A safe place to sleep

Let me tell you about my friend Ann. I first got to know her around Christmas this past year, although she had been working in my office for some time. She seemed phony to me at a distance, artificially cheerful and embarrassingly enthusiastic. When her seat was moved right next to mine, I was polite, but cautious. Gradually Ann grew on me, and I realized that she was the genuine article, a true optimist whose idealism was sincere and passionate. For a long time I had no idea what enormous burdens she had to shift upon her small back each day while still maintaining that bright smile and happy chatter. We talked about safe topics for a while, shared joys like writing and reading, a disciplined lifestyle of healthy eating and exercise, and the old standby, motherhood. That day before Christmas when I offered a ride to the annual party at a nearby restaurant, I gave her one of my stories to read. She had been borrowing my copy of The Sun for months and enjoying it as much as I. She read my short story on the way, gushing with excitement, and telling me I must try for publication. I knew she had been a newspaper writer and editor in one of her former jobs, and I thanked her sincerely for her praise. Because the narrative was deeply personal, Ann felt she could share her own story with me, one so painful that she had never written it down.

Some thirty years ago when she had lived in New Jersey with her family, she found herself pregnant and left in the lurch by the man she thought loved her. She struggled to make a living for herself and her baby girl, but the business ventures she went into failed. In deep debt, so she asked her parents to support her for a while until she could get on her feet. They told her no, even though they could have well afforded it, and with no other options, Ann and her baby lived in her car in the streets of New Jersey for a year. When she finally struggled to her feet, she moved to Virginia, got a good job, bought an old house and renovated it in her spare time. She raised her child always living on short money, wearing Salvation Army thrift store clothing, and believing that tomorrow would be better. About five years ago, her parents, now elderly and with no one to turn to for the physical and financial help they needed, called on Ann for help. She moved them lock, stock, and barrel into her home, took a job where she could work nights and be with them during the day, and dedicated herself to making their life easier. I asked her how she could do that after the way they had treated her. Ann looked at me in amazement. “They’re my parents, Elaine,” she said without a trace of irony. She shared many things with me that day and all of them made me realize that with all the reason in the world to take a grim view of the her lot, Ann was one of those rare breed that just keeps getting up with a smile every time life knocks her down. She only allows love to have purchase in her heart and just does not entertain vengeance, malice, anger, or resentment.

Ann has been off work since the end of April with what the doctors first thought was a heart problem, then COPD. When both of those diagnoses proved wrong, they scratched their heads and said they would run more tests. I have talked with her a few times over the past weeks and could tell she felt bad, but she remained upbeat. She called me Monday night with the grim news. The doctors have finally told her she has cancer and they believe it is in her pancreas. She says it is at 49 out of a possible 100, not the usual stage 1, 2, 3, 4 markers with which I am familiar, so I’m not sure how bad, but evidently there is no good pancreatic cancer. The survival rate is 5 percent and life expectancy 3 to 6 months after diagnosis. Ann lives 80 miles from town and normally commutes each day, and she is that far from the best treatment centers too. She had a request of me, one she really didn’t want to make. She had to have chemo and the doctor told her she could not make the drive home after treatment. “Elaine,” she said, “could I bring my sleeping bag and sleep on your floor after my treatments? I won’t be any trouble.” Tears came to my eyes immediately and I told her I live in a 4000 square foot house with 5 bedrooms, 3 of which are not being used at the moment. I joked and told her she could have the “Lincoln” bedroom with clean sheets and breakfast included. She repeated she didn’t want to be any bother and I repeated she would not be. It was settled.

Monday night I dreamed my Mother’s clothing was in a yard sale I attended. Her beautiful pink pleated skirt, all the elegant high heel shoes in a 7 double A, that green silk blouse she looked so lovely in, even the navy blue suit we buried her in after she died of colon cancer. The horror I felt in the dream was not unlike the scene in the Christmas Carol when scrooge sees the people tearing down the drapes from his bed and taking every movable fixture from his room. I tried to pick up and fold the items, but people kept snatching them out of my hands. I woke in a cold sweat with my husband snoring by my side and the steady woof-woof of the dog next door as background noise. Tuesday night I dreamed the bedroom door opened and it was my first born, five years old with his Mickey Mouse hat on his head, dressed in his PJ’s, crying from a nightmare that had awakened him. He climbed into my bed and I pulled him close to me, covered him with the warm blanket, talked to him soothingly, and we fell back to sleep together. This morning I am up at three with no remembered dreams and no way of getting back to the arms of Morpheus to hear his soothing tones. I sat writing this in the dark before the dawn, feeling selfish in my heart of hearts, knowing I have been not been picked at random for this deceptively simple favor. If I could turn my face away I swear I would, but even if it means, as I think it does, that I must watch her die, my hand will be the one she is holding when her spirit leaves her body.