I suspect her place was by his side - years of cooking and cleaning and managing the little details of their lives.
If man is the head of the household, no doubt woman is the heart.
And she had beat warmly and faithfully for as long as I could remember.
I used to make lots of Christmas candy, she said, and it was as if she was remembering a different life, a time when little details seemed little. They loomed paramount now, significant and casting a long shadow.
I had stopped by, having driven myself to their house and then having walked myself to the door, independence in the flesh, it must have seemed to them, when I saw it -
the hospital bed in the living room, yes, I was expecting that.
It was the bed at the foot of the hospital bed that I had not seen before.
The master bedroom has been vacated, as they concede they are no longer masters of a good many things - autonomy, for one. A new normal is being patched together.
He is ready to attend her, cooking and cleaning and managing the not-so-little details of their lives.
He, head of household, now lies at her feet.
Roles in marriage are not concrete - they shift and morph, imperceptibly at times, the way fall bends into winter. The leaves were there - now the branches are bare. When did autumn surrender to death? Will there ever be spring again?
The head moves to the foot. The server becomes the served. And death becomes a doorway to true and everlasting life.