愛·感恩
本期主題
作者：by Joyce Wadler
The worst Thanksgiving I ever had came two days after they sliced me open， belly to 1）pubic line， and the surgeon， coming in to see me in recovery said， “We got most of it.”
“Go to Ken’s，” I tell my friend Herb， trying to send him to the old friend in Brooklyn with whose family we’d spent the holidays for years. They did a great Thanksgiving； crazy newspaper stories； relatives we’d known so long they felt like ours.
“How could I enjoy anything with you here like this？” Herb says.
Like this： Staples in my belly. A 2）morphine drip. My surgeon from when I had breast cancer， the easy cancer， coming in to visit saying， “They tell me it isn’t as 3）dire as it looks.”
Herb isn’t my husband. At the time this is happening， he has been my best friend for 20 years， a feature writer like me. The first night after surgery， he sleeps in a chair next to my bed. He stays in the room when the nurses change the dressings. He sees the 4）sanitary pads with the blood， the kind you get when they take out your 5）ovaries and your 6）fallopian tubes but cannot remove the 7）uterus because it is stuck to the colon with what the doctors at Memorial Sloan-Kettering 8）euphemistically call“disease.”
Love does not come as expected in a cancer hospital. I had seen this a few years earlier， sharing a room with a woman who was dying. She looked like what I had once thought cancer looked like： 9）emaciated， skin and bones. Her husband was with her. In the middle of the night the woman 10）moved her bowels. The sharp stink of it pervaded the room. Her husband stayed by her side and murmured comforting things and emptied the bedpan. And I， staying overnight for a minor procedure， thought that this is what real love was and how different it is from what you think love is when you are 22 and what you see in the magazines： the romantic dates， the sexy 11）lingerie， the beautiful young woman， the rich， handsome man helping her out of the expensive car. Love was emptying the bedpan. Love was sleeping in a chair.
Food does not interest me during the bad Thanksgiving， which is good because I cannot eat. I suck on ice cubes and sometimes there is a broth and eventually I work up to Jello. Herb is indifferent to holidays， though not to food， but Thanksgiving that year does not interest him either. Thanksgiving 12）evaporates. I seem to remember sending him to the cafeteria Thanksgiving Day and talking about a very bad hamburger， but I am on morphine， I am stoned， so who knows. And when I am not stoned， I think about death. It has a presence as strong as Herb’s； it’s sitting in its own chair， talking to me.