Hand-Me-Down Love Read Online Free PDF Page B

identifying birds. Sean got her some
binoculars so she could watch the birds that were high in the trees
or from the window in the kitchen. They put up several birdfeeders in
the back and kept them filled with sunflower seeds. “They like that
the best,” Meredith explained to Marla.
    Gradually, and
almost imperceptibly, Meredith began to decline. She got fatigued
earlier in the day. She stopped making supper for Sean. She stopped
keeping up with the house. And finally, she went to bed and never got
up again. Sean and Marla and her parents waited as long as they could
before calling in hospice care and setting up a hospital bed in the
sick room. But that day did come. They could no longer care for
Meredith in the way that was necessary. Meredith needed pain
medication and nourishment. It was a medical situation that her
family did not know how to do.
    Marla sat with
Meredith one early summer afternoon as the television blared some
syndicated sitcom. “Turn that off,” Meredith said sternly. Marla
took the remote from the bedside table and turned the TV off.
    “ I need to talk to
you,” Meredith said, pulling herself up a little on her pillow. “I
need to ask you something.”
    Marla sat in the
wingback chair near Meredith’s bed. “What is it, Merrie?” she
asked.
    “ I know that you
and Mom and Dad will be there for each other after I’m gone. I know
that.”
    “ Yes,” Marla
said. “Of course we will.”
    “ But I need to ask
you to be there for Sean. You, Marla. You. I need to know he’s
going to be taken care of, that you will be there for him after.”
    “ I know he’s got
his parents and his sister, and I know they’ll be there,” she
continued. “But I need to know that you will be there. I think you
understand him the same way that I do. He’s going to need you. He
might not know that, but I know that he will.”
    “ Whatever you want
me to do, Meredith, I’ll do it. I will be there for Sean,” Marla
said, choking on her words.
    “ I know he seems
like a company guy and all of that—a suit—but he’s really very
sensitive. This is going to hit him very hard. I feel that I can let
go if I know that you’ll be looking out for him.”
    “ I’ll look out
for him, Merrie,” Marla said taking her sister’s hand. “I
promise.”
    Meredith lay back on
her pillow. “Thank you,” she said wearily. “That makes this so
much easier.”
    Marla patted her
sister’s arm and reached for the hairbrush. “Want me to brush
your hair?” she asked Meredith, who had closed her eyes.
    “ Mmmm,” she
murmured. Marla raised the bed to a near-sitting position and stood
so that she could easily reach Meredith’s hair. Her once-shiny
blond tresses were ashy and dull now. Marla gently pulled the brush
through Meredith’s hair and felt her sister relax as she supported
her head.
    A few days later,
the hospice nurse told Sean and Marla that it wouldn’t be much
longer. They all kept a vigil by Meredith’s bed. She spoke her last
words on a Wednesday afternoon. “It’s been fun,” she said. She
never spoke again. She never opened her eyes again. The hospice nurse
watched her vitals and urine output over the next several days, and
finally said it could be anytime.
    It was the middle of
the night, about 3:30 a.m. when Meredith took her last breath. She
was twenty-eight years old.
    Sean held her hand
and Marla and her parents stood at the other side of the bed,
stroking her arm and holding her other hand. Sean leaned his body on
the bed, on Meredith. He sat there like that for a long time as Marla
and her parents hugged each other and cried. Marla sensed that Sean
needed to be left alone in his sorrow.
    Then Sean got up and
left the room. Marla and her parents looked at each other but did not
follow him. A moment later a roar pierced the still night.

Chapter
Seven

    Sean asked Marla to
help him with the funeral arrangements. He was so depressed and
unable to connect with anything or anyone, that Marla