Sweet Frozen Treats

Up until Sunday night, I had forgotten about the popsicles.

During Chris’ last few days alive, his brain became very childlike, due to the morphine in his system. He was cute, but the experience is still a very sad one.

I didn’t want him to go. In some ways, I’m just beginning to realize that, now. Back then, I was so intent on giving him what he needed, and leaving his life is exactly what he needed, that I never stopped to think about how his impending departure from my life would make me feel.

Sunday night, I sat on my sofa half-enjoying a root beer flavored popsicle, all the while distracted by the frozen dessert’s tastelessness. I contemplated throwing the remainder of the treat into the trash, rather than continuing to half-delight in its watered-down, sub-par sweetness. Suddenly, and without warning, I was taken by a memory of Chris, sitting on the bed in his hospital johnny, enjoying a lime popsicle, the excitement of a five-year-old on his face. That expression of happiness on his face each time he tasted the frozen citrus filled me exactly halfway with joy and exactly halfway with sadness. He had become a small boy in so many ways. He was incapable of taking care of himself. He became incapable of eating anything other than popsicles and yogurt. Actually, he had even stopped eating yogurt, and if the hospice care giver who visited and bathed him hadn’t sternly fed it to him, he would have gone to the other side hungry.

I remember the hospice care provider talking to Chris, telling him to believe in God. “You must believe in God.” he kept saying. I listened on the other side of the door, knowing full-well that Chris didn’t believe in God, that he fancied himself an atheist. I wanted to run in and shush the caregiver, but just my anxiety had taken over, it began to dissipate as I started to think that maybe my husband had decided, in the last three days, to believe in God. Maybe something had changed. Maybe he needed to believe. He wasn’t fighting the man, in fact, I remember having a sense that he felt saved by this man, taken care of by this man and thankful to have a man help him get nourishment in his last couple days of life.

I was deeply in tune with Chris’ needs and I believe his opinion had changed during his last few days on earth. I think he finally knew the fight was over and that he could guiltlessly give up knowing that the time had come. I don’t remember witnessing any anger on his part during those days. He seemed happy…and ready.

The popsicles make me sad, though.