the muse has been on an extended break. i think she's back. this came to me this morning. i like the idea a lot.

I really do not know if I can bear to watch this, even though I know what will happen when he opens his fist. The doctors and nurses stood around have no clue. All they see is my poor husband, lying swaddled the hospital’s baby blue crochet blankets. His face is drawn and lined.

They do not even know what is wrong with him, other than he is an unwell man. His energy seemed to disappear overnight.  
 
What looks like half a smile moves his greyish lips. They tremble slightly, as if he is about to cry, but the ends of his mouth turn up almost imperceptibly and he begins to grin. His lips stretch out, making them even paler, thinner.

Oh! I love those lips and their tender memory of his sweet kisses. That first one vivid now as it was forty-seven years ago, stood on the promenade at Blackpool. Fine rain was soaking our overcoats into a darker shade, our hips leaning gently on the metal rail which stopped us toppling into the churning brown and white sea below.

A deckchair attendant was sat in his small, green hut, dismally wasting his day. He watched us kiss, and waved when we finally surfaced, shouting across to us, You’re a lucky fella. She’s as pretty as today is awful. 

I went bright red in the grey day. Ernie looked down at me, his arms wrapped around my shoulders, and simply smiled. I smiled back at him, he pulled me closer, crushing me against his chest, and whispered through my hair, wet from the rain, 

‘I know, I know.’

And he leaned back slightly to look at me, then raised his hand to cup my cheek. I pressed my skin into his palm, slightly wet from the rain like my hair, knowing he would hold me there forever.

Remembering this, I am staring at that same hand, now a fist, clenched in a final defiant gesture to our life, which he could not, or would not explain to them. They tried of course, psychiatrists and psychologists, the pretty nurses who changed his bedclothes, our family.
 

They ran tests, took X-rays, manipulated and manoeuvred his bones and flesh. They found no reason why his hand had closed. A consultant head doctor came and asked him questions. He answered as he is, always has been, taciturn and gentle. They prised open neither his hand nor his head. I loved him more for that.   
           
I on the other hand know exactly what it was about. Not that I could tell them of course. I saw nothing else at the funeral, could only stare at the whitened skin where his knuckles appeared to be straining to get through. I saw him look down through his red-wet eyes and smile at the hand. Oh! How I wanted to touch him then.
 
On the bed, he is still smiling, and the medical staff are hovering, questioning still. They feed a drip into his arm, the needle piercing his skin and small amount of blood dripping out before the glucose tube is attached. Oh! I think, leave him be, can you not see he is happy, now it’s the end.
 
I look down at his face and then, for the first time in a long time he looks at me, the handsome man taking in my gaze. His eyes move down to his fist, wanting me to look too. Lying prone, its back on the sheets, the fingers seem to be more loosely clenched. I look back at him, and he nods slightly, eyes brightening. His lips move, I know, I know.
 
Oh! My hand goes to my mouth, as I remember the last time he said those words to me, our words, whispered in my ear whenever I told him how I felt. He always did know, whatever I was thinking.
 
He had not spoken our words since I lay on my own bed, life leaving me. He leaned in to hear me speak, my voice too weak to hear.
 
‘I love you, dear’ I whispered to him. Through my thin hair he said his words, our words, I know, I know, closely, softly, gently, the last thing I heard.
 
‘I love you’ I said again, this time into his gentle hand, pressed firm on my lips, helping me leave the pain behind, catching my words, pressing until I left him alone.
 
He had stood then, looking down at me, until the Health Visitor had arrived for my daily check, standing still, occasionally raising his clenched fist to his forehead. I watched as the Nurse phoned for a doctor and then the coroner came. Ernie sat in the corner of our room, his eyes not leaving his hand all the while, even when they ask him questions about how I died.
 
Now, I barely notice the medical staff in their attempts to revive him, the sound of the machines fading as his breathing fades. That fist is now opening slowly, his fingers releasing their secret, my words. A memory of my heart fluttering stirs as he first sits, then swings his legs onto the floor. A handsome young man, he comes to join me. I open my lips to tell him, but his raises his now open palm to cup my face and looks down at me.
 
‘I know, I know,’ he says.