Sarah Wineberg woke at ten minutes after seven, just as she had done every day for the last fifty years, as the frost on the lawn outside was just starting to thaw. She went to the kitchen, put on a pot for tea, and wafted over the bare wood floor of the hallway to the bathroom where she would freshen up for the day. She looked into the mirror, marveling at the journeys imprinted into her aged face, the pale skin that had once been taut and firm now slack and sagging, her life's highways criss-crossing across her bony cheeks and around her shriveled lips. She sighed the sigh of a mature woman who has accepted the conditions of old age, and yet went to work with the tools of her makeup case and all its little miracles, powdering her wrinkled skin and stenciling her thin plucked eyebrows.

She went into the bedroom and walked around the bed to the closet. The bed was a queen but only the left side was used, the covers thrown back in contrast to the pristine and untouched other half. She stood in front of the closet and peered at the many dresses and outfits displayed inside, wondering what to wear on this cold Tuesday morning. Yesterday she had worn a maroon sweater with a pair of cream colored slacks but today she decided she would put on a simple blouse and long skirt with stockings. She would wear those with a pair of rose gold earrings and matching necklace she hadn't worn in as long as she could immediately recall. "This should do," she thought to herself. She walked over to the bed and picked up her wedding ring off the nightstand and placed it on her finger, the skin marked with its presence from all the years it had adorned her hand.

The tea began to shriek and she returned to the kitchen to see it off the burner and fixed an English muffin with butter and brought the two over to the table. She sat and ate her breakfast in silence, staring out the small window that looked upon the short back yard of the house, watching the cardinals, wrens, sparrows, and finches fluttering through the trees in the late fall air and flocking around the large bird feeder she kept generously filled all year long. "Oh, the birds are so lucky," she thought as she let out a long sigh. "To live without a care in the world... Stanley always loved it when the northern birds come down from Canada to visit New Jersey this time of year. I'll have to tell him later after his treatments are finished for the day."

She finished her breakfast and cleaned up, then went back to the bedroom to finish getting dressed and put on her coat and shoes and gather her purse. She left the house and started off on the road in a terribly oversized American sedan that rolled down the street like a Viking flagship. She was a slow and careful driver. It had been less than a decade since she had even first driven an automobile, after Stanley began to get sick and couldn't drive anymore. At first she had been so frightened, hesitant and terrified in the foreign position of control behind the wheel, and then as time passed, as with all things, it became ordinary, just another stitch in the fabric of her existence.

Her first stop was the Big Y grocery mart down the block in West New York, where she picked up some things for the house and a six-pack of ginger ale for Stanley. He loved ginger ale and most of the time refused to drink anything else. She would pour it for him into Styrofoam cups the aids gave them so he could drink it more easily and brought at least two cans back home with her each day she saw him.

She paid the cashier at the store and left, having a few more errands to run before she went to see Stanley today. She went to the bank, where she waited an eternity in the teller line. She withdrew enough from the savings to cover the monthly Medicare deductibles that provided for the nursing home. It was so expensive! She wished she had the energy to care for Stanley herself, if only so she could be closer to him, and save some pennies as well, but the effort was more than she could bear.

She had held up for about three years when he first got really sick, and though she loved him with all her heart, she was just an old woman with osteoporosis herself who had found that she couldn't handle the exhaustion of full time nursing. Their only son Daniel had been killed in an auto wreck back in 74' and she wouldn't bother her daughter in law, she must be so busy with her second husband and family and besides they had never been close. In the end she had made the only reasonable choice by conceding to the nursing home option, and it wasn't as if it were a horrible dungeon of sorts by any means. Stanley was treated so nicely by the doctors, nurses, and aids there. He was always in high spirits, occasionally even making jokes and always bringing a smile to everyone's faces.

She smiled herself as she stood at the teller counter and thought of him telling his little jokes and stories. Such a character, that Stanley Wineberg! It was his wit that had first entranced her, all those years back in December of 1946, when the war had been finally over and there was room again for young love in people's hearts. They had met at a smoky lounge in New York City on a snowy night, he with his smooth, handsome, dark Jewish looks and khaki sports jacket, her with her hair all done up like Judy Garland, draped in her mother's pearls.

He must have made her laugh at least a million times that evening, her shrill, girlish giggle rising above the clatter of clinking glassware and bouncing through the cigar smoke saturated room. How he had begged her to see him again at the night's end, standing in the cold, her girlfriends trailing behind on the corner, a cap covering his long ears, holding her arms to keep her warm! He had worn a Navy issued blue wool scarf, and as the wind blew strongly as they said their goodnights in the street he had taken it off and lain it across her shoulders and gently wrapped it around her neck. It smelled of his musk and she had loved it. Oh, and how she had pretended to be somewhat disinterested of his affections, coyly teasing him as the snow fell on their shoulders, as she kissed him for the first time, not caring about what her mother had always told her of men and first acquaintances and the like.

They had walked along the sidewalks of New York in the late hours looking for a cab. A street peddler had come up to them selling Christmas snow globes. Stanley had bought one and gave it to her. It was an angel singing choir under sparkled blue glass.

"It's beautiful," she had told him.

 "Never so striking as you, my dear," he'd replied, trying his best to sound suave and charming.

How cheesy! Yet how it had made her glow! They had kissed again and he had sent her and her girls off in a cab back to Brooklyn. She wondered if she would ever see him again, and realized that she had to, that was the impression he'd left on her. And so she had, and they became closer and closer over time, and, as they used to say in the movies, "the rest was history."

She blushed a rosy hue thinking of that beautiful night as she walked from the bank teller to the branch door. She remembered how she looked in her dress, and the bittersweet realization that she would never look like that ever again, those days so long past.

