The Blackbird Has Come: Let the Blaming Begin

It’s gray and chilly outside, and summer has closed its doors for the season, but it has left its curtains open somewhat so sunshine can still shine through occasionally, warming and taunting, offering morsels of false hope for those who are still clinging to summer memories. The trees in their yard are transfiguring into bare and ominous effigies. The flamboyant yellow and orange leaves are letting go of their grasp, one by one, gently spiraling down and landing on the cool ground below, subtly wiping away all optimism, with a reminder that worse is yet to come.

She is not aware of the temperature outside, or that summer has ended for that matter. She can’t, she hasn’t been out of bed for weeks, possibly longer than that, he’s not sure because everything about this situation feels like an eternity already. At her bedside, machines maintain a colourful blinking pattern of reds, greens, yellows, and are softly beeping methodically, continuously keeping a rhythm of life dripping clear fluids slowly into her veins intravenously. It’s a matter of time now, they say, although he forces that thought out of his mind quickly before the guilt that always accompanies it has a chance to creep in there too. The thought of “soon” makes him happy, but happy infuses a dark feeling that stabs his heart and he can’t comprehend that. He’s obligated to maintain his persona, to camouflage his feelings of euphoria that consume him due to the doctor’s prognosis that she’s dying. He can’t express how happy this makes him feel and how elated he is because the end is near. But he’s cautious about this information too, and careful not to fall into this same trap again. This wouldn’t be the first time she’s succumbed to weakness for a lengthy period and suddenly rebounded back up on her feet again, so a matter of time is just perspective. He glances at his watch, and at her once more, satisfied that everything is fine, then shoves his hands in his pockets and shuffles out of the room to head to the other end of the house where the fully stocked bar is waiting for his four o’clock arrival.

Outside her window a blackbird lands on the railing and perches, pluming his glistening black feathers and taking grip on the cold metal rail with his talons, while he stares in the window at her, holding his gawp over her through his shiny glass portal. His beady black eyes penetrate her soul as if the bird knows something about her. Her eyes flutter open for seconds reflecting a mixture of fear and confusion before she locks eyes with the blackbird, and then eerily settles back down into her bed sheets and gently drifts back to sleep.

He’s miserable and fed-up. Terrible guilt consumes him because he hates her now, in fact after thirty years with this woman, he has grown to despise her. Thirty long years with her has reduced him to shambles. His world has become diminished and small because she’s wretched and needy now, and she’s consumed much of their savings just trying to keep her disgusting self alive. Nobody comes around to visit anymore because she’s dying and they don’t know what to say about it or what to do to fix it, so it’s easier to stay away. In his mind she’s despicable and selfish, clinging onto her dismal life like it matters, but he stays by her side despite his feelings for her, biding his time and waiting it out. It’s very close now but at this point, a matter of time has lingered into fifteen long abominable months. Yet how could he even entertain the thought of ending it at this juncture of their story?

It’s not that love wasn’t shared between them in its day – it was. They were deeply in love in the beginning, way back in the day. She was vibrant and beautiful, and she emanated pure love at a time when she was young and enthusiastic about life. She cared about people, family, friends and even strangers in need of something. She was that kind of lady. Elegant dinner parties surrounded by loved ones entertained within the confines of this warm home years ago. Where were they all now, he wondered, while turmoil was festering deep down inside himself. Echoes of boisterous laughter, tucked away in the regresses of his mind, were begging to yell out. Poignant memories of camaraderie became twined inside the folds of his heart, but it’s all so far away and long ago that his heart barely recognizes the memories. Today she’s laying there gasping and gurgling, struggling for every breath rasping in and out of her defeated lungs. Too far down the road now lady. Too many cigarettes and funky smelling hand-rolled ones back in their party days.

She diverts her attention to the design of the hardwood floor while she walks down the hall and shudders as she thinks to herself “just let go, you feeble old cow. Give up. Stop breathing.” She quickly glances behind her worrying that she might be thinking aloud, and he might have overheard her. Every time she hears that woman’s crotchety voice demanding something for her to do, she cringes. To her, she’s a bitter old lady withering away to her final expiry date, which cannot come soon enough in her opinion. She truly loathes that craggy old bag and secretly wishes for the end to come sooner than later, even if it brings her own unemployment upon her. There will be someone else who will need her private home-care hospice skills, someone equally as wealthy as this one and hopefully much nicer. Three years of this has become an exceedingly long time now, but the past fifteen months has kicked it up to another level.

They brush past each other without exchanging any words, just shrewd glances of uncertainty, an unmistakable silent pleading in each of their eyes, and a dark undercurrent of mistrust flows rampantly between them. She’s aware he’s heading for a drink, more likely ten drinks, before he finally staggers to bed. He’s turning into a drunk now. They don’t like each other but nevertheless, as a court appointed caregiver, she’s here to stay, obligated, living under the same roof with him, and with her, until that wheezing old windbag stops sucking air.

As each day passes, each of them secretly wished the other one had some bad news to bear about her health statistics, and they both also secretly wished the other one would do something about it and bring all this misery to closure somehow. Something like accidentally knocking the plug out of the wall when she’s sleeping, except that choice would set off alarms and initiate the generator to kick in and take over, leaving “the one whodunit” to get caught red-handed in her room when it happened. It would play out like an Alfred Hitchcock movie. Disappointedly, today’s rounds are boringly similar to every other day. She doesn’t have such exciting news to share, just the usual health updates, her vitals are typically normal, her overall appearance is typically normal and as usual, she’s sleeping. She doesn’t have to discuss these details with him though, because the notes are logged into the medical journal dangling at the foot of her bed where they both log daily information about her. In case somebody cares. So, unless something extraordinary happens this evening, she’s finished her rounds for the day and free to catch some of her evening TV shows.

