Starting Over - John Fetto

I don’t know all the story, though I should. I didn’t write it down at the time. I don’t remember exactly what I did. I remember that after the hospice nurse and the hearse left, his wife’s friends asked if there was anything they wanted him to do.

“All this,” he said, meaning the hospital bed, the walker, the oxygen tank, “can you get them to take all this away?”

They understood. He didn’t sit, he did something, even if I can’t remember what he did, I’m sure he was moving. His wife’s friends made it all disappear. The hospital bed, the oxygen tank, the walker. It all disappeared, though to this day he can’t recall anyone taking it away. He might have driven to the airport to pick up his cousin, because his cousin, his surrogate brother, was there that afternoon. He must have cried, but I don’t remember. He must have answered calls. He would have gotten on the internet. Yes, I’m sure he did that. He wrote something about his wife. He liked to write. He would have written. He would have saved it somewhere.

Something that afternoon or morning, the wife’s friends left and the cousin arrived. The cousin had been there all along, a phone call and instant message away. They were but one year age difference between them. Both Brooklyn born and transplanted to California, both lawyers, the default occupation for the good student. Always competitive until they stopped and the younger cousin became the prop holding up him. The cousin had become a prop for everyone. And now he was here for him.

He, not the cousin, but the he who is subject of this story, would have pushed himself to start over. Even that day he would have started making plans. A trip to England. He would finish his book. No distractions now, he couldn’t see anything else bad ever happening to him. This was so much. He could become a journalist, go to Afghanistan, he could stand up and take photographs while soldiers lay hunkered down in trenches, because nothing worse could ever happen to him.

It was over, he would have thought to himself and he would start again. It would be easy, he told himself. No, he didn’t say that, I’m sure, but I would bet he thought it, knowing him as well as I do. He would have thought everything would be easy now. It would be years before he admitted he was wrong. Just as he had been wrong about nothing worse could happen.

Still, he did go England, and it had been fun. And yet it never really felt like starting over. He simply survived.