She left the bank and went to the stationary store to pick up a pack of ribbon. She had found something special for Stanley the other week and today was finally going to give it to him. She would wrap it up with some Christmas paper left over from last year, one that didn't look too silly, and the ribbon would add a nice touch. She wondered how his face would look, how he would react... She suddenly realized the gift was as much for her as for him, probably even more so, but thought that it was okay. "Old women are allowed their moments of selfishness," she said to herself, "as they have already spent the better parts of their lives caring for others."

Despite her relative fortitude, there were hard days for Sarah. Days when the frustration gripped her like a firm vice, when she felt like she couldn't handle another single day of the loneliness that had enveloped her life since Stanley had become ill. Those were days when she stayed home and locked herself in her room and cried till her eyes were tender and sore. She cried as she watched the daytime courtroom reality dramas and the afternoon soaps, wasting away upon her bed until before she knew it the sun was fallen in the sky and another long day was done. Yet somehow, time after time, as the perpetual light of day cracked through the window of the bedroom the next day she felt her strength return, and the desperation of the previous day faded like an old photograph, and as always, life went on. 

She paid for the ribbon and left the store, returning home to put away the groceries and home goods. She went into the den and lifted Stanley's "present" off the piano chair and brought it into the kitchen to wrap. She wrapped it so nice in a box she saved from Macy's and tied a nice ribbon around the top. She gathered her things once again and left to go see Stanley.

She arrived at the nursing home in North Bergen right on time. There was no need to sign in, all the staff there new her by now, even the ones who were new. She said hello to Karyn at the front desk and made her way over to the staff nurse's office. Heather, one of the nurses that Sarah was friendly with, was just walking out the door and nearly walked right into her.

"Oh hello, Mrs. Wineberg!" she said cheerily, looking up from a clipboard she held in her hands. "Are you here to see Stanley?"

"Of course dear," Sarah replied. "Is he done with his treatments for the day?"

"He should be up in just a moment Mrs. Wineberg."

"How is he today?" Sarah asked, her face turning slightly stern.

"Well, he seems to be doing pretty much the same I'm afraid," said Heather, looking away. "The memantine hasn't been as effective as the doctor had hoped and he still shows severe nerve cell communication disruption and continuation of cognitive and memory loss. The Clozaril has kept him stable, but the dementia..."

"No, no, no, dear, I know all that," she said a little impatiently. "I mean how does he look, is he happy, has he ate today?"

"Oh, yes, of course Mrs. Wineberg, he is doing just fine if that is what you mean."

"Oh, that is good to hear. I brought him something of a present today."

"Oh how nice!"

"Yes I should think so."

"I'm sure he'll love it. Oh, look now, here he comes!"

Another nurse appeared around the corner of the hallway to their right and wheeled a pale old man with a sagging face down the hall towards them. She recognized Sarah and leaned over and whispered something to the old man. They stopped in front of Sarah and Heather and the old man looked up at the two of them.

"Hi Stanley, look who came to see you!" said Heather.

The old man looked confusedly at the two of them, his watery eyes drawing back and forth between them.

"Hi sweetheart," said Sarah. "Hi Stanley."

"Hello...Who are you?" he asked in a raspy voice. He sounded rather medicated.

"I'm your wife honey," she said. "It's Sarah."

"My wife?" he asked.

"Yes sweetheart. Can you try to remember today?"

The two nurses looked at each other, both feeling awkward, not knowing whether to leave the two of them alone or wait another moment.

"My wife?" Stanley repeated. "I have a wife?"

"Yes honey," replied Sarah gently. She was not upset or frustrated, she had been through this more times than she could count. But she hoped today would be different. "I brought you a present today."

"Do you hear that Stanley, Sarah brought you a present!" said the other nurse.

Stanley looked confused and a little tired. Sarah reached down and picked up the present and laid it in his lap, then began to untie the ribbon and unwrapped the gift for him. He leaned over to see what was inside the box. He reached inside with two pale sets of bony fingers and pulled out the angel Christmas snow globe from long ago. It was yellowed and faded from all the years it had been stored away. Sarah had uncovered it more or less by accident as she had been cleaning out the spare bedroom closet several weeks prior. It sparkled in the florescent light of the nursing home hallway, little "snowflakes" dancing over the angel's head.

"Do you remember this Stanley...?" she said. "You gave it to me the first night we met."

He stared at it for what seemed like a long time, an eon almost, his eyes blank. Finally a small fire lit his pupils. He looked up at Sarah.

"It was snowing..." he whispered.

Both of the nurses gasped in surprise. A tear ran down Sarah's cheeks but she remained composed as she held his hand gently. It had been two years since he had been able to remember her name, and shortly thereafter he couldn't even tell who she was. How long she had waited for this! She knew he wouldn't remember again tomorrow, just as she herself remembered what the doctor had told her the week before, that Stanley would probably not make it to summer without suffering another stroke at the least, probably something worse, and then she would truly be alone. And so, even if she had just one day...It was worth the world entire.

Stanley looked up at her, and Sarah saw him as he used to be, the years peeling from his face in her imagination.

"You're her?" he asked. "You're..." he struggled. "...Sarah?" She nodded softly, both eyes welling with tears now. She could feel the cold wind blowing through the streets of New York City upon her cheeks as the snowflakes danced around her and fell melting upon her hair. She could feel Stanley's scarf around her neck, could smell the familiar aroma of his skin, and around her the night buzzed with the sounds of distant traffic.

"You look beautiful." he said. He tilted his head, and there was his old black hair again, neatly gelled upon the top of his head, and his skin was tan and firm. "I must be lucky."

"You certainly are." she replied, their young hands warming each other in that soft embrace. "And so am I."

Copyright 2007 Dave S. Shearer
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