One Day in the Life of the Cancer Patient and His Wife

A Forest in the Living Room

She does "deep image" photography, for people going through trauma, taking them into nature where they can mourn in the mud and dance their grief under the broad arms of oaks and in the grasses waving silver in the sun, so even though I very much wanted pictures of me with my husband at this moment in our lives, when he is so deeply wounded by his terminal cancer and will never rise from his bed again, I almost told her never mind because we weren't in nature, which has been the top and the bottom and the all and everything to us, all the hiking and skiing and times on the trail ever since we met six years ago, but now we're stuck in his house with its furniture, and curtains over the windows and rugs on a wooden floor, but she said oh, but yes, of course we will, don't worry, don't worry and came to the house with large bins of flowers and ferns and foliage, and unfurled two sod rolls of moss and la them on him, and I said, "Oh, but I don't want it to look like he is buried already!" and she said, "Don't worry; don't worry" and never stopped for a minute Burt moved like a tornado in Kansas creating an Oz, slicing farms into the moss and tiny fir twigs and sprigs of rosemary, attaching a multi-pronged madrone branch to the back of the hospital bed and slinging it with cherry blossoms and draping lilacs purple and white at the top of the bed and white madrone blossoms and yellow Oregon grape util the room smelled musty from the moss and perfumed from the flowers and I sat by my husband's side in all that wonderland and kissed him like Helena her Demetrius, there in that magical forest she had created, like a Puck pouring a love potion into our eyes.