So this is love
So this is love -- Don't trouble; I'll drive myself to the hospital (to die).
He drove himself to the hospital to die so as not to be a burden. But because he had taken the car, we had to bring her to him like a bride to share a moment as intimate as any from their honeymoon more so because of all the years.
We walked down the corridor the long, white corridor. Choking, gurgling in another room. That's Harry, she said. A small bald bundle of ragged bones in a rollaway bed lay withered in a white paper dress, its swollen, bruised arms ending in bloated black stumps above the bloodstained white paper sheets. It gurgled and choked through rubber tubes. Look, Harry, oranges! She squinted through her thick glasses, and after prying open the lid of the icebox dish with delicate, wrinkled fingers, dropped tiny, juicy pieces of cool fruit into the choking throat. Bright jewels of fresh juicy life against wet paper lips too slack to feel.
She was dressed in casual stretchwear the nonsexual asensual uniform of comfort for her age but she had put on makeup and had had her hair set, her nails done. Still she was naked before us yet unaware unaware, in fact, as she offered tender ministrations that we could even see her them that we were even there. But he knew and while he loved her, kissed her with his dying red and yellow eyes, he would have blushed, if he could have spared the blood, with embarrassment at having to make love to her this one last time in public like an infant not a man.
My bare hand sweated unnoticed into the blackened palm. My mother old friend to both wore black mink and black leather gloves, and afterward would urge me to wash my hands.
	How will you get home? it managed to gurgle/wheeze. Stephanie is taking me.
She bent to kiss it good night. The bald, parchment-colored skull recognized the gesture, though it recognized little else through its pain, and strained forward until her dry, creased and crinkled pink lips met its thin, slack ones dampened with a hint of blood and sweat and spit. It closed its eyes. Once a man, thrice a hero, it would not last the week. We walked back down the corridor the long, white corridor. So this is love.

For Dorr and Georgia Harris, March 1982; I will never forget your courage, your kindness, or your love for each other.

by Sara, copyright 1999, all rights reserved