Dear Eleanor, Shall I Decay?

Decay is a natural thing, you liked to say. And yet it feels far from it. One moment, this body feels like home and the next, it's as alien as the inside of a black hole. Perhaps if we had the chance to peer over the black hole's edge, we would find the glory and wonder of a mysterious new dimension, a cascading turbulence of color and resolve. I wonder if peeling back the layers of our own dying bodies would reveal a similar sight.

Instead, we fear the descent into darkness, tread tenderly in the face of rot, turn away from the onslaught of death. What if we faced it all with courage? What if we welcomed the creak and mold of age? Would we find stars in our dying lights? Would we see the face of God behind retired eyes?

I wonder… I wonder…

For as my teeth burst from my gums, stained by nicotine and the relentless echo of time, a creature dies within my chest. Or perhaps, it’s just waking up.

Am I ending or just beginning? Is this tragedy or the doorway back to you?

What an odd thing to wonder at the simplicity of youth, when as a young boy I dreamed of this enlightenment, this accomplished melancholy of a life well lived. I'm here now, without you dear, and I feel wizened beyond accomplishment or desire. It's impossible to understand as a young man madly in love, how disconcerting it is to feel like a stranger to memory, to see all the moments that passed you by without a second glance dance in front of you, taunting you, reminding you of vitality wasted.

And wrapped in this cocoon of disillusionment, I wonder...

Did you feel like this too, Eleanor? Like you were both everything and nothing as the light left your eyes? The thing is, I’m not finished yet. I’m not ready. The stubborn fire you ceaselessly taunted and treasured still broils my bones and spits with sizzling ambition, a demon that could only ever be staved off by your soft and spritely eyes. But you and your laughter and your mischievous grace are no longer here to set the stories straight. Now, I am alone, still miniscule beneath skin and boundless in nature. I have stories and thoughts and projects and miles unfurling against my creaking bones, begging to be released, and no one, no one like you, my love, to tread with through it all. What you once protected and craved and called your home now swallows me like a tempest. At this moment, I’m bound to a chair, legs dangling like severed tentacles, hands wrought with tremors too violent to even hold a spoon.

It’s hard to imagine only yesterday these trembling hands were shoving a bouquet of roses a little too eagerly into your arms, sweeping you off your feet as the wedding church bells rang, rocking our sweet baby Maybelline in the bruised and marbled dawn. Or was it yesterday we clung for dear life to our baby girl's first loosed tooth, following eight unsuccessful tooth fairy missions to extract the prize without making a sound. Ha, what a sight we must have been rocking precariously back and forth outside her bedroom door, tears streaming silently down our grin kissed cheeks, and you snorting giggles through your spectacle tipped nose.

No that's not it, because yesterday, I walked Maybelline down the aisle, kissed your wet cheeks, squeezed your hand and stood paralyzed in that gaze of yours. You always knew how to say everything without saying a thing at all.

Only it wasn’t yesterday, no, I've done it again. Not yesterday, remember, what was yesterday? Not yesterday because...

Because yesterday, Eleanor....

You’ve been gone for almost fifteen years. Strange how I haven’t lived a day since you left. The seconds float by in hazy fits of breakfast, lunch, and dinner through a straw, sponge baths from nurses who smell like cigarettes, and the constant nagging call of B4, C3, D2! Who’s got a bingo?!

Pah!

Well, I guess, you always did love the idea of playing bingo. Side by side on senior discount nights, stooped shoulder to shoulder, wrinkled hands fighting to be first in the air, winning every game and making a damn good spectacle like we ought to.

What a cruel and sorry thing bingo turned out to be. Let me tell you Eleanor, I want to take that goddamn game and smash it on the ground, watch the numbers explode into a thousand tiny pieces, and rearrange them into a stained-glass mural of the end of all things. The end of creaking and blinking and dreamless sleep. The end of drug after drug after drug after drug. The end of missing you, my love.

Maybelline comes once a week with her blue-eyed Margaret to suspend the ache. Maybelline has your face, but darling, Margaret has your heart. She brings me paintings of mushroom fairies on neglected Sunday school papers and laughs so big you can feel the stars dancing in her chest. I see you in her, sometimes more than I care to admit. But she's got your kindness and only smiles tenderly when I say, "hear that Eleanor, that's the Milky Way you done shook loose." Only when her mother sniffles, "Come on, Margie. Let's let Grandpa rest," do I realize what I've become.

And yet, what comes after? If I let go of this hollow and glossed up fever dream, will you be there? When my heart surrenders, will your perfect fingers smooth the wrinkles and lift my soul from beneath its skin? I imagine the last breath escaping from my lips, bursting into a cloud of color, swirling into the painting I never finished, the portrait you demanded was worth all the doubting, the canvas that could never really capture the kaleidoscopic perfection of you and me.

That painting will become a doorway, I’ll curl my fingers between yours, and together, we’ll dive into the unknown. We’ll chase the center of the black hole, dance around galaxies, and realize time never really existed.

Because all this time, it was just you and me, two pulsing, radiant, cackling spirits enslaved by blood and dust, waiting to decay back into the river from which we both came.