There is nothing particularly comfortable about this weekend. The in-laws are visiting, both mother-in-law and father-in-law, as well as grandmother-in-law. Nothing is as it once was.
It sometimes feels like I am the only one who sees the whole picture. Everyone comes to me and we discuss things, one on one, walking around in the back of the farm. We small talk and touch on important things. With the mother-in-law casual references are dropped about the house that her daughter is about to buy. The father-in-law makes only occasional, offhand remarks, about things like the neighborhood she’ll be in or what it will be like for her to live in town, closer to our son’s school. She does not walk with us, which is just as well. I am tired of her and her pain. I hear enough of it during the day from the phone calls. After two years of living apart, she is beginning to wake up to what is happening. She cries a lot. She thinks mistakes are being made.
It is very tiring. I hate the sound of the phone ringing, wondering what is waiting for me on the other end of the line. It feels like every last bit of energy and life will be wrung from me before this is through.
But the sunset tonight is simply spectacular. I realize as we walk that I probably haven’t seen the sun set from the farm for more then two years. So when someone asks me, “Is it always this beautiful out here?” I don’t know what to say. I say yes, although I feel like a fraud in saying it. I haven’t lived there. I haven’t watched many sunsets the last couple of years.
But the strangest part is all about the grandmother. She is naive about everything. Ninety years old, having just lost her husband a year ago, she has in the last few months begun to lose her mind as well. She is sweet and happy, but quickly becoming very confused. Names disappear and places become jumbled. She reminds me that her husband is dead. I am told that on the drive down she is unsure whether her great-grandson will remember her, and at one point, asks if she has ever met me. I was married in her home and spent two years with her, by her side, helping her to complete the book she had written about her life. Somedays she is fine, other days not so good. It is only a matter of time before everything is lost.
No one tells her that I have moved out. She is unaware enough that she doesn’t even really notice that I stop by for an hour and then disappear. We don’t share our problems with her. Why help ruin what little sweetness and happiness she has left? I’m afraid if someone told her, she would only be extremely upset, only to forget all about it a half an hour later. Maybe it would continue to resurface, and she would have to rehear painful news over and over. I have no idea. I think everyone has agreed that it serves no useful purpose to tell her anything.
A funny thing, protecting someone from the truth. Makes me wonder about the kind of things that people are probably keeping from me.
I almost typed not that I’m losing my mind or anything, but then stopped myself. I’m not quite sure that would be true.