to convention is in itself a bit odd.  Unless he is struck down in a board room while giving a power point presentation, a person on the point of death, or even in the throes of a near-death experience, is most likely to be situated in a hospital, hospice, home, automobile, battlefield, bottom of a lake, bath, etc, in which case he or she would be wearing a gown, robe, uniform, swimsuit or nothing at all -- in sum, almost anything but a business suit. Perhaps the Soul is dressing up for his job interview with God.  But God, if we can believe Michelangelo, is a sartorial slouch who, even in the Sistine Chapel, never wears anything but flowing robes and bare feet, and obviously wouldn't be caught dead in a business suit.  No slave to fashion He.

Solitaire's mind has by now begun to wander so far afield that she is beginning to fear for her sanity.   She thinks that if she lies here much longer she will most certainly go mad and is therefore relieved to hear an approaching hum of soothingly low masculine voices. The hum increases, the door opens, and in a moment she is being drawn to her feet and embraced by Em’s sons, Zach and Benjamin.

Zach, the elder of the two, is a single father of two small daughters.  Rising early to get them ready for school, he has picked up Solitaire's message, left the girls with a friend, and driven to his brother's, arriving at the hospice around six.

As they lead her from the room, Solitaire clutches Zach by the arm and whispers fiercely,  “They won’t let me change Em’s clothes.  You've got to do it.  Please.”

Zach nods.   Pausing at the nurse's station, he says to the tech, “Can we get some coffee?” 

Socorro looks at Kristee.

“Get them some coffee,” Kristee says to her subordinate. Her tone is crisp.

Zach takes Kristee aside while Benjamin and Solitaire follow Socorro to what is called the "Family dining room," where they sit down at a long table covered with a protective cloth. Through eyes dull with fatigue, Solitaire observes that although the intent has doubtless been to create an atmosphere of homey elegance, the mission has gone awry. Reminded of a Dylan Thomas story set in a warehouse piled ceiling-high with chairs, she feels suffocated by a depressing clutter of dark furniture --  consoles and desks, sideboards and coffee tables, love seats and, most especially, chairs, as though in expectation of burgeoning generations of extended families lounging around idly as they wait for their loved ones to make up their minds: stay or go, live or die, to be or not to be?  In her deranged state of mind,  these chairs seem to take on surreal characteristics.  Mutant Chippendales clad in fuzzy brown and maroon stripes, line up on either side of the table like importunate pensioners demanding to be fed; in the reception room, overstuffed arm chairs and sofas, similarly upholstered, jostle for space like dowagers at a dance; behind them sit desperate duos of dutiful wallflower chairs, whilst dusty dieffenbachias, false family retainers, stand sentinel in corners, guarding tabletop arrangements of plastic pears and pine cones that gleam like heirlooms with coatings of Lemon Pledge.

“It’s done,” Zach says, sliding onto a chair.  “But just the shirt -- too late for the trousers.”

“Well.. at least he won't have to wear that wretched hospital gown.”

It is close to seven o'clock when Paul Cantwell, the Grief Counselor, rides in like the cavalry from Benson and the relief on Nurse Kristee's face is visible as she briskly ushers Solitaire into the Bereavement Room.

Solitaire has barely entered when she finds herself enfolded in Cantwell's long spidery arms.  He is exceptionally tall -- six-four, or five -- and thin, youthfully good looking in that anodyne way that one often encounters in the west.  Like the Migrating Soul, he is dressed in a jacket and trousers (no tie).

"I'm so sorry for your loss," he murmurs, bending over nearly double to place his face close to her's.

Unaccountably and infuriatingly, Solitaire, who had thought the well-of-tears was temporarily dry, bursts into sobs.  But Cantwell, a certified bereavement practitioner, after all, is ready for her and with the speed of a prestidigitator simultaneously produces a box of Kleenex and sweeps her into a brown and maroon arm chair.

Solitaire hates this man on the spot.  She knows it's unreasonable; he's been kind and sensitive, the very embodiment of caring, waiting courteously while she mops her face, sniffles, gulps, hiccups, blows her nose.  But there it is:  she hates him.  It's visceral.  She can't help it.

"Try to take comfort in the knowledge that your husband has gone to a better place."  Cantwell's voice is almost unbearably gentle, as though he were smoothing baby oil onto her scorched psyche.

To Solitaire's basic hard-core hatred there is now annealed a top coat of inexpressible loathing, contempt and searing detestation for Cantwell.  Far from taking comfort, she wants to take a weapon and kill him  -- to split his skull with an ax down to the jawbone as the Vikings did to their enemies in battle.

"What place is that?" she asks.

He blinks with surprise.  "Why ... Heaven."

"But you can't possibly know that, can you?  No one knows."

"You're wrong there," he says, smiling with equable certainty.  "We have centuries of evidence, reports from the dying and the near-dead, those who've gone through NDE's (near-death experiences) -- highly descriptive visions of departing Souls ascending to Paradise...

... not to mention innumerable accounts of Souls rushing toward the light at the end of a long dark tunnel..."

"I thought that was Vietnam,"

"Excuse me?"

"The light at the end of the tunnel ..."

