The Elegant Gathering of White Snows Read Online Free PDF Page B

by the dip of his head and the way he had his hands pressed against the side of my bed that there was nothing he could do.
    “Hard to say but it won't be long, I'm sorry, Alice, not long at all.”
    “I will not leave her, and you will not take her from my arms until it is time.”
    “But Alice . . .”
    “Tell Chester,” I commanded him. “Then someone help me so I can sit in the chair, just put a chair by a window. Is there a room where we can sit with a window? I want a window so we can look outside.”
    The doctor shook his head and then shuffled off, and I heard Chester scream out in the hospital hallway. I called to the nurse and asked her to hold Annie for just a moment while I used the bathroom. She told me I could not get up yet, but I pushed myself off the bed without acknowledging her and with each step to the bathroom, I left a spot of blood on the floor. I left the door open so I could see that she was holding Annie. When I came back, I found she had set out some sanitary napkins and underwear for me. I took Annie again as the nurse pushed a wheelchair over.
    Someone found us an old rocking chair and a room that looked out across the parking lot to a grove of oak trees. I noticed right away that there was one clump of trees that had red and orange leaves still clinging to their tops from the long-past fall, and I took great comfort in seeing that.
    While I waited for Chester, I pulled open my gown and guided Annie toward my breast. I thought if I could make her eat that maybe some kind of miracle would happen and she would be healed. My God, my God, my God she looked so normal and beautiful when she turned to take my breast. Her lips parted and her eyes were closed and her skin was as clear and bright as the snow falling across the lights on a January morning.
    Annie's sucking was pure reflex and natural instinct, but I imagine her body knew there was no time or hope because she didn't suck for long. When she pulled away I stretched her out across my lap and unwrapped her blanket. I touched every part of her: her tiny legs and her long eyelashes and the insides of her ears. That's how Chester found us; I never heard his feet pounding down the hall, and only when he touched my shoulder and I turned to see his tear-stained face did I know that he was in the room.
    It took the rest of that day and one night and then a morning before she died. These were hours so long and so painful that I wished a thousand times over for my own death. In those hours, everything I loved or could love, even Chester and Richard, was eclipsed by my silent, dying daughter.
    My only comfort then, and every moment in the days and years that followed up until this walk, was knowing that she did not suffer. I pulled her blankets and sleeper off of her when the doctor told me it would not be long, and I held her naked against my own chest. Her heart was thumping wildly but Annie looked like the angel that she is even when I knew she had taken her last breath. She simply stopped breathing and then her little fists that were clenched into balls unraveled and her legs dangled from her knees and I knew that it was over.
    Everything after that is a blur. I remember I would only let Chester take her, and what happened after that I never knew or cared about. I stayed in the hospital, curled up in a little ball for another day until Chester beseeched me that Richard was crying and could I please come home and what about the funeral?
    Life swirled around me. I acknowledged it but never joined in. No one but a few know that I never went to the church or the cemetery for the burial. Not even Richard remembers that I spent the day rocking by the window, holding Annie's blanket to my face. When Chester and Richard came home, I rose from the chair and ate with them and stepped back into their lives. But the truth is I never really lived again.
    It has taken me fifty years to come to this point. Fifty years before I could empty my heart of the sorrow