No Saints around Here: A Caregiver’s Days

The Last Christmas

149 THE LAST CHRISTMAS January 31 Of course I don’t really know if this was the last Christmas. Despite James’s entry into hospice in earlyOctober, he is still walking (a little), eating (some), and showing awareness (spotty and subdued) of his increasingly small world. I think sometimes of Dylan Thomas’s much-anthologized poem to his dying father: “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night.” Thomas urges, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” James is not raging. I am not even sure that he knows the light is slowly fading; he has never spoken of dying. I can’t tell how much he is able to hold in his Parkinson’s-riddled brain. James will go gently, I think, because he has retained his inner sweetness. But he loved life intensely, and he will not slip away easily. Now, in late January, this past Christmas seems as if it happened a year ago. As I was slogging through the holidays, which seemed both ragged and interminable—caregivers needing time off, snow and ice clogging our driveway and walks, Christmas cards piling up to be answered in months (if at all), a few essential presents wrapped—I thought from time to time, “I will probably be alone next Christmas.” Thinking“ThisisourlastChristmas”leftmenumbratherthan sad. Our past few Christmases have not been very festive. I have to the last christmas 150 let my mind slip back at least six years to a holiday (shared with dear friends, far away, in New Zealand) where I felt relaxed and celebratory. This year I decided to concede only one modest decoration to the holiday, a small pot filled with evergreen branches that gave a convincing impression of a real Christmas tree. One of James’s daughters decorated it for me. It was quite charming, actually, wreathed in fairy lights that turned on at the first sign of dusk and glittery with a set of suitably tiny ornaments. Still, I could barely muster enough enthusiasm on Christmas morning to open the presents a few friends and family had insisted on. (“No presents this year,” I’d protested in vain.) Looking back, beyond Christmas, I see that the realization “This is our last . . .” or “This is James’s last . . .” rarely occurs to me at the time. Only later do I understand that he will not go to another movie, he will not go out to lunch again, he is unlikely to drive with me to any of our favorite places—or, in fact, anywhere. When I recall the sweep of our twenty-eight years together, I feel both a rush of gratitude and a blast of grief. Two recurring images tend to flash into my mind. In the first, James and I are on one of our many trips to Britain, and we are setting out midmorning for another day’s adventure. James slides comfortably into the right-hand driver’s seat—he was always a confident driver—as I settle myself next to him, maps on my lap, brochures in a satchel at my feet. “So where are we going today?” he asks eagerly. “I hope we’re going to see another garden.” “Oh, we certainly are,” I say, as I pull out The Good Gardens Guide from my satchel. I tell him what wonders to expect when we get there. “Then,” I add with anticipatory gluttony, “we can stop for a great lunch at a country-house hotel that’s listed in The Good Food Guide. If we have time, I thought afterward we could take in a ruined abbey not far away.” “Of course we’ll have time,” James says. For a while we did have time. Then we didn’t. Five years ago, the last christmas 151 as our plane left London, after I looked back on a rewarding but very difficult ten days there—James’s gait was already tentative, and he almost crashed once as he navigated the steps of a London bus—I remember thinking, “This is our last trip to England.” Never again would the two of us walk hand in hand along the Thames or ramble into the countryside. My other image is more recent. Last May, I drove James to our Wisconsin retreat, which he designed for us twenty-five years ago and which had been our refuge and delight for all those years. In “Beige Lies, Pink Lies, Purple Lies...