. The Blinding Lake I drove to the southern tip o…

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The Blinding Lake

I drove to the southern tip of New Jersey and sat on the beach. There were no waves, no breakers. The Atlantic was a blinding lake in the late afternoon sun with a few fat gulls riding swells near the shore.

I’d been to visit my dying uncle who is nearly 100 years old and wasted beyond the point I thought possible. Though he refuses to eat, he bites at the air and chews nothing, weakly pulling the bed clothes and the nurse call-button to his mouth. The conscious and subconscious are at odds. He’s completely blind now. He breathes on his own. Aunt Ches, who is becoming more and more tired and confused as the weeks drag on, lately refers to Uncle Bert’s living will as his “will to live.”

She says Uncle Bert came around for just a moment on Saturday when she visited him. “We don’t live together anymore, do we,” he said. That was it. When I visited him with Aunt Ches on Sunday, Uncle Bert didn’t talk to us at all.

I drove Aunt Ches home. Afterward, I sat in the sand, squinting into the unusual stillness of the ancient, mortal Atlantic.