This is personal

It was 4:43 a.m.

I woke suddenly, softly aware that I had been singing John Denver's "Lady" to myself. The one line that I recall bringing me to my state of consciousness was "I'm as close as I can be".

The motel room was lit with the diffused blue green hue shining gently through the thin curtain that was draped over the window of my front door. I could easily see the shapes of the paddle fan and surf board mounted to the ceiling over my bed. Yet the visions were internal.

I saw in an instant the images of my sweet lady's final moments in this life. She was sitting again, as she has so often done in the last eighteen months, in the front passenger seat of the Subaru, unconscious, slumped with chin tipped downward, bottom lip curled tightly, then laying on the ground in the slush as she received CPR from the EMTs, then laying on the table in the ER, incubation tube in her nose, slight amounts of blood present on her face, then she was gone, yet again, gone.

All of this in an instant as I then became consciously aware of a din that was ever growing, like a great Beethoven crescendo. The volume grew and I lay there in my motel room in this historic mining town in southern Arizona, wondering what it was that was creating all this noise. A rock slide? A collapsing mine shaft beneath me? A wall of water from a flash flood roaring down the mountain side? Then I wondered why I was thinking of portends of doom when I realized it was a motorcycle coming up the long steady incline of Main Street, steady throttle, first gear, now it's gone. I reached to my right and she was not there. She hasn't been for quite some time now, just the constant aching in my heart.

I often envision parts of my life as being scenes from a movie, so I chuckled quietly as this scene would have to include my current state:

Because of the 115 year age of this old motel the electrical outlets were, I can only presume, installed retroactively after electrical power became available in town. So the outlets and switches are installed at room locations that you might not often find in other locales. One of them is on the floor between the bed and wall and another, somewhat more conveniently located, is under the front window, behind a large chair. This is where I chose to set the IPad while connected overnight to it's electrical umbilical cord. 

So I knelt on all fours, in my underwear, butt in the air, behind a large chair recording these thoughts and visions so that the scene could be properly recalled when I awoke. I shut off the IPad after making the briefest of notes and was instantly struck by how dark it was. Pitch black, lightless from within as well as from without! 

I felt my way along the bed and returned to my previous position under the sheet and light bed spread. The images were still flashing through my mind as I recalled, laying there on my back, "my lady's sweet pleasures"; thirty nine years of fond memories in thirty nine seconds. I rolled onto my left side and felt a singular tear roll across the bridge of my nose.

I laid there and rejoiced in that singular tear while I became aware of another noise that had been gathering in my mind. A cacophony of birds was playing outside. Strange I thought, because birds don't normally talk in the dead of night. 

I opened my eyes again to decipher this and found the light had returned. I thought about the light for a moment, sifting through the front door curtain again and realized I needed to go and peek outside to determine what it's source was or I would wonder forever. 

I walked across the gently lit room once again and drew the curtain slightly. It was daylight! I looked in bewilderment at the clock. It was 4:54 a.m.

I pulled the covers up over my head, "I'm as close as I can be, and I think our time together has just begun"