The view

The window that looks out of the 6th floor at Beth Israel Hospital overlooks the Citgo sign and Fenway park. The kids and I sat there on Sunday and talked about baseball and I told them the story about the time a couple of years ago when I went to Fenway Park with their grandfather and we cheered and ate hot dogs and grumbled about the price of popcorn at Fenway and when we were walking back with the crowd glowing from our win, Grampa tripped over a curb and I had to help him up and all of the sudden he appeared old to me.
This is how it often went with my father in law in the last few years. One day he would be up and at em and the next he would be tired and weak and we would remember that he was old in years and we should tell him we love him.
I'm so glad that we did often tell him that we loved him. We spent time with him and we knew him really well.
When we were sitting in the window sill one of the buildings looked like Curious George's apartment building, you know the one where he is window washing and then he comes to an apartment that has painters in it and they are taking a break and Curious, because his is so curious decides to go in, even though he was told not to go in, and he paints the whole apartment a jungle scene. We love that one. And there we were in the window looking out over the scene, imagining it in our heads.
Grampa would do something like that. We would tell him to turn this way and he would turn the other way and then blame it on the liberals or The Boston Globe.
Do you know that I almost hate taxes as much as he did now?
In the window there is another woman there and she is older than me and she is having trouble too. We are all having trouble in this place because this is the ICU and trouble comes here.
She doesn't speak much English and she is periodically crying and she sees my son and proceeds to give him candy. She has a lot of candy. I know about the candy thing because on Wednesday last week when I left his bedside I headed straight for Trader Joes and if I could have intravenously injected chocolate into my blood stream I would have. Instead I got a box of peanut clusters and proceeded to eat them all without even noticing what I was eating. And when they were gone I was still crying.
Jonah was happy to be the recipient and fondly took the Hershey's kisses from her and smiled at her and batted his eyes at her until she dished out more. I turned my back for a moment, happy to gaze out at Curious's apartment and when I turned to them again she was kissing Jonah's cheeks and crying and he was letting her and although this probably should have creeped my out it didn't and I hugged her.
Her son is in the ICU in a coma.
Life is hard and these are the hard times.
In the elevator on the ride down Gary cried and some people next to us were laughing and the kids were climbing on parts that they shouldn't have been and we were all there together.
Human beings are so wonderful and caring and life is so sweet.