Manhattan Descending

A Recollection in Two Fragments

I.  Dies Irae

It was a strange note.

Mom and Dad,

I have important news.  I would like you to come by my apartment for drinks on Friday evening at 7.  I know this seems cryptic, but I need to talk to you in person rather than on the phone.  Please don't call to pry anything out of me.  I'll see you on Friday.

Love,

Sky

Ever since Schyler had graduated from Harvard Law, four years before and moved to Manhattan, we rarely got to see him.  "There's no time for anything but work when you are an associate," he'd use as an excuse every time Beth called him with an invitation to come up and spend the weekend.  Actually, after we got that note it dawned on me that we had only been to his apartment once in all those years.  Funny, it had never occurred to me before.  A dinner here or there in some trendy restaurant in SoHo or TriBeCa that was what the relationship with our son had become recently.

As we drove south on Route 17, it began to rain.  The steel gray skies had been threatening rain all day.  The hills that hugged the highway from th4e gates of Tuxedo Park to the intersection with the Thruway were at the peak of their autumnal color.  But with the damp dingy weather, their colors were muted.  At Suffern, the highway becomes garish and this trail of cheap tackiness followed is all the way through to Paramus and Route 80-  McDonald's, Taco Bells. Pizza Huts, giant billboards screaming at the traveler to stop at some furniture store or to be on the lookout for the next fast food joint or car dealership.  Huge shopping malls- one after the other- surrounded by vast parking lots.

I've always been awestruck by the view of Manhattan as you descend the cliffed tramps that curl down to the Weehawken side of the Lincoln Tunnel.  Midtown- in all its glory.  On clear evenings the Manhattan grid's perfect alignment can be breathtaking from this vantage point.  The buildings with lights glistening define the edges of the straight, narrow caverns.  Looking down 33rd Street from this side of the Hudson, you can see clear over to Queens.

But I wasn't much in the moos to look at Manhattan descending.  I was obsessed with Sky's note.  What could he possibly have to tell us? I looked at Beth.  She sat quietly and passively, blankly gazing out the window on her side of the car.  We had not said a word to one another since we began our drive.  She kept playing with her fingernails.  She had this habit whenever she was nervous.  She would take her left ring fingernail and flick it with her thumbnail.  Those nails were manicured to perfection, as always.  But what about Beth wasn't done to perfection?  She had style, class and an impeccable eye for detail.  She demanded nothing less than the best from herself and could not tolerate anything but the best from anyone else. 

It's what had drawn me to her when we first met and what had come between us as our marriage had matured.  I wondered if she would chip her nail polish as she flicked her fingers. Maybe she had developed a chip proof nail flick, or better yet- she had stumbled on to a secret chip-proof nail polish.  She could do an informerical and interview some washed up actress that wears too much makeup who would give a testimony about the product and lavish lyric praise on Beth's entrepreneurial endeavor.

The Manhattan traffic startled me out of my fantasies.  The rain had become steady and beat with a quick tempo on the windshield.  The sidewalks had become a sea of bobbing umbrellas.  I drove quickly down Seventh Avenue to Fourteenth Street. This is where the true skill of a driver is tested.  If midtown and upper Manhattan were developed by an anal retentive urban planner with an obsession for symmetry, the city below Fourteenth Street had been planned by someone with a demented mind and a cruel sense of humor. 

After some backtracking along the snaking streets of the Village, I miraculously found a parking spot right in front of Sky's building.  What were the chances of finding a perfect parking spot on Charles Street in the heart of Greenwich Village at 7 PM on a Friday? A million to one I estimated.  An omen? "The evening is off to a great start," I thought to myself.  I suddenly felt upbeat and wondered what good news Sky wanted to share with us. 

Our son had a charming duplex in a converted brownstone.  It was very well appointed, but somehow it struck me as too well appointed.  A set piece.  The Arts and Crafts furniture perfectly meshed with the Moderne pieces and the Art Deco lighting fixtures.  He had his mother's eye for detail- there was no mistaking that.  Every book, every plant and yes, even the magazines- all seemed to have a deliberate placement.  One item moved an inch in any direction would put the whole place out of synch. 

Sky had Beth's eyes- big and almond shaped eyes that were bluish green and flecked with brown.  As he greeted us at the door, I was immediately struck by how much he had grown to look like his mother. The bone structure, the nose, but also what lay behind those eyes.

