Margaret and Myra, both in their eighties, survive the travails of nursing home life, and the contempt of their families over Myra's decision to bequeath half her fortune to Margaret instead of her own daughters. Myra shut her eyes, held the lids tight until they hurt, like a child's game of hide 'n seek. "I'm cold. They cut off my leg. Who are you?. . ." "I'm Margaret Princeton. Why don't you look at me?" "I'm blind, you silly, but I can see plenty. I don't need sympathy either. My name is Myra Gronbeck, and I'm eighty-two."
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PROLOGUE
January, 1996
Doc stared solemnly out the window. Snow fell, quiet, soft. His thoughts turned, as they often did with the silence, to Myra and Margaret. He smiled. How badly they had wanted to visit the cemetery together during the last warm weather of summer. The sharp contrast of the current bitter-cold streak failed to mask the recollection, now burned into his memory. That cemetery trek seemed like only yesterday.
Uncertain as to the merit of such a trip, he wanted to be realistic, but still hopeful for both ladies. Time dwindled for Myra. Acutely ill, her chronic problems growing more insidious by the day, the old woman still smiled. And Margaret wanted to visit her burial site, where she and James would be laid to rest in the family plot.
The two old women's insistence continued until Doc agreed to lead the tour, so to speak. Myra had become more awake and talkative those past few days, a sign that could not be clearly interpreted as positive. The calm before the storm? Part of her preparations to die? She could slip back into a coma at any time.
Doc sighed heavily and shook his head. Margaret identified closely with Myra's dying, her own depression increasing with the impending loss. The arrangement of the million-dollar transfer from Myra's to Margaret's children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren had been completed. An odd request, and one about which Myra's own daughters would scream. Margaret just clutched Barry the Bear even closer to her bosom--hanging on to life, to Barry, to love, and to Myra at once.
Margaret had told Doc that she felt horrible about her lingering desire for a new roommate, her desperation for someone to be near, to love, and hopefully for whom to help tend. When Myra lay awake, this need for a replacement receded, but never entirely disappeared. It became shadowy and vague, just as Myra's dying weaved more like a spider web than a single strand of silk.
Doc agreed to the cemetery visit, after consulting with other mental health professionals. He had helped patients write notes to the dead, or tell stories about them. As a psychologist, he had taken patients to cemeteries to speak to departed relatives, to express vehement anger or crippling guilt, but he had not visited burial sites with patients in advance of death.
Nursing home residents such as Margaret and Myra proved surprisingly realistic in this regard. "Don't you want to see your new house before you move in?" Myra asked. Margaret added, "You don't buy a car without driving it around the block, do you, Doc?"
The preparations included a van and driver, as well as an aide to provide any nursing or medical assistance. Margaret needed her portable oxygen tank, while Myra needed extra medication in case her diabetes acted up. Prone to falling asleep, she had to be very securely strapped into her chair so as not to slip out since she had lost so much weight. Both needed sweaters, shawls, and lap robes in order to go from an air-conditioned van to the outside heat, then return to the van.
Under the blistering sun, they were rolled down the ramp and loaded up as they chatted away. Myra was more articulate than in weeks, although her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes produced a ghoulish look that fooled no one. Even so, all around her momentarily smiled at this burst of energy.
The tom-boy inside of Myra surely saw the trek as the final five yards of a hundred yard dash. Margaret surely thought so, too, but she wouldn't say so or admit it to him. She did, however, bounce in her chair.
"Well, okay, I'll take it. The lawyers can give it to my kids. James and I don't need it." Margaret giggled. "Who needs a million dollars, you silly?"
"I'm glad. You know how I feel about you, the love. I want you and yours to be taken care of. There's plenty left. You'll miss me, but the money will remind you of how much I love you and your family. You'll remember Myra."
"It won't happen for a long time. You're like a new person, now eat more and get better, dammit."
"I'm dying. You know that, Meg."
Margaret asked for the van's shades to be pulled down to block the bright sun. Except for the Bar-B-Que, or a trip to the hospital, neither woman had been outside of Golden View for months. Doc turned around to study them. The outside world proved a shock. The forty-five miles per hour speed of the van unsettled them, although little traffic passed and virtually no road noise sounded or horns blew. The oppressive sun and heat hit senses generally exposed only to air conditioning, artificial light, and a myriad of unpleasant odors.
Margaret said, "I like the car smell. There's no paint or urine smells in the van."
Myra, always the more blunt of the two, answered, "I'm so used to it, I almost miss it." They both chuckled.
Doc sat in front with the driver while the nurse Jeremy sat in the jump seat next to both residents in their wheelchairs. No one had yet mentioned burial, coffins and urns, infinity, eternity, or that great abyss everyone reached at some point. Doc thought how death had such different meanings or salience at different points of one's life. When young, talk of death was easy; remote and unthinkable; an interesting philosophical concept. Older people talked of impending death, its closeness and reality. Too close sometimes. Yet, as the gap closed over the years, with the inevitable illness or pain, death became that long-awaited comfort and friend. It might not be close enough. Margaret and Myra would surely have no trouble with it when they reached the cemetery. Death was so familiar to both of them, if not yet a friend they were ready to meet.
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