Roller Skates
The door squeaked as it opened, alerting the ones inside of my presence. I entered the quiet room in which the rest of my day would be spent. I set my things on the kitchen chair and looked around. The things once happy and loved in that room - piano, writing desk, books - were now faded and dusty, holding bags and box.
Helen looked up briefly from the kitchen table, organizing stacks of paperwork and mail.
“Morning,” She said.
”Good morning,” I said to Helen as I sat down looking at her daughter, gathering an idea of the day that lie ahead. Melanie shifted her head slightly toward me.
“Hey,” I said to Melanie, receiving only a weak smile in response.
I took a moment to look at her small body rested in the same chair, in the same exhausted way as the day before. I pushed away the thought of the way this cruel disease had stolen her youth and strength and replaced them with equipment and electrical chords.
When we met - like every caregiver’s story begins - I was just another reminder to her that she wasn’t getting any better. I started reading to her and what began as a desperate attempt to break the silence became a way to connect. I’d stubbornly read aloud to her as I did my son. When I’d finished all of her books, I’d brought some things from home; one of which became her favorite: my journal from high-school.
“Will you promise me something” she said one night as I read.
”What’s that?”
”Never stop reading to me.”
“Melanie.” I said, trying to halt the conversation.
“Some day,” she continued, “I won’t be able to make my own stories or even tell you that I want to hear yours,” She looked down at the floor to gather strength and looked back up.
“I do,” She said with a smile and a glimmer in her eyes displaying the beginnings of a tear.
“Especially this one,” she said with urgency, trying to stop me from getting emotional. She pointed to the top of the page on my lap entitled “Roller Skates”.
“Of course,” I laughed. “But I’m pretty sure you know that one.”
She’d flip through that one over and over again some days, reading it again and again.
Today was going to be slow. I could tell when she’d look at me, suddenly overtaken by a quiet heartbreak, weakened by the force of gravity that weighed heavy on her, I knew what she was waiting for.
”I rode my bicycle past your window last night”, I began repeating the words of her favorite entry by memory as I flipped through the pages to an unsent letter from ‘71. “I roller skated to your door at daylight.” I continued.
A faint smile appeared and her fingers fluttered faintly on the arm of her chair.
”It almost seems like you’re avoiding me. I’m okay alone but you’ve got something I need.”
By the end, her gaze had fallen off pleasantly to the side. I slipped away to the piano and returned with my hands behind my back. I stepped back in front of her path and held up two faded red roller skates, frayed brown laces dangling beneath them.
“Melanie, these are yours now,” I said.
She smiled and turned her head, humming a quiet tune. She always did, but this one was a little different. It was joyful, hopeful. She closed her eyes and continued - some notes so softly only she could hear. She composed her song adding parts, rewriting over others. Occasionally, I could see her fitting the pieces together in her mind. There was beauty in her that a piece of paper or a piano key could never capture. There were things I know she wanted to tell that no one would ever hear. But one thing I’m certain of; it was beautiful.
