6/19 Kaiser Hospital, Terra Linda. While Alison read to Neil from the book I got him for his birthday on Ulster, I burst into tears, like my previous outburst this morning, it was too much having to take care of Herman at home. I can’t breathe, have to pull myself up the stairs.
Patrick called and I began to sob,
clutching Neil’s pants to my chest, the odor of detergent suggesting the
flowered meadows we might not have ever seen again. All I could think of was
how close to death he had come, my waking vision of my wailing over his prone
body was not so not far off the mark.
As Alison read, I wept uncontrollably,
couldn’t stop. She held me in her arms as she had held Neil earlier. Said “It’s
OK, Let it all out. It’s post-traumatic stress syndrome.” I couldn’t shake the
vision of how I was covered in his blood. “The red blood of a son of Ulster,”
he said, raising my hand to his poor, swollen lips, attempting a gallant kiss
from that poor broken mouth. I wept as I kissed his fingers in return, from the
shock they were still mottled purple, little yellow islands of fat. Am I Lady
MacBeth haunted by blood?
When I could do no more at
the scene of the accident, I lay down at his feet right in the middle of the
roadbed, and waited for the ambulance to arrive, afraid to take my eyes off
him, for fear he’d lose consciousness and die. I remember the blueness of sky
broken by eucalyptus leaves, thinking how the patterns of light the most important
thing in the world. If I just focused on them hard enough, then he’d live.
Many
images: had I lain at his feet before, covered in his blood, in some
battlefield in a past life? I’ve plenty of present life dejá vú, but rarely a
past life “memory.” Not sure I even believe. The imagery of slaughter.
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