G.

A month ago I went to G.'s little old house in the woods where he lives with his daughter M., who takes care of him. He has a bed in what was the dining room, and nothing else in the room remains. The house is mid 1700's, and the room is spare with drunken angles. The floor is wide chestnut, honey-colored, the walls are a bare plaster white. There's his hospital bed, with an air low-pressure mattress that gently hisses away, an old wedding quilt, and a wooden chair with a red cushion, where I sit. The windows are west-facing, and I like best to go in the afternoons, when the room is lit and golden. The glass in the windows is wavy. A weeping birch outside rustles, and you can always hear cardinals calling.

G. has thick and longish snowy hair, and I asked him if I could put my hand through it. He was in no need of that kind of comfort that day, and we were joking, which is what he likes about me. He likes sarcasm, and a sense of humor, and he likes to sit quietly for a very long time and then say all kinds of things, and have me say nothing in return, just listen. I pull the chair alongside his bed, and sit just a bit behind his head, so he can see my knees and feet, but not my face. He likes to look at the wall when he talks, not at me.

This summer he has told me stories. One afternoon he told me about six men he killed, and one little boy by mistake, in World War II. It took hours. He told me about his sister's kitten he killed by accident when he was 10, stepping on it, and how he sank its body in a pond and everyone believed the kitten ran away, and he never told anyone, and that his shame affected his relationship with his sister his whole life, and made a distance he knew she never understood and that hurt her. He told me about how the happiest day of his life was a January afternoon where he had his six children on sleds on the hill behind his house and how he just kept pushing them off and sending them down the hill, over and over, and the sight of their fresh pink faces running back up the hill to him, over and over.

A month ago I ran my hand through his magnificent hair, and it made him really laugh. Today he told me that his wife never touched his hair. She would always take his elbow, rub the back of his hand with her thumb, kiss him behind his ear. But it was not her habit to stroke his hair.

He said he loved his wife very much. He said he also loved a woman who was his neighbor for 37 years. He loved his wife. He was never unfaithful to her. After 10 years, he sought to move away; his wife loved the neighborhood, wanted to stay. He could not convince her and he never told her. He held himself in check. He never sought the neighbor's company, but he never lost awareness of her. Which light on, which light off, when. Sounds and glimpses. She loved him too, he said.

Once a year, perhaps, he said, they would have some exchange. One time in a pantry at a holiday party, he went in to get something, she was already there. He said he placed his hand on the small of her back, and his other hand up under her hair on the back of her neck, and she put one hand on his heart and the other on his cheek, and they said they loved each other. Another time, his wife asked him to go over and borrow eggs. I held her in the hallway as long as you can explain getting eggs, he said. I tried to memorize her. She whispered in my ear that she was happy, and that we had happy lives, to know she always loved me. And she ran her hand through my hair.

And once, he said, they were at the pond, each with their grandchildren, after so so many years. A thunderstorm came up, and his wife took all the children home. His wife told him to ride home with the neighbor woman. The children's shoes and shirts and toys were everywhere. It took some time to gather it all up. There was a willow tree and they each walked under its branches to pick up something belonging to one of their own grandchildren.

We walked into each other, he said. I think we knew we were getting older, and that we might not have the chance again.

They sat down. They held each other and thanked each other for loving each other so long, and so much. She put her hands through my hair, over and over, he told me. I put my lips to her cheek and I did not kiss her. I just touched my lips to her cheek. I did not think I could ever come out from under that tree.

They got up, she dropped him off, he went home. Three years later she had a stroke, and died a week later. His wife sent flowers to the hospital. His wife thought it best not to disturb and visit. He didn't visit. She died and the day of her funeral his wife had a colonoscopy scheduled, and needed him there to drive her home. He did not go to the funeral. His wife died a couple of years after that.

Today I sat in the chair by G.'s bed while he told me this, and on my timesheet it says, Client Contact, In Person, 1.5 hours. I'm connected to the mainframe right now, and I'm replicating my timesheet and documentation, sending in that summation of today. Its hard, somehow, to reconcile.

It took an hour for the story. Then he asked me to read this to him. He said the neighbor had given the book, a second-hand collection of Robert Frost poems, to his wife as a Christmas present the year after the day at the pond. He said he was looking through the book this week, and came across this poem, with the page folded down. His wife was a librarian. She never in her life folded a page, he said. This page, folded twice. His wife would have thought it not strange, being second hand. He is sure the neighbor folded it, for him, never knowing if he would realize it, find it. It was the only message she sent me, he said. The only time I know of that she sought me.

To Earthward

Love at the lips was touch
As sweet as I could bear;
And once that seemed too much;
I lived on air

That crossed me from sweet things,
The flow of - was it musk
From hidden grapevine springs
Down hill at dusk?

I had the swirl and ache
From sprays of honeysuckle
That when they're gathered shake
Dew on the knuckle.

I craved strong sweets, but those
Seemed strong when I was young;
The petal of the rose
It was that stung.

Now no joy but lacks salt
That is not dashed with pain
And weariness and fault;
I crave the stain

Of tears, the aftermark
Of almost too much love,
The sweet of bitter bark
And burning clove.

When stiff and sore and scarred
I take away my hand
From leaning on it hard
In grass and sand,

The hurt is not enough:
I long for weight and strength
To feel the earth as rough
To all my length.

He told me her name, where she is buried. He asked me to go there and bury the pages from the book there.

I did that today. I left him, I found her grave just where he said it was. I called him and left a message with his daughter: Tell G. I ran the errand he wanted me to -

It was a white headstone. Under a willow tree. It was thick and humid in the cemetery. And it was thundering off in the distance as I buried his pages with her.