He tries to put himself in her position. She asked that a number of times: “Try. Then maybe you’ll change in how you treat me.” So in his mind he has her condition. Confined to a wheelchair, has to be helped in and out of bed and often fed. Hands shake, legs hurt. Can’t find a good sitting position. Wants to raise his legs but can’t so asks her “Would you help me with my legs?” “What do you mean ‘help you’? Be clearer. You known the English language well, so use it as if you do. What is it you specifically want?” “Must you always be angry?” “I’m not always angry. True, I’m occasionally a bit miffed, but it’s only because I want you to be less vague in what you want of me. Say it once clearly and completely and I’ll do it quickly as I can, all of which will save us both some time.” He says “I need to have my legs raised on this pillow.” “Good, I’ll do it,” she says, “I always do it. But also, long as we’re on the subject, why must you take what I do for granted? A little ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ every now and then and even ‘I couldn’t possibly survive here if it wasn’t for you, so I have to keep you healthy, we both do,’ and so on, would help, build my spirits a little and show that I’m appreciated.” “You need to be told? I thought you knew.” “There are times I don’t,” she says, “although I know you’re in pain or very uncomfortable and sometimes you haven’t time for simple courtesies and gratitude like that, which I can understand.” “So what are you saying? I’m a bit confused.” “What can I do for you, is what I’m saying?” and he says “All right, that’s very kind and much appreciated. You can do a lot, I’m afraid, starting off with putting my legs on the pillow. I need them raised and stretched out. They’re killing me the way they are and it’s bad for their circulation to have the feet on the floor or the chair’s foot rests all the time.” “As I said, will do, and gladly,” and she does it and he says, “Thank you. That already feels better.” “You’re welcome, any time. I mean that: never hesitate to ask. Just try to be precise in what you want.”
Later he says “My legs feel stiffer than usual today and I can’t feel my feet,” and she says “I guess that means you want me to help you with your exercises,” and he says “If you don’t mind. But if you’re too tired or doing something right now very important to you, like your work, we can save it for later.” “No, I can use a bit of a workout. It’s not as if I do anything strenuous all day,” and he says “That sounds sarcastic but I’ll let it pass.”
His wife grieves, wonders what she could have done to prevent his suicide. “Nothing,” people tell her, and things like “Be honest with yourself: he’s better off dead. He knew that, which is why he did it, and you, for your own sake, should know that too,” but she can’t quite come around to think that. A few months later, while she’s nursing a glass of wine in the living room late at night, she says to herself “If you were alive you would know it was the wrong thing to have done.” Then she thinks “But that’s ridiculous, ‘if he were alive, he’d know,’ so what am I trying to say here? I’m trying to say…” and she stands up and looks at the ceiling. “I’m trying to say,” she says, “that you did the wrong thing. Now I’m alone and the girls have no father and they loved you and miss you just as I did and do. And I tried to do my best for you. Sometimes I couldn’t and sometimes I failed by some of my actions and what I said, but for the most part I did all right by you, didn’t I? The last years of your life were tough and awful and often humiliating and all those things that come with horrible debilitating diseases, but you still had the kids and me. We didn’t ignore you. We didn’t pretend you were a ghost. We ate with you, joked with you, said goodbye to you when we left the apartment, read to you and still managed to go out to a restaurant about once a month with you and take two-week summer vacations and occasional weekends someplace, hard as all that usually was for them and me, but we did it because in a way we had adjusted to the changes and wanted you to think that your life had only relatively changed. If you could come back, even in the same condition, even a little bit worse, if it had to be, you wouldn’t do that again, killing yourself, would you? I know you wouldn’t do it, knowing the effect it had on us, something you probably never even took into consideration until I just spoke about it. But I’m talking too much and maybe too loudly and that might wake the kids.”
The kids are very sad at first and then stop talking about it and asking questions about why he had to do it and don’t even seem to think about it — at least that’s what it seems like to her. But later when they’re adults they tell her that their father’s suicide was the worst thing that ever happened to them and it altered their lives for good. The only worse thing that could have happened, they say, is if she had taken her life too and around the same time as their father or done it alone while he was still alive. “Why would I? Never,” she says. “But what do you mean ‘altered’?” and they say it just made them more morose as people, with reduced hopes about life and the future and that sort of thing. “It’s hard to explain,” one of them says to her during a visit. “But we both agree that although Daddy was sick for so many years and never improving, the way he died and the suddenness of it sunk in irremovably, if that’s a word,” and she says “Oh yes, it is, and I suppose applicable here.”