Beth seemed tense as we sat on the leather and wood Arts and Crafts sofa that faced the fireplace.  The room was aglow with the fire that Sky had laid.  He had created the perfect atmosphere on a cold and rainy night- warm and cozy.  I looked at Beth.  Her face was tight, her lips pursed.  Did she have a headache? Or did she just need a drink?  She never really liked coming into the city, so I believed that she would relax in due course.

I thought a snifter of brandy would perfectly compliment the mood that Sky had set.  I laughed and said that the only things missing were a smoking jacket and an Irish Setter. Beth looked at me and glared.  What had I said to upset her?  Shy looked at his mother with deliberate graciousness and asked what she would like to drink.  She declined anything- she just remained stiffly perched on that sofa. 

"What is it you have to tell us Sky?" she said coldly.  There was something in her voice that led me to believe that she thought she knew what our son was going to tell us and that she did not like it, one bit. 

A tried to ease the tension a little by making light of her attitude.  "You don't waste anytime do you Beth?  Give the boy a chance to fix himself a cocktail and sit down for a minute.  Whatever happened to simple conversation starters like 'How are you?'" 

Summarily ignoring my remarks, Beth reiterated her question, but this time with a distinct hint of anger in her voice.

Sky slowly lowered himself into the leather winged-back chair that was positioned next to the glowing fireplace.  In the flickering of the firelight I could see why he looked so much like Beth.  He had the same tension in his face as she.  I suddenly became a little worried.  "This isn't going to be good news," I thought. 

Sky cleared his voice and took a sip of Scotch.  "I don't know exactly how o go about this," he said.  Beth and I sat staring at him waiting for him to continue.  I noticed that I had involuntarily begun to hold my breath. 

"I haven't been feeling very well for a number of weeks," he continued.  My face tightened.  "I haven't been at my peak for some months now and it's gotten worse.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed some blemishes on my right ankle so I saw my doctor.  I had a good idea what was going on, but I had to find out for sure.  I think I've really known for a while, I just didn't want to deal with it."

"For Christ's sake, what the hell are you talking about?"  I blurted out.  Beth kept sitting rigid next to me. 

Our son looked at Beth than at me and with his eyes fixed directly on us both, he said it. 

"I have AIDS."

I suddenly knew what the French mean by the term sang-froid.  It was as if someone had poured ice water into my veins.  I stared at my son.  I was paralyzed where I sat.  I felt like I had been immobile for minutes, but I think it was just for a few seconds.  I slowly turned and looked at Beth.  She hadn't moved and her expression was fixed.  I looked at Sky again.  He was staring at his mother.

I shook myself out of my stupor and came back to reality, or at least the reality I could deal with.  That's impossible Sky," I said.  You couldn't possibly get AIDS.  That's ludicrous!"

Beth, her eyes sternly fixed on Sky, finally spoke.  In slow measured deliberation she said "It's very possible.  Isn't it Sky?  Tell us why its so possible!"  I had never seen Beth like this.  She seemed filled with contempt for her son.  She seemed to know something that I didn't know, but what was it?  Sky remained silent.

"Come on Sky," Beth said sternly.  Tell your father and me why it's far from impossible!"

Sky glared at his mother and then turned to me.  He leaned in his chair towards me. 

"I'm gay," he said gently. 

I was confused.  Sky, gay?  It made no sense.  I had been a good father.  I was there a lot for him when he was growing up.  He seemed so well adjusted.  Why would he make such a disastrous choice?  I looked again at Beth.  She was still terse, tense and rigid.  I looked back at my son. 

"Why?" I asked.  I was pleading for him to tell me what had caused this.

"Why?" he repeated  as if I had been speaking a foreign language that he didn't quite understand.  "I don't know why.   I am and I always have been," he responded. 

Beth rose imperiously from the sofa and began to pace.  "How could you do this to your father and me?" she demanded.  How could you be so disgusting and so damned selfish!"

I watched her as she continued ranting at Sky and telling him how our lived were ruined because he is a homosexual.  Her tirade began to fade in my brain as she continued.  An image began to unfold in my head  Sky embracing another man and kissing him.  Images flashed.  I saw my son aimlessly searching out the gay bars of the city- lots of promiscuous men looking for new conquests.  Sky falling prey to these men.  Men who dress in bizarre costumes. Did my son wear motorcycle leather or did he wear a dress?  I began to wonder.  I wanted to know.  Did I dare ask him?  Beth's strident monologue began to fade back into my consciousness. 

"You repulse me," was her finale as she turned on her heels, her back now to Sky, and lit a cigarette. 

