A Game at Sundown

Even in the midday sun, the walls in my nursing home room were a dull, ambiguous colour. It was almost certainly supposed to be psychologically demonstrated to soothe old people. That’s why I sat by the window at the end of the room,  my back to the door, without a single bit of that colourless paint even in my periphery. 

The view from the window was only a marginal step up: a courtyard with a growing weed problem, a patchy lawn extending some fifty feet before giving way to baby pines growing gregariously around mature oak and birch trees. Squirrels chased each other across power lines that bobbed gently from one pole to the next along the treeline. Birds sang, diving through the branches in whirls the Blue Angels would have been proud to call their own and chasing each other down, those feathered spitfires! Despite being completely unspectacular, it was beautiful and calming. 

I spent whole days sitting there passing most of the time playing chess games with myself. White’s move. Rotate. Black’s move. Rotate. Repeat.  I had a roommate, a man as old as myself who had only enough energy to cruelly hurl criticisms at the nursing staff.  In our entire time together, I never saw him go to the bathroom without the help of one of those poor assistants. The only thing he could clearly articulate was his immeasurable dissatisfaction for the people who fed him, cleaned him…kept him alive. Anything else he had to say was an abrasive sounding mumble that I had months to learn how to ignore. Not the makings of an enjoyable chess opponent.

There was a day when the sun shone especially warmly through the room’s window. It made for a relaxing game that I had no problem prolonging indefinitely, or interrupting with episodes of reading. White’s move, king’s pawn forward two. Black queen’s pawn forward two. White king-side knight forward. Black knight’s pawn forward one. Reading break. My roommate had been making some groaning that went almost entirely without fully-worded concerns, requests, or instructions. The nurse judged the timing to mean he wanted food. Ten minutes didn’t pass before he had warm soup brought to him on a table that pulled up to his bed over his lap. 

He struggled as he coarsely stammered: “If I want food, I can bloody well get it myself! Do you think I’m some cripple? I can’t get you people to give me a moment’s peace!”

I took exception to such a comment coming from, as far as I could tell, the only consistent disturber of the peace to be found. I admired the patience the staff had with him. I had never seen work so literally thankless. His impassioned insistence that he could walk even to the door on his own took most of his energy. Even as he coughed violently after raising his voice just above conversational level, he would not entertain the idea that he was any less vigorous than in the springtime of his years. 

I pitied him, but no less than I felt compelled to study him from my window-side seat. He was amazing and pathetic. Awe-inspiring when taken without the certainty that what I was witnessing may very well foreshadow my own years to come. 

I had grown comfortable having accepted a level of confinement that, I admit, I was averse to when I first began living here. I kept to myself and had plenty of time to think. It was not long before I settled into a routine. Usually I paid little attention to my roommate. But today, I found myself briefly haunted at the prospect that his condition was some kind of prologue. 

My mind abruptly turned to the man’s self-certainty. He was undaunted by his condition. I wondered how aware of it he was, what level of his reality he grasped, or if he was simply a historically stubborn specimen. It was clear enough that he was delirious in his age. His frailty made me feel confident of my comparative vitality. I started to feel like a young man again. I felt the seeds of my own illusion of redeemed masculinity take root.

I looked at my wrinkling arms and saw the muscular masses they used to be. I looked at my all-too-atrophied legs and saw their formerly athletic and trained selves. I felt like going for a run. I thought I might go out into the browning lawn, fix the derelict sprinklers myself, and trek the nearby woods as a treat afterwards. 

Death disappeared. It was as absent as my roommate seemed to me in those wandering moments. I became as stubbornly set against ignoring it as he was. Or perhaps, like I said, he was convinced that he was immune to death. In that case, I felt myself siphon his immortality and make a claim of my own. I didn’t know how, but death disappeared. 

I must have been outside myself as my little arms pushed my body from the chair. I must have lost my mind as it lit up with the thought of strolling in the naked warmth of the sun. I pushed with the determination of youth. It dimmed faster than the setting of a winter sun. I sighed, harrumphed, and finally  surrendered. And then it hit me. A sane person could, under certain circumstances, subject themselves to any number of fantasies. My roommate was like a funhouse mirror where his weakness nullified my own. The heaviness in my breath and feeling my meagre body cloaked in a baggy sweat suit collapsed the illusion, yet it was not so bad to be cast back into old age. I went to continue reading, but I wanted to finish the chess game. I put the book down. 

When my roommate died, I sat with my body partially towards his few family members, facing out the window, glancing over my shoulder periodically. Their eyes said they felt more inconvenienced than sad. I was distant and deferential, a small courtesy to strangers. 

That night, the silence felt so familiar. I had trained for it, pretended it was there for so long. I slept calmly, deeply, and without break. In a dream, I drifted slowly down a river lined with giant, breathtaking rocks that made a divine presentation out of the strong river. The thick trees above me spread out and the tell-tale mist of an approaching waterfall rose up ahead of me. I gently drifted a little faster and faster as each second passed. The mist sprayed my face. It felt like cool pinches against the warmth of a summer sun. I closed my eyes. I felt my stomach fall as I drifted over the crest. Falling felt interminable and my eyes were forced open. I had to see into what depth I was falling. 

But all I saw was neatly organised chess pieces against the orange sun as its light crept out from the trees.