A tiny frown like a hairline fracture appears on Cantwell's implacable brow and Solitaire knows her flippancy was ill-considered.  She has gone too far.

"I think you might benefit from our bereavement support groups," he says flatly, but his meaning is clear. "And, of course, I'm available for personal grief counseling at any time."  He rises, his calling card in hand.

Nurse Kristee appears in the doorway.  "Excuse me, Walter is here."

Walter is the owner of The Heavenly Heights Mortuary,  "Wally's a great guy, very sympatico," Cantwell says.  "You'll like him."

"I'd like Wally to bring my husband's body to our house and then pick him up tomorrow.  Of course I'll pay any additional expense."

Cantwell's eyebrows raise just enough to make Solitaire feel ashamed, as though  he suspects that she intends to perform crazed sexual acts upon her husband's corpse. "I'm afraid that's not possible."

Now she is reduced to begging. "Just a few hours then -- a brief stop en route."

"Absolutely out of the question.  Sorry.  It's against the rules of the Health Department,  It would be breaking the law."

Solitaire is sure it isn't true, but she knows when she's been beaten.  Bowing in defeat, she takes his card.

"Let me give you another hug."  She submits stiffly to his embrace.  "Remember," he admonishes her, again ever so gently, "time heals all."

"So they say," she answers sourly.  But she doesn't believe it for a second.

Leaving the Bereavement Room, Solitaire finds Zach and Benjamin in conversation with Wally, the mortician.  One of them makes a comment about "Six Feet Under" and they laugh.  Wally is an irredeemably cheery young man. She makes one last try and asks him if he can bring Em's body to her house.  Wally shrugs regretfully -- "against the law" --  but suggests that she drop by the mortuary some time this afternoon so they can discuss arrangements.  Solitaire suddenly feels dizzy and light-headed, as though she's levitating, looking down on this scene.  She thinks she must be having an OBE, (an Out-of-Body Experience, as opposed to the Order of the British Empire.)

Benjamin suggests getting something to eat.  Her stomach growls receptively and she realizes that she's hungry.

And so they part, Solitaire and Em, she by the front door, he by the back, she to Starbuck's and he to The Heavenly Heights.

3. TO SPEND ONE NIGHT WITH YOU

Solitaire wants to bring Em home.   She isn’t asking for much -- a few hours, a night, at most.  The fact that he’s dead strikes her as irrelevant.

“You can’t take him home.”  The nurse’s tone is flat but emphatic, brooking no argument.

Em is lying on a narrow hospital bed in the corner of a curtained room.  Solitaire is sitting on the edge of his bed, hunched face down, somewhere between a defensive crouch and a possessive sprawl,  over his upper body, her arms spread out like wings across his chest.  She’s been in this position for roughly an hour and when she raises her head to the nurse, her cheeks are creased and streaked. 

“He’s mine.”

The night nurse, whose name is Kristee, looks down at her.  She sees trouble, maybe hysteria.  Her resolve hardens.

“It’s against the law.”

“What law?”

“A city ordinance states that the deceased must be removed from the premises in an hour.”  She speaks in the quaintly distanced argot of a police briefing.  “After that the body starts to putrefy.”  

Solitaire wants to tell Kristee that if she fills Em's nostrils with ambrosia and red nectar as the Greek Gods did for fallen heroes, his flesh will remain uncorrupted. But she doesn't.  

Kristee looks at her watch.  “It’s already past four.  I've left a message at the mortuary to come and get him as soon as possible.”

Em is at a hospice in the foothills.  He has been there since Friday night when he was dismissed from the hospital and sent home to die.  For reasons having mainly to do with transportation, he has been remanded to this hospice, but only on a temporary basis.  He is to come home in a medical transport van on Monday.

“This isn’t a dying facility, he can only stay the weekend,” an administrator admonishes her. 

This is news to Solitaire.  She was under the illusion that a hospice was precisely where people went to die.  So.  No dying allowed.  Well, no matter.  She didn’t want Em to die there, anyway.  But now, in what looks like bald-faced defiance of the house rules, he has died there.

The call comes at two-thirty Monday morning.  She rings Em’s sons, but their phones are off.  Picking up a bag already packed with his clothes -- socks, underwear, khakis, a royal blue shirt -- she leaves the house at three o'clock.  In the black, starlit silence of the desert night, with a chill wind blowing off the mountains and random traffic lights blinking robotically over the empty street crossings, she winds up bone-dry River Road into the cactus-strewn hills north of town.  

A few hours before his death, without her knowledge, Em had been moved from a private room to the cramped, curtained-off corner of a double room. Arriving at hospice on Sunday night, she had found him on his back beetle-like, legs splayed, naked, sheetless and shivering beneath a glaring ceiling light, a diaper around his ankles.  His hospital johnny coat, ripped off, lay on the floor.     

