Quiet

 Remember the cliche from old Western movies?  It's quiet.  Too quiet.

I spent the day being quiet, lying on the couch with the cats, reading Harry Potter.  I found as long as I held still I was all right.  If I got up and tried to do anything, the reality of being alone would come crashing in.  

I remember the quiet when I came home.   There had been no quiet for three months - someone was always coming into the room every hour or two, day and night, checking Bob's vital signs, hanging bags of blood or platelets.  There were the clicks of the monitors, the sound of Bob moving restlessly (he never could get comfortable), and for the last couple of weeks the alarms.  You could hear people talking in the other rooms or the halls, see the nurses walking by through the glass observation windows.  So no privacy.  If I had to go to the bathroom, I wasn't allowed to contaminate Bob's toilet, so I had to go down the hall and out of the ward to the public bathrooms.  At 3 a.m. that meant everyone that I passed knew where I was going.  Bob had even less privacy - for his last couple of weeks he had to be bathed and it took at least 3 people to help him relieve himself.

And then on March 30 I came home.  And it was quiet.  And private.  I was alone.  

Three years later, it's still quiet, and I'm still alone.  I miss daily random chitchat, conversations, talking about ideas or projects or even what to have for dinner.  Yelling out the answers on Jeopardy.  The sound of his breathing, the sound of someone moving around in the house.  Sitting here, writing - it's quiet enough that I can hear the trickle of water in the aquarium in the bedroom, the occasional clunk of the icemaker in the fridge, the happy little sound of spring peepers outside.  RedBug purring in my lap.  It's peaceful, and quiet, and empty.

I'm glad I've given myself three days just to quit for awhile.  Tomorrow I'll pick up the bootstraps again.  Wash my hair, do the three day's worth of dishes in the sink, change out of the pajamas.  Start on year 4.