"Beth!  How could you?"  I said.  "This is our son,"

"Your son!" she retorted.

I had never seen her like this before.  I took a large swallow of my brandy and looked at Sky.  He seemed no different than he had a few minutes earlier I began to think about the things that I had read about homosexuality.  It wasn't viewed as an illness.  Many scientists even thought that it was something genetic.  And, Sky had answered me earlier and said that he always had been this way.  I just never thought of Sky like that. 

I looked at Beth.  Her back was to us as she smoked her cigarette with deep and heavy sighs.  My eyes returned to my son's face.  He was crying.  "Why is he crying?" I wondered.  He had to realize that telling us that he is a homosexual would not be easy on either one of us.  My thoughts were full of Sky and Beth.  Beth seemed to know what Sky was going to say.  Had I missed some important clues, was I that inattentive that I missed the signals?  The tears kept coming from his eyes  they would well up and then quickly roll down his cheeks.  I looked at him.  I wanted to understand.  I truly wanted to understand. 

But then it hit me.  I realized why he was crying.  He had just told us that he has AIDS and that he might die.  "My God, my son has AIDS," I said quietly.  My little boy who I had watched grow up and become a successful man has this dreadful disease. 

"But how did you get it- who did you get it from?" I asked.

"It doesn't really matter," he said  all the time looking at him mother's back. 

I looked at him carefully and saw the pain in his clenched face.  "I want to know," I said gently.  "Please tell me."

Slowly, Sky began to tell me the story of his last four years in New York.  Only a few weeks after he had moved to the city, he had met a man named Tony.  They had fallen in love and he moved in with Sky.  Tony was an art dealer who had operated a successful gallery in SoHo up until two years earlier when he began to get sick.  Sky took a book from the coffee table.  It was a photo album.  There were pages and pages of photos of Sky and a rather strikingly handsome man  holidays, vacations, around the city.  These pictures rounded out a life.  I looked closely at Sky in these pictures.  His face seemed lit from within and he looked happier than I had ever seen him.  He continued to tell me more about this man- Tony- his partner.  As he continued, I glanced at Beth.  She continued to stand implacably with her back to us. 

Between his tears, Sky told me how he had cared for Tony as he lay dying in their bedroom.  An agonizing tale unfolded of a brilliant man who slowly was stripped of his dignity.  Tony, at the end, developed what Sky called AIDS related dementia.  His mind had gone. 

Sky got up and took an urn from the bookcase.

"Tony died a year ago.  I haven't been able to say goodbye yet," my son said as he reverentially placed the urn in front of me, on the coffee table, next to the open photo album. 

I was dumbfounded and I was in shock.  For years my son had hidden all of this from us.  He had loved, and lost, he had fun and he grieved- all without telling us.  I was angry and hurt that he had deceived us, that he had lived a lie. 

"Why didn't you say anything to me or to your mother?" I pleaded. 

"I was afraid of losing you," he said.  He continued looking at his mother with an expression that seemed to be a pathetic need for acknowledgment.  She continued to stand there  seemingly unmoved by her son's words or by mine. 

It suddenly became clear.  From the time Sky was a little boy, he had always been the model of perfection that his mother had demanded.  He was the perfect child, he was the perfect student and had become the perfect lawyer.  He knew that Beth could not accept anything other than complete perfection or at least what she viewed perfection to be. 

But I also knew that Beth had to be terrified.  She had put so much energy into Sky as a child.  Now that child had a disease that could kill him. I went to touch her and put my arms around her.  She was stony to my touch. 

"I have to get out of here," she said to me in a very clipped staccato cadence.  "I can't be here."  I looked at Sky.  He nodded and sighed.  We put our coats on and went to the door.  "I'll call you tomorrow," I said to my son.  He smiled- but it seemed very forced.

"Goodbye mother," he said plaintively.  She refused to look at him or speak to him. 

The rain had stopped and there was a winter like chill in the air.  I opened the passenger door of the car and Beth got in.  When I situated myself, I started the engine and we sat in deafening silence as we waited for the car to warm-up.  Beth had resumed the position she had for the drive into the city.  Her head turned facing the passenger side window.

My thoughts turned to my son. The story that he had told me about Tony.  Was that horror story going to replay itself for my son?  I tried to think of my son being that sick.  He was a robust young man and he didn't look that sick.  I suddenly had a feeling that the doctor had made a mistake.  But the feeling was fleeting.  I knew he hadn't.  I wanted to envelop myself in a fantasy- a healthy son and a compassionate wife.  But neither was true. 

