Promises

SAMUEL SHENOVA


Last night my father said to my mother, “You know why I’m still alive? So that you can go first, like I promised. I don’t want you to be left alone and I don’t want you to be in the care of others.”

My parents have become typical old people who bicker all the time and obsessively talk about their daily ailments. But in the past few years, I’ve seen them fall in love with each other, perhaps for the first time; their every moment spent together with intense claustrophobia and unflinching loyalty. They still go on trips, make plans, and fall asleep late after watching Turkish soap operas. My Dad calls my mom “Shoshana,” my mother’s Hebrew name, a name she hasn’t been called since she was a young woman and one that I rarely heard growing up. But that’s how they both are these days, young and bright and vocal, despite the wear and tear of illness and age.

I worry that my dad won’t be able to keep his promise and that he’ll die with that regret. I want to warn him to adjust his hopes but I can’t; his will to live for my mother is just too heartbreaking and admirable to dilute with reason. I’ve spent so much time writing my own versions of their deaths that I never thought they had their own. But I realize now how out of my hands it really is; how useless it is to rehearse for a tragedy while a miracle unfolds.


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