THE WAITING-ROOM TISSUE
"When I knocked my box of Kleenex to the floor, the doctor picked it up and handed me a fresh one and told me my husband was a champ."
Jim and I were in our fifties when a dating site matched us in June 2007. And boy did we match. When he heard my ’60s playlist, he thought I’d copied his. When he showed me his rice cooker, I thought he must be kidding; it was the one I’d donated to our local thrift store. It turned out we had loads of mutual friends, and they all said, “How did we not put you two together?” By year’s end, Jimmy had given me a key to his house and added me to his car insurance. He proposed that first year too, but with siblings and four adult kids, we could never figure out the timing for a wedding. In 2017 we finally gave up and eloped.
Jimmy was tall, freckled, handsome. Easygoing. A little mischievous. By day, he was a parts manager at a diesel shop, a walking engine encyclopedia who could find the most obscure part you might need; at night, he was a rock star, shredding on an electric guitar, playing the songs of John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Neil Young in a series of bands. He had a weakness for chocolate donuts and oldies TV. He whistled The Andy Griffith Show’s theme song while he worked. He could pack a car or a suitcase like a Tetris master. He could fix anything: a sputtering engine, a wobbly table, a kid’s broken toy, a friend’s broken heart.
In early 2019, Jim noticed a lump below his ear. It turned out he had cancer of the parotid gland. A man who never smoked and preferred O’Doul’s and virgin piña coladas had a life-threatening cancer of a salivary gland we’d never heard of. Surgery—high-risk, eight to ten hours—was scheduled at Stanford Medical Center. I was in the waiting room by 6 a.m., armed with a bottomless tote holding my laptop, magazines, doodle book and colored pencils, cell phone charger, box of Kleenex, bottle of Xanax, deck of cards and snacks. (How were hard-boiled eggs and string cheese going to stay cold for ten hours, I remember thinking.)
As the day dragged on, I paced, did stress lunges, curled up under a desk in the fetal position, and watched videos of Jimmy doing a silly dance and singing an original ditty about Mr. Lumpy the uninvited tumor. I threw up my lunch, reapplied my lipstick, emptied my bag in search of more Xanax, texted everyone in my contact list with an urgent request to pray, now, and cried into my Kleenex—out of terror that Jimmy wouldn’t make it, that he’d die on the operating table, alone, without me, that he’d never again sing me the lullaby he wrote for me, that the last thing he felt before being sedated might have been fear.
Ten hours turned to thirteen. By the time the surgeon came out, I’d anxiously twisted my wedding ring so much, my finger had blistered. The surgeon’s gloves were spattered with blood and his eyes looked exhausted, and I would later learn that Jimmy had indeed come close to dying on the table, but when I knocked my box of Kleenex to the floor, the doctor picked it up and handed me a fresh one and told me my husband was a champ. “He’s not out of the woods, but he’s breathing on his own, with decent vitals.” They felt like the best words I’d ever heard.
After a touch-and-go week in the ICU, we came home and I stashed my waiting-room tote on a shelf in the closet, not wanting to be reminded of how near I’d come to losing my love. Our new routine included hour-long commutes for radiation and chemo. After every treatment, Jim rallied. He baked sourdough bread, hosted band practice, fixed the back fence, composed some of his best songs and harvested the largest tomatoes our garden had ever grown. But in the end the cancer spread to his lungs. Shortly after his 67th birthday, Jimmy entered hospice. He died a month later, at home, holding my hand.
A few days after his death, a small earthquake shook our home, knocking down boxes, books and the successfully forgotten tote. Among the things that tumbled out of it was the crumpled tissue the surgeon had handed me. I don’t recall putting it in my bag, yet there it was, smudged with my mascara and lipstick, a symbol of hope and dread and gratitude all in one. My husband was alive when I last held it in my hand. I had cried into its softness, and seeing it again, tears came anew. Now it lives in the center of a sacred shrine I created for Jimmy. When you lose someone so precious, any bit of connection becomes precious too.
—Lina Lambert
Lina Lambert is a semi-retired realtor who writes songs, poems and essays and is working on a memoir.
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That fragile tissue so poignant and steadfast. Like your memories of him. Beautiful.
Perhaps the "small earthquake shaking" was a hello from Jimmy? If you believe in such things. Your memories written with love notable in every sentence keeping him close in mind and heart... this was beautiful to read.