As we were caught in the uptown traffic, I turned and focused on Beth.  Not a muscle moved. Like Rushmore.  She had a blank, vague expression of no discernible feeling or thought.  But those eyes- they gave it all away.  I could see that they were filled with tears and the terror.  As approaching headlights washed the interior of our car with a garish brightness, she looked like a frightened wild cat caught in a hunter's snare.  All that exterior control, all that surface calm was a thin veil over a tempestuous caldron of unexamined feelings.  But that veil- no matter how thin was made of lead.  It lowered occasionally, but only with judgmental anger.  Even anger she would reel in very quickly after its initial expression. 

What had happened to my family?  We were embroiled in something that was alien to us. It was as if we had landed on another planet.  The topography was unfamiliar, every twist and turn had a surprise in the ready.  I couldn't navigate as usual.  The regular rules didn't apply.  We had never had emotional upheaval thrust on our lives before- or not that I remembered.  I didn't know what to do with it or whereto go in order to purge it from my soul. 

I yearned for those chartered waters that were like home.  As comfortable as an old slipper.  My mind wandered back to those safer moments.

The Saturday mornings when Sky was a boy.  In retrospect it seemed like they were almost ritualistic, but they didn't feel that way at the time. Every Saturday morning I would take my young son out for breakfast.  Beth liked to sleep late and he and I would get an early start of the weekend chores.  I'd drive down to that old diner in Suffern.  IT was one of those '50's numbers that gleamed with chrome siding and neon sign flashing in the window.  Inside we would sink into the red vinyl seats of one of the side booths and talk and ear.  What did we talk about over our juice, eggs and hash browns?  I couldn't remember.  Did it matter?  We were together. 

The day trips to Hunter Mountain.  I'd wake Sky up in the dark stillness of 4:30 AM.  An ungodly hour, but we ad to have an early start for a good day on the slopes.  Watching the sunrise in the cold clearness of mid-winter as we drove on the Thruway.  There was hardly a soul on the roads with the exception of long haul truckers.  Even with the mammoth lines for chair lifts and the crowded slopes, those days were ours. 

As my head turned into a sea of vague reminiscences, pictures shot through my mind in rapid-fire succession.  My impressions of Sky.  My impressions of Beth.  But no impressions of the three of us.  I thought hard.  I knew we had taken vacations together and spent holidays together  but I just couldn't envision it now.

Beth was the perfect wife.  Our household ran like clockwork.  Christmas- now that was Beth's time.  Our home became a veritable wonderland of the Yuletide season.  She spent weeks decorating our home.  Of course, it was always in the best of taste.  Evergreen garland wrapped around the banister, the living room mantle festooned with greenery and holly. Then, of course, there was the tree.  We would spend days going to the tree farms of upstate New York, searching for the perfect noble fir.  It had to be a noble fir- nothing else would do.  But it had to have a precise shape and, most definitely, no holes!  Once the tree was chosen, Beth would oversee its decorating with the detailed eye of a renaissance master painter.  Ornaments that adorned one bough would quickly be moved to another to create just the right touch, just the right harmony, and just the right balance.  No detail was too small to remain unnoticed. 

The Christmas Even Open House was Beth's night to shine.  With the house decorated and cleaned to perfection, she would carefully open our home to my colleagues, people we knew from the country club and our families.  The food was thoroughly delicious and the atmosphere seemed perfect.  Funny though, something seemed to be missing.  It was like a Currier and Ives print- aglow in labored and deliberate warmth- but it was hollow.  A set piece- like Sky's apartment. 

The moon gave everything an otherworldly glow as we passed the gated leading into the park.  I drove halfway around the road that circled Tuxedo Lake and made the hairpin turn that goes up Summit Road and reached the highest point in the village.  After we got to the end of our long gravel driveway, I turned off the ignition and sat in the car.  Beth got out and, without saying a word, walked into the house.  I sat there for a few minutes; I don't remember what was going through my brain or through my heart.  

Finally, I got myself out of the car and walked over to the edge of the hill that sloped from our house and gracefully cascaded, via a perfectly manicured lawn, to the shores of the lake.  In the brisk autumn air, I surveyed the moonlit valley.  It was completely silent save the rustling of the leaves. Whirlwinds of fallen leaves formed in the night breeze. 

