Blink

Ferris sat in the cold, hard hospital chair next to her bed. Seventy-two hours ago, Tess entered Resting Meadows Hospice Center. Ferris agreed it was time to allow his beloved grandmother to rest comfortably while waiting for death’s arrival. It meant all measures of fighting to save her life had switched to making sure she was comfortable and at peace. No more hospital wires, IV needles with painful pokes and jabs, or heart monitors to track her pulse.

The room was small, quiet, and bland. What was it about death that required the ambiance to become so boring and muted? Since arriving at Resting Meadows, the goal was to allow her to slip away peacefully and not fight off death’s beckoning. Ferris knew his grandmother’s body was exhausted from the two-year fight against the cancer swirling in her organs. Tess needed comfort, and Ferris knew this was her wish.

“It’s time to go,” she had begged before losing consciousness.

Now Tess stood at heaven’s front door, knocking, just waiting to be let in. His heart wished for the sound of those “beeps” he had grown accustomed to for the past several weeks while she was being treated at the hospital. Those rhythmic, continual beeps had an odd way of soothing him. Her fading pulse was something he wished he could hold onto for the rest of his lifetime. But now, all the monitors and wires were gone.

“Tess,” Ferris whispered.

His seventy-nine-year-old grandmother lay still beneath a thin beige, nubby cotton blanket, waiting for life’s grip to finally release her. With each rise and fall of the blanket, he understood each one could be her last. He leaned forward and dragged the chair a few inches closer. The legs scraped faintly against the vinyl floor, loud in the hush, filling the otherwise silent room.

“I’m here,” he said, and reached for her hand.

Her fingers were light in his—papery, chilled, and skeletal. For a moment her breathing sharpened, and Ferris froze, unsure if he’d imagined it. He held on anyway. He squeezed once, gently, like a question begging to be answered. No answer came. The shallow breath returned, and the blanket once again rose and fell gently.

Ferris noticed the room around him and realized what was missing: color. The four walls encompassing him could only be described as old oatmeal. The curtains framing the one small window looked like they’d been washed one too many times. Even the light seemed tired and stale. Ferris stared at the palette and wrestled with his guilt for keeping her in a room that would have offended her to the very core.

Who decided dying should look like this? He wondered.

Tess had spent her whole life insisting on living in vibrant colors. Everything in her world had to be bright.

The brighter, the better, she used to say, as though it was a mandate. In that moment, he thought of her oversized green reading glasses—the ridiculous neon frames she wore on a chain he’d made in his fifth-grade art class all those many moons ago. Her preferred ensembles often mixed and matched polka dots and plaids, but only if the colors complemented one another. It was her zany trademark, which everyone admired her for. Tess had a special way of helping folks feel a little less afraid to be themselves.

Ferris cringed, thinking about how offensive this beige would have been to her senses. He wanted to apologize for putting her in here, but the rooms all bore the same uniform of washed-out, drab, and dull.

He blinked hard and forced his eyes to keep moving as he took in the room’s single portal to the outside. The room felt like a box with just one window. The February light outside was pale gray and flat. Suddenly, a red cardinal swept down and landed on the sill’s narrow ledge.

It stayed there for a beat, twitching its head back and forth as if listening for something only it could hear. Ferris saw the little bird’s eye take in Tess and then himself. Ferris did not dare blink, afraid to lose this moment of exchanging a knowing look with such a beautiful animal. And then, it opened its wings and took to the winter sky, only to disappear.

Ferris exhaled shakily. He half wished he, too, could fly away from the heaviness of this grief.

Ferris called off work for the third day in a row, something he had never been able to do until now. His dedication to his law practice kept him from much of his own life. He had missed holidays. He had missed his now-estranged wife’s first miscarriage, and even his own surprise birthday party. He had a hard time admitting his addiction to work, but when Vanessa took her things out of their home last Christmas, he had to admit he understood why. If he truly wanted to be a husband and father, then he needed to actually be present. His family did not live at his office, and that was the main issue that drove his love away from him.

“It’s either me or work,” was her ultimatum, and he could not give up his practice, not even a little. Now he wished for her in a way he never had before. He wanted to run to her like he did to Tess when he was a boy—afraid of the same night terrors that had plagued him since the night of his parents’ tragic death.

After losing them both, his grandparents took him in when he was just eight years old. The transition was seamless, and his memory had erased all but a handful of moments of his mother and father. Tess held him tight when the nightmares came and jolted him from sleep. It was always the same dream: his parents were trapped underwater, and he could not get to them in time to save them. This nightmare had plagued his subconscious since the night he lost them, thirty years back.

Where had all that time gone?

Ferris, now an adult, felt as lost as he did on the night his parents died. The memory of that loss, combined with the grief of losing his Pops just two years back, mixed with Tess lying motionless in front of him and overwhelmed him. His entire body shook as another wave of grief came for him. His sturdy frame convulsed as his body released it. Ferris bent at the waist, still sitting in the chair next to her, rested his head on the bed, and felt the coarse texture of the hospital blanket beneath his cheek.

After several minutes of unadulterated sobs, his sore, tired eyes took in the photograph perched on the small table next to her. The mere sight of it caused his sobs to momentarily abate, and a smile crept over his lips. How had he overlooked it? The small cherry-wood framed picture went everywhere with Tess—no exceptions. He stood up and went to the night-stand to hold it in his hands. He ran his thumb over both Tess and Pops’ faces.

