Marquette University Intimations Project

Anonymous

When I got back from Italy, I had to self-quarantine for two weeks. I had to wait to see my grandparents, and the day I was “free” was the day the city shut down—the nursing homes were the first to close their doors. 

Window visits—a COVID phenomenon. 

Window visits—a screen separates us from him. 

Window visits—wiry mesh disrupts the image of him.

I fight to differentiate the wired intersections from the man behind the screen; my eyes disagree on which to concentrate on, so the wiry frame comes in and out of focus, blurring his figure. When I focus on his room it seems bare. He had to move in without us, so there are no decorations on the walls or pictures on the shelves. The only item of comfort or familiarity is the blanket that my grandma knitted. He doesn’t even have his wedding ring. We think it’s in the boxes we had to compile that are now sitting in our basement. 

Can you speak up, my dad asks. I press my ear to the screen to try to hear his muffled response: When are you getting me out of here? He asks every time. 

Everything’s shut down you’ll have to stay here for a bit longer, my dad replies every time. 

How many visits have we had at this window? 3? 5? 10? Every time we have to explain we cannot come in and he cannot come out. 

He used to walk with a bright red walker. He would walk next to me, the Parkinson’s would make him involuntarily lean forward, but we would go for walks outside. No one takes him on walks in here now, so he has declined to the wheelchair. 

This is the last window visit before I leave for school. I will be six hours away from the window visits that will happen without me. When I say goodbye, I try to focus on him, but the wiry mesh gives me a headache.  

Window visits only work when you are in the same state. Letters go undelivered and phone calls are left unanswered. Each time I call, I count fifteen dull rings before I hang up. With each unreturned call, his voice gets farther and farther away. So, I go back for a weekend. Students were not supposed to leave campus, but I could not take the empty rings any more. 

The leaves are changing now when I approach the same window I had approached so many times before. I sit on the bench looking at the door and waiting for the wheelchair to enter the room. Waiting. Waiting. Focusing on the empty room. 

Sorry, he’s not feeling well. 

I go back to school. Letters go undelivered and phone calls are left unanswered. I imagine that he did come in the room when I visited. That he was feeling well. That the room was not empty. He would have rolled in next to the window. His smile would have made me smile, even though he probably would have forgotten to put his dentures in. He would have asked me about school and I would tell him that we would play gin rummy together soon. I would have. But he didn’t. 

The inevitable phone call comes. Six hours away from my family. I do not write any more letters or listen to the dull ringing of the phone. Funerals are for the living. But, if there are no funerals—what can the living do to say goodbye? The acceptable grieving period comes and goes, but the empty feeling remains. 

I try to remember his voice and his face, but time blurs it together. When was the last time I saw him? It was before school started… I think it was August. The sun was beating on my back as I leaned towards the window to hear him. He was leaning towards me asking if he could share a cookie with me despite the window screen dividing us. I think he wore a blue sweater… or was it red? All I can remember is the wired mesh.