I had looked at the valley and the lake from this very place- this square foot- hundreds, if not thousands, of times before.  But that night the night that I learned that my son had AIDS, the view was different.  The world had been inexorably altered for me.  Tuxedo Park was the same, the way it had always looked but somehow it was foreign and unfamiliar.  There was a palpable difference to everything.  Maybe my perceptions had been forever altered. 

Few men have the opportunity to distill a moment in rime that changed their lives forever. That moment, looking out at Tuxedo Lake in the chilled night air, I knew that my life had changed forever.

II. Requiem Aeternam

I opened the curtains of my bedroom window and looked at the view of Central Park bathed in the golden hues of the morning hours. The morning joggers were making their way around the reservoir, the dog walkers where holding onto the leashes of their charges.  It was a morning like all others for most of the denizens of the city.  Nothing remarkable- it wasn't a noteworthy day.  I smiled longingly for a life that was routine, days without change.  My life had changed dramatically in the three years since I stood on the hill looking at the view of Tuxedo Park in the moonlight.

Only a few months after that pivotal night, I had told Beth that I wanted a trial separation.  She was exceedingly polite about it and she never asked me why.  I had hoped that we could remain close.  After all, I had not last my feelings for her, I just didn't know how she felt about me or if she felt anything at all.  After her moment of rage with Sky that night, she regrouped and retreated into the closed off world that kept her safe.  However, she did not want a trial separation.  If we were going to separate, she wanted to divorce.  No loose ends; it had to be neat and tidy.  Our attorneys handled most of the divorce and we didn't see one another throughout the entire process until the day that we had to appear in front of the Judge in order to receive the final decree.  When the divorce was official- I stopped Beth on the steps of the courthouse and told her that I hoped we could see one another.  She smiled and that was the last we spoke.  She never phoned me nor did she ever return my phone messages or letters.  Somehow, I wasn't surprised.  An ex-spouse did not fit into her picture. It was a situation that would not fit into her neatly crafted existence.  But neither did her son.  She had not visited Sky since the night he told us that he had AIDS.

I went to the kitchen to make a pot of coffee and thought about Beth.  I knew that she cared about Sky.  I knew that she cared about him very deeply.  She just could not accept a situation that she viewed as a personal failure. I wondered- did she view it as his failing, hers or both of theirs?

I had the doorman hail me a cab.  The morning was already beginning to get hot.  By midday it was supposed to get up into the high 80's or low 90's.  I greeted some of my neighbors who left the building while I was waiting for a cab. As usual we smiled at one another and commented on how fine the morning was.  I didn't think that they really wanted to know how I really was feeling. 

Once in the cab, I quickly told the driver to take me to Saint Vincent's Hospital.  Sky had been admitted for his third hospital stay in as many years and was quite sick.  But this time it was different.  Before it had been because of pneumonia or some infection.  This time it was not so obvious and the doctors seemed baffled.  Since I had taken the one bedroom co-op on the Upper East Side, I stopped at Sky's every morning on my way to work to see if he needed anything.  When he was in the hospital, I would usually stop to see him both in the morning and after work.  I always hated visiting him in the hospital.  The AIDS unit was filled with young men and women that mirrored my expectations of Sky's future.

As we drove down to the Village, the cab driver kept attempting to engage me in idle chitchat and I tried my best to be cordial, but I was not much in the mood to discuss traffic, the weather or the Yankees.  After a while of this, I just opened my paper and pretended to be reading.  I couldn't concentrate.  My mind kept wandering.  I read the same thing over and over as thoughts rushed through my head.  I kept re-reading the date- June 16, 1992. 

When I got to the AIDS unit, a few of the nurses greeted me and looked at me with sympathetic smiles that seemed more patronizing than usual.  I walked into Sky's room.  He was lying on his side in bed with his mouth open and his eyes rolled up in his head.  I stood motionless as I stared at him.  The sound of his breathing was labored and raspy.  I pulled the chair that was next to the window up to his bed.  I reached down and held his hand.  There was no response.  His emaciated body just kept twitching involuntarily.  All feelings drained from my heart immediately.  Like an elephant that knows by instinct that death is near, I felt it.  I could almost taste and smell death in that dimly lit, pale green room.  My head became a jumble of things I needed to do.  Suddenly I wanted make myself busy- doing things.  I was petrified of being left alone with only my feelings.  I ran to the nurses station and asked what was happening

From behind me a hand touched my shoulder.  It was Sky's doctor.  He took me to the solarium and sat me down on the gray coffee stained sofa and told me very gently, but very directly that Sky's kidneys were failing fast.  I had never known before that AIDS could effect kidney function.

