I’m making slow steady process through the novel I told you about last week by Richard Ford called Independence Day. Frank, the middle-aged protagonist who is divorced and in the middle of what he calls his “Existence Period” just received a call from Ann, his ex-wife. She called to tell him that she had decided to get remarried. Frank had been secretly holding out hope for a possible reconciliation, but obviously, Ann’s news changes all of that.
Listen to his thought process:
“Up to that moment, Ann and I had had a nice, cozy-efficient system worked out, one by which we lived separate lives in separate houses in one small, tidy, peril-free town…But in a pinch, a real pinch, say a head-on car crash requiring extended life support or a prolonged bout of chemo, no one but the other would’ve been in attendance, buttonholing the doctors, chatting up the nurses, judiciously closing and opening heavy curtains, monitoring the game shows through the long, silent afternoons, shooing away prying neighbors and long-ignored relatives, former boyfriends, girlfriends, old nemeses come to make up—shepherding them all back down the long hallways, speaking in confidential whispers, saying ‘She had a good night,’ or ‘He’s resting now.’ All this while the patient dozed, and the necessary machines clicked and whirred and sighed. And all just so we could be alone. Which is to say we had standing in the other’s dire moments, even if not in the happy ones.”
I don’t know if never-married, or divorced, or widowed women think the way that Frank does, and I don’t even know if most single men in the same situation think this way, but I sure do. I don’t have an ex-wife, but I wonder what would happen if I were in such an accident. The idea of having nobody present to bug the doctors, chat up the nurses, to take control of the hospital room, and to shoo away people who were never around when I was well…it bothers me.
If such an accident happened today, I wouldn’t have to worry. My mom is still alive. She’d do what mom’s do—no matter how old I am. But I don’t have a backup plan, and coming up with one is no easy task for a single person. It’s not the type of thing you ask a person you are extremely close to, it’s just something that happens automatically during a crisis because you are so close to another person. If you have to ask, it doesn’t count. And if the wrong person just assumes the role, well, that’s a disaster in the making.
I don’t have any answers. I just loved Frank’s insight. So many of the important moments of life come down to having that one person who will be there when you need him or her most.
