As many years as I lived with them, I'm sure he had said it, I’m sure they had done it. But as hard as I tried, I could not remember it.
I was in my forties, divorced, and had a few years of relationships under my belt when I began to unravel some of the mysteries of my parent's marriage. I didn’t know what was being lived out before my eyes because I didn’t know the "language” of their relationship.
I looked back on things that were just part of our “normal” family life and realized my parents had their marital crises. My Mom told me there were a few times she had packed up our bags after Dad left for work, but had them unpacked and supper on the table before Dad got home from work. Dad wasn’t quite as open. I recalled him standing in the back yard watering the grass by hand with a hose for a couple hours (I wondered where I got that as a decompression ritual…). I remember Mom mercilessly berating him at the supper table and him just looking down into his plate and trying to say something to defuse her (or shut her up). During my high school years they had separate beds in their bedroom. I never thought of it as strange, probably because I was raised on Ozzy and Harriet, Father Knows Best and everyone had separate beds on TV. After I had years of a rough marriage, I imagine he too thought of driving to work and just keeping on going through the light and on to where ever the road ended. But he always came home to his watering hose and his table.
Mom was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 84. I suspected at her age she would just say, "That is that" and let nature take its course. Her “life verse” (and a record she played probably hundreds of times on the console in our living room while Dad was at work) “Que sera, sera”… whatever will be will be.
I sat in the surgeon’s exam room with her and Dad. The surgeon was laying out the options, risk factors, prognoses. Mom had always said, “No one is going to cut me up.” She was adamant about no invasive procedures on her body and had put that in her advance directives.
“Whack ‘em both off” she said. “I’m not using them anymore. Neither is he…” Mom pointed a thumb at Dad and smirked.
“Um. Well. I can leave some tissue and the nipple so if you want to get reconstruction surgery later….”
“I don’t need boobs anymore. Hell, I can use the money I save on bra’s to play the slot machines!”
I was more than a little surprised when she opted to try to cheat “what will be” and chose to have a radical mastectomy and a year of chemo.
When they wheeled her from recovery to her room, Dad tailgated the gurney all the way to the door. When the nurse told us we had to leave the room while they moved her into her bed, Dad stood at the door pacing in a small square dance. He was the first in when they opened it. He hovered over her bed and even though she was still groggy he asked, "do you want anything... can I get you some water... do you want me to order some dinner... how do you feel... "
We stayed for a while until he was sure she was comfortable (and he was as comfortable as he could be.)
I’m sure they must have done it sometime, he must have said it before, and she must have looked at him “like that” before… but for the life of me I couldn’t remember it.
As we said goodbye for the night, my Dad leaned over the rail of the hospital bed and kissed my Mom. "I love you," he said as he stroked her head.
She smiled at him. "Go home, JG, I'll be fine."
Dad spent his days hovering over her and the staff in her room. Mom had to be able to walk around the nurse's station in order to be released. Every day she made it a little further down the hallway. Dad always walked beside her, at a certain distance but close enough to catch her should she stumble or fall.
It was as close as I had seen them, and probably how they had walked together through sixty years of marriage.
But I know now, I was also witnessing the closing of the distance between them.