"The disease is not responsible for his kidneys failing," the doctor calmly explained.  "All the medications that Sky has taken over the last few years, many of which are highly toxic, are the culprits here. These drugs are a bargain with the devil.  You can gain health in certain ways, but loose it in other ways."

I sat staring at the doctor's face. I began to focus on his pores and the pock marks on his cheeks.  "He must have had a horrible case of acne when he was a teenager," I thought.  He looked grotesquely distorted and ugly to me.  His eyes seemed to burn with evil intensity.  I wanted to kill him.  This repulsive demon just told me that the drugs he gave my son were killing him.  My view of him was distorted by the message he carried.

My palms became clammy and I began to breathe heavily.  I finally summoned up the question I knew I had to ask, but the one I dreaded asking.  "How long?"

"When I told your son about his condition last night, he asked to be taken off all medications and to be put on to a morphine drip.  I am sorry to say that he has 24 to 48 hours left."

My mind nearly exploded with the information.  Twenty-four hours?  That's one day.  I had so much that I still wanted to say to him.  So much I wanted to do for him.  The doctor told me that with the amount of morphine being pumped into his body, he would not be able to respond to me.  Anger suddenly began to well from my guy.  I was beginning to feel again.  I was enraged.  How could Sky do this?  He had not given me the chance to say goodbye.  He hadn't allowed me to tell him that I loved him- one last time.  How could he rob me of this?  I suddenly wanted to run back into his room and scream at him. 

But I didn't.  In a semi-coherent daze I walked down the hall to the pay phone. First, I called my secretary and told her that I wouldn't be in for the next few days- that something personal had come up.   My secretary and the other partners at the firm knew that Sky was sick, but I didn't want them with me tight now.  My son was dying and I wanted to be alone with him, or maybe with he and Beth.

I called Beth,  "Hi!  No one is here to take your call right now, so please leave a message at the sound of the tone and I'll get back to you as soon as I am able.  Have a great and wonderful day!"

"Hello Beth.  I hate leaving this sort of a message, but I have no choice.  I'm at Saint Vincent's with Sky.  The doctor has told me that he is going to die within the next two days.  It would mean a great deal to me if you were here.  Bye."

I returned to Sky's room and stood over him.  I watched his body as it fought in a struggle with death.  Wracked with pain and amazingly weak, he still fought to live, or at least his body seemed to be fighting. 

I was torn in two; one part saying, "Live, damn you live!" and another part saying, "Let go Sky- it's all right, you can go."

I leaned down and kissed his forehead and told him that I loved him very much.  How odd- for years I never told my son how I felt about him.  I assumed he knew. But for the last few months it seemed that I could never tell him enough how much he meant to me and how proud I was to be his father. 

I sat with him all day. As the hours passed, his temperature kept rising.  He felt like he was burning up.  I asked the nurse to find me a basin of cool water and a sponge so I could cool him down.  At first she looked at me like I was a lunatic.  I knew she was thinking that he is so high on morphine that he wouldn't feel the fever or a cool sponge bath.  But I felt helpless and I needed to do something for him.  My little boy was slipping away and there was nothing I could do.  She gave me a weak smile of understanding and fetched the basin. 

I gently bathed my son for the first time in his life.  As a baby Beth always gave him baths.  I had thought it was her job.  But I realized on that day  June 16, 1992, as I gently sponged the cool water on Sky's warm skin, how close I felt to him.  U kept talking to him.  I knew he couldn't heat me.  I just wanted to talk to him- to remember those times that were special- those Saturday morning that were ours, our ski trips together to Hunter Mountain. 

I began to feel the tears welling up in my eyes and I collapsed into the beige vinyl chair and began to sob.  I was jolted by my own actions.  I had never openly wept before.  But I couldn't stop.  It kept coming. 

I looked at Sky; his breathing had become much shallower since the morning. I caressed his hand as his body continued to twitch.  Then a low guttural noise came from the back of his throat and his chest heaved suddenly.  No more noises.  No more twitching.  It was over.  I sat with him quietly.  The nurse came in to tell me Beth had just left a message for me.

I looked at the pink message slip.  "Beth called but didn't want to disturb you.  Her thoughts are with you." 

The nurse looked at Sky and then at me.  "I am so sorry," she said. She turned out of the room to leave me with my son.

I was numb, I was in pain- but I knew that my life would go on.  My son had given me an amazing gift.  Through him, I had found my ability to love.