John Barth - The Development

Helpless, yes: He still damns Tim Manning for that. Not that anything he or anyone else might have done would likely have saved her, but had their situations been reversed — had the thitherto undetected and now fatally ruptured aneurysm (as the Cause of Death turned out to be: not, after all, the news of Bush and Cheney's reelection) been his instead of hers — Margie Manning, for all her alarm and grief, would no doubt have taken some charge of things. She'd have dialed 911, he bets, and/or the establishment's Medical Center; would have shouted down the hallway for help and pounded on their neighbors' doors — all the usual desperate things that desperate people in such situations typically do, even if in vain. And would then have somehow collected herself enough to deal as needed with Med Center and other Bayview functionaries; to notify children and friends, comfort and be comforted by them, handle the obligatory farewell visits, and manage the disposition of the Departed's remains and estate and the rearrangement of the Survivor's life. But except back in his high school history-teaching classroom before his retirement and in a few other areas (tending their former lawn and shrubbery, making handyman repairs, presiding over their Oyster Cove cookouts), Margie was ever the more capable Manning — especially in emotionally charged situations, which tended to rattle and de-capacitate her husband. Now (i.e., then, on Election Day + 1, 2004) he lay literally floored, clutching his unbelievably dead mate's body as if he too had been stroke-stricken, which he desperately wished he had been. Unable to bring himself even to respond to the Manor's alarm-bell First Responder (from the nurses' station over in Assisted Living) when she presently came knocking, calling, doorbell-ringing, and doorknob-twisting, he lay closed-eyed and mute while the woman fetched out her passkey, turned the deadbolt, and pressed in with first-aid kit and urgent questions.

Don't ask T.M. how things went from there. Death is, after all, a not-unusual event in elder-care establishments, whose staff will likely be more familiar with His visitations than will the visited. As it happens, neither Tim nor for that matter Margie had had any prior Death Management experience: Their respective parents' last days, funeral arrangements, and estate disposition had been handled by older siblings, whose own life closures were then overseen by competent grown offspring who lived nearby and shared their parents' lives. The Bayview responder — an able young black woman named Gloria, as Tim sort of remembers — knelt to examine the pair of them, spoke to him in a raised voice, cell-phoned or walkie-talkied for assistance, spoke to him some more, asking questions that perhaps he answered or at least endeavored to, and maybe did a few nurse-type things on the spot. After a while he was off the floor: in a chair, perhaps mumbling apologies for his helplessness while Margie's body was gurneyed over to the Med Center to await further disposition. Although unable to take action, not to mention taking charge, he eventually became able at least to reply to questions. To be notified? Son in St. Louis, Daughter in Detroit. Funeral arrangements? None, thankee. None? None: Both Mannings preferred surcease sans fuss: no funeral, no grave or other marker, no memorial service. You sure of that? Sure: Organs to be harvested for recycling if usable and convenient; otherwise forget it. Remaining remains to be cremated — and no urn of ashes or ritual scattering, s.v.p.; just ditch the stuff. All her clothes and other personal effects to the nearest charity willing to come get them. Oh: and if Nurse happened to have in her kit a shot of something to take him out too, they could do a two-for-one right then and there and spare all hands more bother down the road.

Because what the fuck (as he explained to S-in-S and D-in-D when both were "B-in-B": Billeted, for the nonce, in Bayview): He and Margie had been fortunate in their connection and had relished their decades together. Unlike their Oyster Cove neighbor Ethel Bailey, for example, with her metastasized cervical cancer, Margie had been spared a lingering, painful death; she'd gone out in one fell swoop, a sort of Democrat parallel to their other O.C. neighbor Jim Smythe's fatal stroke in '92 upon hearing of Bill Clinton's defeat of George Bush père. Better yet — so he can see from his present perspective — would've been for the two of them to go out together like George and Carol Walsh over in Rockfish Reach last year, when'T.S. Giorgio's freak tornado flattened most of Heron Bay Estates. On second thought, though, that must have been scary as shit: Best of all (if they'd only known that that god damn aneurysm was about to pop) would've been to take matters into their own hands like those other Rockfish Reachers Dick and Susan Felton, who for no known reason drove home one fine September night from a neighborhood party, closed their automatic garage door, left their car's engine idling and it's windows down, and snuffed themselves. Way to go, guys! Yeah: Pour Margie a glass of her pet pinot grigio and himself a good ripe cabernet, crank up the Good Gray Ghost, hold hands, breathe deep, and sip away till the last drop or last breath, whichever.

Whoops, forgot: no garage these days over here in Geezerville. Nor much get-it-done-with gumption either, for that matter, in this lately overspacious apartment, where T.M. pecks away at his word processor faute de fucking mieux (but No thankee, Barb and Mike: Dad'd rather stay put than change geographies this late in the day). Left to himself, Yours Truly Tim Manning is… well… left to himself, making this minimal most of his hapless self-helplessness by chewing on language like a cow it's cud.

Assisted Living? Been there, done that.

So?

Well. Somewhere on this here QWERTYUIOP keyboard — maybe up among all those F1–F12, pg up/pg dn, num lock/clear buttons? — there ought to be one for Assisted Dying…

Like, hey, one of these, maybe: ?

help

Worth a try:

enter

WE DELMARVANS… Delmarva Peninsulars? Anyhow, we dwellers on this flat, sand-crab-shaped projection between the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay, comprising the state of Delaware and the Eastern Shores of both Maryland and Virginia, are no strangers to major storms. Even before global warming ratcheted up our Atlantic hurricane season — pounding the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, and the East Coast of the USA from July into November with ever more numerous and destructive tropical tempests — there had been slam-bangers every decade or so for as long as anybody can remember. The nameless Big One of 1933, for example, cut a whole navigable inlet through our peninsula's coastal barrier islands, decisively separating the resort town of Ocean City, on Fenwick Island, from undeveloped Assateague Island, below it. Hurricane Hazel in 1954 roared over the Outer Banks of North Carolina into Chesapeake Bay, sent crab boats through second-story windows in our marshy lower counties, and sank the five-masted tourist schooner Levin J. Marvel in mid-Bay, with considerable loss of life. Even in George and Carol Walsh's dozen and a half years in Heron Bay Estates, at least three formidable ones have "impacted" that gated community and environs: Hugo in '89, which downed trees and power lines hereabouts after ravaging the Carolinas; Floyd in '99, with it's humongous basement-flooding downpours; and Isabel in 2003—a mere tropical storm packing less wind and rain than those hurricanes, but piling a record-breaking eight-foot storm surge into the upper Bay that tore up countless waterfronts and flooded historic riverside houses in nearby Stratford that had been dry, if never high, since the eighteenth century. Nothing so catastrophic hereabouts to date as the great Galveston hurricane of 1900 or Katrina's wipe-out of New Orleans in 2005, but we tidewater Marylanders keep a weather eye out and storm-prep list handy from Independence Day to Halloween.