Gone
The empty chair
at the end of the dock
stared blindly toward the sea
surrounded by clouds
gray as coffin liner cloth.
. . . . . . . . . . . .
"Joan, when did you lose him?" Sue asked, new to the trailer park, living just two double-wides down from Joan.
When, that's the question, Joan thought. He died exactly 28 days ago, pulmonary infarction the medical chart in the VA hospital said. But he had gone long before that.
Over 700 days before his death, he started leaving. Pieces of him fell away like a worm-holed structure, termite-ridden, leaving trails of sawdust on the floor. The doctor declared early onset dementia.
She lost him when he left behind civility, angering easily at minor infractions.
"Why's this damn chicken so rubbery, girl. Can't you cook no better than this!" he'd scream. "You call this bed making! I've seen tighter corners from my raw recruits," he'd shout in his gruff Army sergeant tone.
She lost him when he lost his way. A reconnaissance specialist in Afghanistan, he always found his target through dead reckoning. But one day, he left their trailer at 11:00 a.m. By 3:00 p.m., she was worried. At 6:00 p.m., she asked her neighbors to help her search. She found him at 8:00 p.m., shivering by the dock.
"Hey Ben. What are you doing? We've looked everywhere."
He turned to her, his eyes vacant, black as undertow, and said, "I went for a walk, somehow ended up here, but I don't know where here is."
She lost him when he lost his memory. Once she went into the den, and he said, "Hello mam, may I help you?" ever the gallant officer but without a hint of recognition. Or she'd enter their kitchen, and he'd look at her with fear, shuddering, "Why are you here? What do you want? Leave or I'll call my wife."
She lost him when he lost his words. He'd try to speak, but his words were like waves rippling toward shore, never reaching land. His thoughts were like a stone thrown into the bay, sinking into silt, creating concentric circles that diminished into emptiness.
She'd lost him before the dementia. He joined the Army two years after their marriage and shipped out for his 12-month tour of duty in Afghanistan. He returned with PTSD pinned to his shirt like a service medal and terrors wrapping him like concertina wire. At night he shouted out dead men's names like bloodied words from a bitten tongue. In the day he narcotized with bottles of Budweiser, French kissing their long necks like a lover.
"Joan. I wondered when you lost him," Sue asked again.
Breaking from her reverie, Joan said, "Last month. We were happily married for two years," not telling Sue that he had been gone much longer.
Steve Gerson writes poetry and flash about life's dissonance. He has published in CafeLit, Panoplyzine, Decadent Review, Vermilion, In Parentheses, and more, plus his six chapbooks Once Planed Straight; Viral; And the Land Dreams Darkly; The 13th Floor: Step into Anxiety, What Is Isn’t, and There Is a Season.