Banana Banana Cake

I savor the last bite of cake and lick the last of the sweet frosting off the tips of my fingers slowly with tears wet on my cheeks and pain in my heart.  I close my eyes and remember Saturday, sending David and the kids ahead to Grandma’s house while I stayed behind to put together J’s birthday cake.  He turned two a couple of weeks ago and we were getting around to his birthday party BBQ.  David and the kids made the cake the day before while I went to an exercise class.  It was “Banana Banana Cake,” his new favorite recipe, except he had forgotten to add the walnuts.  He made sure to remind me on his way out the door to add them to the frosting instead.  He is so good about taking the kids away when I need just a few minutes’ peace to restore my patience with them.  I put the cake together and headed to the party.  We had a great time and even made it home at a decent hour to get the kids to bed.  

Then Sunday came.  David got up with the kids at the crack of dawn, he always does.  I adjusted my pillows around my big belly and drifted in and out of semi-sleep, listening to them getting breakfast and watching cartoons.  He came back into the bedroom and asked me if I was ever getting up and I pulled him onto the bed to snuggle.  I scratched his head and rubbed his back, in perfect contentment until the kids started fighting and he got up to go referee the situation.

I rolled out of bed slowly, reluctant to leave my nest.  I always make the bed first thing after getting up to lessen the likelihood that I will crawl back in it instead of getting ready for the day.  I joined everyone in the kitchen to get some breakfast.  David, of course, was already itching to get out of the house and do something before church.  He suggested avocado picking in Pupukea.  It sounded good to me and we got ready to go, too slowly for him.

We didn’t talk much on the drive, it was a beautiful day and we are good at companionable silence.  I knew from the look on his face he was thinking about his next business move with our house that he was trying to sell, those wheels are always turning.  I reached out and rubbed his shoulder and smiled at him.  The air in Pupukea is always a little cooler and fresher and it felt nice driving to the trailhead.  We parked and he was surprised to notice that the tree by the road was ripe already, and all the lower-hanging fruit had been picked.  He decided to climb that one and pick a few, and then we would walk up the trail and check the other tree that he had initially intended to pick from.

Up he went with strong easy movements, gripping with his hands and feet, to the first branch where he asked me to hand up the picking pole.  I did and then herded the kids a little way off to climb on a fence while David picked.  I was always worried that a falling avocado would hit one of them.  I was feeling happy, the kids were happy playing and everything just felt. . . .good.  From time to time I would hear a branch crack as David would kick some dead wood down, or clear off a stray vine.  It always made me turn my head to see what was going on, but wasn’t alarming.

It must have been the sound of a branch cracking that made me turn my head to see the very last millisecond of his falling body out of the corner of my eye.  I don’t have a clear visual memory of it and I don’t try to search too hard for the details of it in my mind.  But the sound of it.  I am praying to forget it.  It comes back to me in my moments of panic and makes me sick.  The sound of a hard avocado hitting the ground and splitting into pieces.  Except it didn’t make sense, because it wasn’t an avocado, it was him.  I swore and ran to him, Z screaming “Daddy!” behind me on the fence.

He was laying on his left side and I fell to my knees beside him, calling his name.  My heart stopped as I saw the blood pouring out of his right ear and I knew.  I knew it was his head.  I grabbed my phone out and punched in 911 as fast as possible, the panic mounting.  The operator answered and I started yelling into the phone that my husband had fallen from a tree, is unconscious and hurt and please please send an ambulance.  It didn’t make sense at the time but the operator did not respond to me but hung up instead.  I dropped my phone between my knees and screamed his name, trying for any response.  He started breathing, ragged, labored breaths, red foamy blood coming from his nose and mouth.  His eyes never opened.

I became aware of others around me, from the nearby Boy Scout camp.  One of them was telling me they had my kids, one was calling 911, others were finding and putting pressure on his wounds.  He started fighting them off, eyes closed and swelling fast.  He tried to push up off the ground, tried to get up.  I held my arms under his head while he rolled and fought and struggled to breathe, to cushion him from the hard asphalt.

The firefighters arrived and tried to strap him to a board.  He fought.  They got him restrained awkwardly and we waited for the ambulance.  Minutes, hours, years, who knows.  Finally the sound of sirens coming and they took him away from me.  I was asked to give information.  I felt clear and was able to answer, though the panic seethed just below the surface of necessary lucidity.  They packed him into the ambulance and I was sick that I couldn’t ride with him. . . . my kids.

They were brought to me as the ambulance drove off.  I decided to allow a kind lady from the camp to drive us in my van to the hospital.  My heart yearned to fly to him, it didn’t matter how fast we were going, it was too slow.

That night passed in sleeplessness and numbness.  I went home the next morning to my empty house to shower and collect some things for that day.  My breath caught in my chest as I saw his slippers outside our front door.  His tile saw on our porch.  His keys on our counter.  His dirty clothes on our floor.  I tried to shut it out and focus on the task at hand.  Packing food, I opened the fridge and there was the leftover cake.  And the world swirled around me and I broke inside.  I cut a piece to take with me back to the hospital.  I eat it outside on a bench and feel the sweetness of what our life has been fading away, savoring it as I savor the last crumbs of Banana Banana Cake.  Knowing there is nothing I can do to keep it, to save it.  

My heart grieves and aches.  And I know from here everything will be different.  And hard.  But somewhere deep in the smothering unknown, I can feel a tiny speck of something.  Something good.  Maybe different will be ok.  Maybe different can even be good.