March 2006: Waiting (cont.)

But now there is only the waiting . . . nothing more to be done. Peter can’t be fixed, though he tries, valiantly, to fix himself. The limitations LBD have imposed on his mind make him unable to understand what is happening to him. Is his lack of understanding a blessing or a curse? I haven’t the wisdom to know. Yesterday when his wife, Katy, visited he carefully demonstrated to her how hard he is working on physical therapy, how much better he can move now. “So I can come home,” he said.

And then he was off to something else, some bit of paranoia or some other kind of odd connection his wandering mind takes him to.

Which is why, of course, he will never come home.

Here in Minnesota we are waiting for spring. It has been an unusually warm winter, too little snow, too little of the crisp, white cold that I love, but spring will be welcome nonetheless. Skeins of geese have been flying over for weeks, settling flat footed on the frozen lakes, complaining loudly to one another. On an early-morning walk just a couple of days ago I came upon a robin festival in a neighbor’s grass.