Now, in death, he lies obediently in the johnny coat.  The sheet is pulled up under his chin; his mouth and eyes are half open.  Slit-eyed and slack-jawed, he appears vaguely imbecilic.  She cradles his head in her arms and rocks; a groan of pain rises out of her gut and her tears spill onto his brow and into his eyes.  She wants to go home and howl at the heavens.  But she has duties to perform.  She presses her fingers gently but firmly down over his eyelids, closing them, kissing them shut.  The mouth is another matter.  Even in the dim light she can see that his lips are blue-ing up, and when her cheek brushes against his mouth it feels, not rigid, but rubbery. His jaw is beginning to set.  She must work quickly.

Solitaire has seen plenty of dead bodies, but has never been to a “viewing.” It has not occurred to her that mortuaries are probably equipped to handle any and all contingencies.  No doubt they have pulleys and tackles that can winch a man’s jaw or any other resistant body part into any conceivable position.  Still, she doesn’t trust them to do it right and she doesn’t want to send Em off to Eternity looking as though Death had found him carelessly snoozing at the opera, catching a few z’s halfway through the third act of “Siegfried.” 

She looks around warily -- she doesn’t want to be apprehended by Nurse Kristee, whom she now perceives as her adversary -- and hearing the nurse and the tech chattering volubly over the charts and seeing that the coast is clear, swings into action.  She puts the heel of her hand under Em’s chin, works her right leg up so that her knee is against her elbow and by exerting sufficient slow, steady upward pressure with her thigh, levers his jaw shut.  She waits, leaving her hand in position for a count of ten, then gently removes it.  The mouth holds for a second, then slips back open a fraction.  She repeats the process and this time it stays shut.

Round One to her.  As Theseus slew the Minotaur, as Heracles beheaded the Hydra at Lerna, so she, Solitaire, will triumph over Kristee at this hospice named, with exquisite, presumably unintended, irony … Odyssey.

Now for Round Two:  the change of clothes.  She raises the head of the bed, removes the hateful johnny coat, takes the long-sleeved blue shirt from the bag, unbuttons it, then pulling Em forward, puts his right arm into the sleeve.  It is when she tries to get the shirt around his back that she runs into trouble.  Em is a big man – six-two, 180 pounds – and she just isn’t strong enough to do this by herself. She is up on the bed wrestling with Em and the shirt when the tech, Socorro, wanders into the cubicle.  A look of alarm animates the tech's stolid expression and she bolts from the room, returning, predictably, with Kristee.

“You can’t put that shirt on him – "

"Yes, I can ... if you help me..."  She grunts with the effort of trying to hold Em up.  She's got her knee in the middle of his back and is trying to insert his left arm into the sleeve.

"It's too late -- he's got rigor mortis."

"He hasn't, damn it ... look!"  Solitaire takes Em's arm and gently shoves it as though it were a swing.  The movement is stiff, but undeniable.

Solitaire is triumphant.  "You see! ...  you see!" she cries.

“You can discuss this with Mr. Cantwell... the Grief Counselor,”  Kristee says.  “He's on his way, but it will take him an hour to get here.  He has to drive in from Benson.  I'm going to call him again.”  

Solitaire folds.  Conceding the round, she curls up beside Em, whose blue shirt is now half on and half off, while she awaits the arrival of the Grief Counselor.  In his absence, Solitaire muddles through on her own, grieving without counsel.

Her anguish advances in waves, surging like surf, crashing, crushing her, knocking her flat, then ebbing, subsiding, sluicing out, leaving a sloshing tidepool of tears, rank with pale anemones and sea grass, slack weeds of woe, tiny crustaceans of useless guilt, small hollow shells of remorse, worn shards of sadness, thoughts scuttling like sand crabs  … all the effluvia, the pitiful flotsam and jetsam  washed up and depleted in death’s wake.  She lies panting, exhausted, briefly numbed, waiting for the next wave, even now gathering momentum in the recesses of her heart.  Then, in the silence, she hears a sound, a faint stirring and rustling, and realizes with a stab of shame that the sound is The Other Patient … the other dying man behind the curtain….

What are the rules of correct behaviour here?  Is there a paradigm?  An existing etiquette for a double-occupancy chambre des morts?  Should she thoughtfully tamp down her tears, stifle her sobs? It seems inconsiderate, at the very least insensitive, to carry on like Hecuba while the poor man is – so she supposes – in extremis.   Or is he merely, in line with professed policy, weekending here?  Even so…

Solitaire wants to go home now.  But it seems she can't.  She must wait for the Grief Counsellor and the Mortician.  She doesn't want to wait.  What are they to her or she to them?  She longs to mourn her fallen husband as the ancient Greeks mourned their dead.  She wants to wash Em's poor tired body, anoint his wounds – his cracked skin and clotted sores and purple bruises -- with oils and sweet-scented lotions, cloak his body in fine muslin, wrap him in purple robes and lay him on a bier mantled in white. 

In the privacy of their home, in the presence of family and a few friends, Solitaire wants to rage like Achilles over Patroclus, shriek and tear her hair like Hecuba, claw the skin from her face, swoon like Andromache over Hector, groan, hurl imprecations at the Immortals, utter elegies and lamentations all night long.  It’s unlikely, of course, that she would do any of these things, it’s not her style.  But if she should … then, why not?  Why should she be denied this last rite? This last right?  This last night?

                                        

“For never sorrow half so deep
Shall pierce my heart again!”