The photograph captured the moment when his grandparents not only first met, but also the moment they fell in love. The juxtaposition was not lost on him. In it, his grandparents were young, vital, strong, and they had their entire lives ahead of them. At nineteen and eighteen years old, respectively, they had no idea how their lives would play out and eventually end. He kept a copy of this picture under his mattress and swore his undying love to them whenever he looked at it. That one single moment in their lives came to symbolize the essence of who they were as a couple.

In it, Ferris’s then-nineteen-year-old grandfather—Joey, back then—hoisted an eighteen-year-old Tess high above his head, and their two bodies created a capital T formation. She held her seemingly weightless body pencil-straight, with her hands clasped behind her back, and smiled confidently as the photographer called for them to say, “Cheese.”

Joey was the self-proclaimed strongest guy in Merriville, Indiana, so naturally his friends wanted to test the claim. One of them suggested he lift someone over his head. Joey was ready to hoist one of his buddies, but they stopped him.

“It has to be a girl.”

“You gotta ask the first girl who crosses the street,” another friend dared.

Lifting a girl wouldn’t challenge his muscles. It was his nerve that needed bolstering. It was then that Tess crossed the street, her blonde ponytail bobbing as she headed home from a friend’s house, and everything changed. The moment she saw Joey, she knew she was going to marry him. It was a visceral certainty—one she would feel only that once.

So when Joey asked if she’d let him lift her above his head, her answer came without hesitation.

“Sure.”

Those two teenagers in that photograph, unaware of each other’s impact, would never be the same after accepting that one dare. Now those kids were lost to time, like a boat out to sea—gone forever, never again to return. They married just one year later and created a family made from mutual, enduring love and trust. While their bodies, minds, and attitudes changed over the years, their trust in one another never did. It kept them tethered together—even beyond death’s final chapter.

Where had they gone?

At first glance, it was a silly photo, one that compelled onlookers to remark, “You’re over his head!” When Ferris saw it, he saw something special. He could feel their unfaltering trust in one another.

His grandmother’s full, red, plump lips were peeled back, revealing a serene smile. In this photo, fear was absent. His grandmother never let fear keep her from anything. He thought of how strong and full of life she had been. The memories overwhelmed him, and his tears flowed freely.

He longed for one of her legendary hugs. They offered safety and love.

Joey, or Pops, warned folks, “Don’t hug Tess unless you got an hour.” This memory caused him to laugh, filling the stagnant room with noise. But the sound of his chortle was not the only noise that filled the room in that moment.

Ferris sat up straight upon hearing the door creak open and saw Vanessa.

Gently closing the large white door behind her, she whispered, “Shhh… don’t get up,” and motioned for him to sit back down. “How’s she doing?”

“The doctor told me she has gone without food and water for two days now. She won’t last much longer,” he said.

After he spoke, his elbows landed on his knees and his head fell between his hands, and he allowed another wave of grief to engulf him.

This wave held the memory of his Pops. When Pops died, Ferris felt guilty for all the times he said, “Sorry Pops, too busy today.” As a boy, his Pops was his world. As a grown man, his world became cluttered with work and hobbies, along with his wife and their wish to start a family of their own.

Pops told him it was “okay” and they would get together “soon.”

Only after Pops’s fatal heart attack did Ferris feel guilt for not making time for him. Now it was too late.

Vanessa strode over to him and cradled his shoulders with her arm, but did not speak.

Ferris continued. “Cancer has had her for two years. I want this to be over.”

Vanessa squeezed his shoulders, then looked quizzically at the picture in his hand and reached to take it.

“They were so young,” she said, and smiled.

He looked up at her and wiped away the constant stream of tears and said, “Vanessa, I’m so sorry for not prioritizing you…” Unable to finish his thought, the plump, middle-aged nurse stepped in and shifted the room’s energy.

“Knock, knock,” she said as she entered and walked to the bed.

To the nurse, Tess was just another dying woman. To Ferris and Vanessa, she was their love.

The nurse walked over to the bed, put two fingers in the crook of Tess’s neck, and silently counted the slowing pulses.

“I bet she’ll let go now,” she said, nodding with certainty.

Suddenly, Tess’s eyes began to flutter, and she coughed.

As if commandeering all the air in the room, Tess took in a breath and said, “It all goes by in the blink of an eye.”

She released her final words and drew her final breath. Her chest sank and never again rose. Her words were clear and resolute. It was as though the voice of God came through the tiny vessel, which let go as soon as her last poignant thought left her.

Ferris’s hand flew to his mouth.

Vanessa made a sound that was half sob, half prayer.

The stillness that followed felt absolute, as if the room itself had stopped living in respect.

“She’s gone,” Vanessa whispered.

Ferris didn’t know when he started crying. He only knew Vanessa’s arms were around him, and he was grateful not to be alone inside the collapse.

Words evaporated. What remained was love—heavy and human and unbearable.

“I love you,” Vanessa said again, and they wept together.

Eventually, Ferris could breathe. He stepped back, wiping his face with the heel of his hand.

“Can I have one more moment?” he asked.

Vanessa nodded and left quietly, closing the door behind her.

Ferris went to the nightstand and lifted the photograph in both hands. The wooden frame was warm from the room’s thin heat, worn from Tess’s devotion. He pressed it to his chest and kissed their faces for the last time.

Then he placed it carefully into Tess’s hands, adjusting her fingers around the frame as if she were only sleeping.

Her face looked peaceful. A small, permanent smile rested there, like a final private joke.

Ferris leaned down close to her ear.

“It all goes by in the blink of an eye,” he whispered. “Tell him I’ll see you both later. I love you.”