Much as I would have liked for me and Tim to be one of those couples that ambled along hand-in-hand, that wasn’t really an option. He needed both hands to push his wheelchair along. My hands were often full of camera gear or picnic baskets or day-to-day shopping.
Whenever we came to a halt, though, we took hands. And we always held hands when we drank each other’s health (or whatever other toast we felt like proposing) before dinner. (My dad once groused that no one held his hand at the dinner table, but that was in his last years, when he spent a surprising amount of time grumbling. I was surprised it bothered him: My parents never were a hand-holdy pair.)
I’ve been thinking about holding hands a lot in these pandemic days.
Timothy and I held hands through so many ominous doctors’ appointments, during treatments in varying degrees of unpleasantness, before surgeries and in recovery rooms. Our fingers, threading together, formed each others’ lifeline, anchor rope, safety net, string out of the maze of despair and suffering.
We rarely let go of each other in his last waking days. As he faded, leaving me the one awake to keep watch, I held his hand as if I could help tether him to my side of the great divide… And when it became evident his body was never going to return to the darling, heroic self he had been, I held his hand to stave off any fear he might feel as the days, hours and minutes he had with me ticked away.
But at times, other people’s hands held us up
I have also been remembering the hands of all those who supported us through the hard years. Dozens of hands: of nurses and therapists, specialists and floor doctors, surgeons and aides… In busy clinics and in quiet corners of hospital ICU floors, these devoted people took Tim’s hand gently to check his pulse, handled him carefully to give treatment, and gripped mine tightly when I looked like I might fall apart.
As I enter the anniversary of the week Timothy died, I remember them all — some vividly, some as only shadowy, kind presences at 2 o’clock in the morning. We could not have made it through this week two years ago without their hands supporting us as he readied to leave, bearing me up to stay.
If you think of anyone tonight, don’t think of me or of Timothy, but think of all those matchless hands in the healthcare world. Especially the caring hands we have lost to this pandemic. And all those poor souls whose hands were held by a kindhearted nurse or doctor, because their wives and husbands, children or sweethearts could not sit by their side, to hold their dear one’s hands as they passed from this world to the next.
Wear a mask. Wash your hands. Help someone else. Hold your darling’s hand while you can.