Diamonds & Rust

This is a story about the death of a loved one. Most of what our family has gone through is not my story to tell, at least not alone. Here's one I feel good sharing on the one-year anniversary of dear Elke's death.

**

"Oh God, have we made a terrible mistake?" I thought. And not for the first time.

Elke and I were cozied up on faux leather recliners in Gurnee. Timothée Chalamet was cautiously approaching an unspeaking, bedridden man I didn't recognize, who in turn was being sung to by a balding Ed Norton.

My first panic of the outing had come when I realized the extent of our confusion at the signage in the outlet mall parking lot. How is it possible to not be able to find something as big as a movie theater?! You're forced to ask these kinds of questions when you're helping your mother-in-law walk further than she has in weeks—probably about as far, I now know, as she would ever walk again.

But we'd made it, and we were characteristically still a bit early. "I love going to the movies," she'd texted me while we waited. Deep breath.

I was now learning that Dylan idol Woody Guthrie, whose music music I obviously knew but whose biographical sketch in my head consisted entirely of one guitar-affixed bumper sticker, had died of some kind of neurodegenerative disorder. I forget if the movie eventually states that it was Huntington's. All I could think of at the time was that I'd taken my poor mother-in-law to see a film whose opening scenes centered around a man going through the same kind of hell that she was.

Of course, all these reactions were more about my own discomfort than Elke's. She'd known Guthrie had had Huntington's, I later learned. And anyway the film had been her idea. Plus you don't need to worry about reminding someone of a medical reality that their every waking moment for the past three months has been utterly shaped by.

I settled in. The film washed over us.

It was splendid, we both agreed afterward as we pulled out of the monstrous parking lot. "The music, the historical perspective, the acting - superb. So he was an asshole - he's allowed," Elke wrote at 3:03, just before her phone died.

Back at the house later that evening, I got a series of follow-up texts. She mentioned her 50-year Joan Baez fandom and the singer's double LP of Dylan covers.

The record is called Any Day Now. I think I recognize the cover from my own father's collection. It's playing as write this, sitting (as I do every day) in the formerly utilitarian guest room we made beautiful for Elke to live and die in.

There are two more texts from that day. She sent me the lyrics of Baez's Dylan remembrance song "Diamonds and Rust," which begins like this:

Well I'll be damned

Here comes your ghost again

But that's not unusual

It's just that the moon is full

And you happened to call

And here I sit

Hand on the telephone

Hearing a voice I'd known

A couple of light years ago

"I have always loved that song," she also wrote.

All told, it was about as introspective an exchange as Elke and I had during her time with us. I can imagine a million reasons why the film and this music spoke to her, but it would have been uncharacteristic for her to say much more.

Our mostly one-way text chain picks up in its usual tone and rhythm after that. Symptom updates. Logistical requests. Replies to my spoken questions. But the texts of December 31 are a diamond amid the rust.

Isn't it just like a good poem for the words she sent about our last joyful outing to sing out today in a different key?

It's one light year since you left us, Elke. We miss you, especially your voice.