In and Out of Phase

by Vic Fontaine

Chapter 18

Dear Twilight,

I’m not sure whether the house feels emptier with Twilight in the care facility, or when she was still here. God I know I shouldn’t write that. If anyone else ever reads this, I didn’t mean that like it sounds. It’s just… just… hard.

Hard to wake up alone in this house. Hard to walk downstairs to the office turned bedroom and see it empty. Hard to turn on the downstairs TV and not leave it on the local news rebroadcast channel.

Yet is that any easier than waking up to an empty bed anyway? Or walking downstairs not knowing if she really slept or stayed up all night thinking she was preparing new lecture notes? Is silence any easier than watching her react to every loop of the twelve o’clock news as if it had just happened?

I keep telling myself that it had to be done. I’m not as fast or as strong as I used to be. On the really bad days it was all I could do just to get her meds in her and make sure she ate. And the girls have their own things to deal with, their own families to care for too. They may be old like us but they can’t come at the drop of a hat either now.

But at the same time I hate the empty house, and the care facility, and everything else that goes with them. I hate that this disease took my wife, took our plans, our dreams for our golden years, and ruined them. I hate that for all of this world’s technology there’s little anyone can do for her.

She’s slipping further and further away, Twilight. I can see it, feel it. Little by little, day by day, like sand through an hourglass. I see her, but she doesn’t see me. Not like she used to. It’s as if we’ve become two separate wavelengths that are just slightly out of phase. Always so close, but unable to find each other again.

Maybe that’s the worst part of it all. Knowing that the thing you’re losing is still right there in front of you. Still there, but not really. My wife, but increasingly a stranger. I still love her with all of my being. Does she still think of love when she thinks of me?

That I can’t answer that last question with any real certainty is like a hammer blow to my soul.