To him it’s as if he’s stuck in the ‘80s, living in a passage of time inside the movie The Shining, starring Jack Nicholson and he is Jack Nicholson. His own house holds haunting memories and formidable stories too. Her irritating high-pitched voice repeats itself incessantly in his mind, and he’s drunk again, just like Jack Torrance was every time reality slipped away from him. “For a man so rich you’re just plain cheap,” is what she chirped at him, persistently, over the many decades. Quite frankly, she wore that line out, but it always got her what she wanted. The back-up generator was by the insistence of hospice care and the doctors who managed her wellbeing issues, to allow her to live out her end-of-days at home, God bless, but she was more insistent about it than they were.

We are born, we live, we die, it is the axiom of life since the beginning of civilization. Some die so young they barely get a start in life before it is harshly ripped away from them. Some die so suddenly they did not have time to realize they were dead yet. Some endure so much pain they beg for the end. She knew the end was in sight, and her lungs were going to need artificial support to keep her alive longer. For her, money wasn’t an issue or even a consideration. Pain wasn’t in her reality either. Her ability to breathe easily without the restraint of her incapacitated lungs was decreasing every day, which was a conclusion by her specialist to be her eventual demise. The installation of the generator was fifteen months ago, and before this recent lapse, she still had the ability to utilize her mobile oxygen pack too, regularly, to enable herself short walks outside from time to time. “A girl just can’t stay inside every single day until she finally lies down to die,” she told him, this time he noticed her voice wasn’t as scornful and revolting as usual. She told him, “A person must live a full life right up till the end, use it all up so to speak,” and to him it appeared as though she was doing just that. It was taking an eternity and thousands of dollars.

In her bedroom she’s trying to focus on the television, but a disturbing feeling is scratching her, picking at her brain, and pulling her attention away from her favourite TV program. Something creepy was making her uncomfortable this evening, something iniquitous that she couldn’t grasp. She felt an edginess when she passed him earlier in the hall that made her feel nervous and intimidated, causing her to briefly glance behind her. It felt like something dark had passed through her, not passed by her, making her hesitate for a moment. It gave her a prickly sensation that raised the hair on her arms. The only one who passed by her was him, on his way to his barroom quest, aiming to satisfy his daily libation consumption. “Something was not right,” she thought to herself, but she brushed it off, rewinding the portion of her show she missed while she was brooding over “something” she just couldn’t put her finger on. Down the hall she could hear him mumbling to himself, drunkenly slurring sinister insults about the old crone in her death bed, laughing nefariously out loud, at his own amusement. “He has become a pitiful man now,” she thought to herself and cranked the TV volume louder.

He’s well into the bottle of whiskey now and common sense has fled the scene. But even in his drunken stupor, he feels a bad vibe in his gut. Something wasn’t right when he passed her in the hallway earlier. His eye twitches as he replays it in his mind. It was something dark that he couldn’t see, but he sure felt it, and it raised the tiny hairs on the back of his neck. Goosebumps rippled along his arms while he was thinking about it now.

She bolted upright in her bed, gasping and struggling to catch her breath but trying to call for help wasn’t happening for her. She couldn’t talk, or scream like she wanted to, and neither of them were aware she was in a crisis. At least, she thought she needed help. Outside her window, the blackbird was gone. Then, eerily, she settled back down into her bed sheets and calmly closed her eyes.

The methodical blinking lights struck an unusual pattern. The soft humming and beeping coming from the life support apparatuses hushed to silence and the zigzag bolt patterns on the monitor flattened until the screen turned black.

There was no power outage in the house, or any other houses in the neighbourhood, and the generator was functioning properly to take over in the event of an unexpected power outage, which hadn’t happened ever during the fifteen months it was prepared on stand-by. All the apparatus was plugged properly into the wall socket, as usual, but strangely, none of it was pulling any power, nothing at all. Not one piece of medical equipment was functioning, yet the lamp was on.

She’s forced to let go now and lay there markedly still beneath the sheets. The room has become unnervingly quiet.

Down the hall, an inaudible cloak of guilt suddenly shrouded her, perking a frightening sensation inside her. She shut the TV off and listened. Silence. She peaked out the window expecting to see something in the gloomy ill-omened evening air. A blackbird perched on a bare branch of a tree was staring back at her, peculiarly, she thought. It was leering at her, as if it knew something. She decided to check on the old lady one more time.

He slid off his bar stool, wobbling to gain his footing, scanning the room with his impaired vision. Oddly, it felt like he had a visitor, but he laughed, sounding crazier than ever. Nobody has visited this barroom for years now, except him. They all scattered ages ago, and as usual, it was just a private party for one. He staggered out of the room, heading for bed to sleep it off.

Again, they encountered each other in the hallway, he agitates her with his typical state of inebriation by this time of day, but she simply avoided him as best she could. He was too drunk to notice her tension and he veered around her, unsteadily. A profuse vapor of alcohol fumes wafted around him. Bitterly, she suggested he check on her once more before bed, but he didn’t respond because he couldn’t hear her. An uncanny feeling was fermenting between them like an unsavory jubilation they mutually shared about someone’s death. It had always roiled between the two of them and had waited so patiently to spring to life. Suddenly it screamed out loudly and began living an obscure life in full-on real-time.

Now there was nothing but spine-chilling silence and they each began blaming it on something.