Hour by hour, day by day, time slips away in waiting. Waiting for the next day to come, waiting for the battle to end.
Keeping the sentries awake and on the wall requires effort with the battle beyond their sight. Defections have risen among the whites. The reds barely hold their numbers at the level to be called a company. At best the whites would be classified as understrengthed.
Battle fatigue has infected the veterans, pre-post-stress. Without action to engage them, they dwell on the details of what might have been and what might yet be. They think about returning to the routine they left behind, the coming harvest a distraction. The urgency has left them as they try to recall the puzzle of seven months ago, which pieces to pick up, which to leave lie.
Challenges go unuttered, rounds unattended. Orders go unwritten, unread and unexecuted. The discipline of duty becomes more difficult with the quiet of each day. The heat siphons our energy, our vigilance, our will. Dogs of summer have replaced the dogs of war.
The grendel becomes more ephemeral each week its once powerful army remains unseen and unheard. Only the most experienced warn of its specter lurking in the miasma behind the waves of humidity. One lightning raid could see our hasty retreat to the tower keep while the remaining whites conduct a sacrificial holding action in the chapel above the gate praying for an infusion of reinforcements.
But summer beckons with blue skies and long lit evenings. Squirrels chase and frolic on the front bailey, occasionally congregating in strange conclaves. Blue jays splash through sun showers by the water gate before teaching their young to feed. Turtles scoop burrows from cool, dry sand to insulate their eggs until they hatch. Snakes entwine around each other on the flagstones like caducei.
Life breeds life, and we long to forget what follows, as eventually we should. We want to linger in each moment, each sliding instant slicing past from future like a well-stropped razor. Adrift on this languid raft, the sea carries us farther from shore with each backward wave that slowly lulls us toward midday sleep.
© 2007 Edward P. Morgan III
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This post is about two things, as many of them are, Karen’s blood counts and trying not to get caught off-guard by how well things were going. In my experience, you are most vulnerable when you relax and start to fall asleep.
By the time she was in radiation, Karen was back at work full-time. I felt really strange about going from having my days completely scheduled to not, almost overnight. Thing was, I knew it could turn the other way in an instant. Karen’s blood counts were still dicey week to week, which meant there was always the possibility of infection. Something as simple as a cold could have been a major setback for her. Radiation didn’t hit her with fatigue like it does many women, but we had been told that too could change suddenly.
Earlier in the year, her office had suffered a rodent problem, which had me all kind of paranoid at the time. When coworkers found either mouse or rat droppings on and around her desk, I red-carded her from work until I heard it the problem had been taken care of. That earned the nickname The Enforcer. That and banning anyone with a recent cold or flu from the house. At least one friend had to visit with Karen through the window from the front porch because she was still getting over something and I wouldn’t let her any closer.
As I say to Karen, these precautions probably only shaved one or two points off the odds that something would go wrong, but they were MY one or two points. Nobody gets them for free. During something like this, you make your own luck as much as you can and hope the dice do the rest.
But summer was full of life and beauty by then. All the nature I described was right outside my office window. And that was refreshing and rejuvenating to see. You can’t see enough nature while this is going on, either as a patient or a caregiver. It relaxes and heals in a way that only time can compete with. It doesn’t care about what is going on, it just goes about its business. There is something peaceful in that to me.
Picture notes: A picture of my watch on the occasional table in our bedroom in the afternoon sun. Karen just thought it was a nice composition when she took it.
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