The Two Kinds of Decay

The Dump

After my third gamma infusion, my mother and I drove to the town dump on a weekday. Our town dump was not so much a dump as a futuristic recycling station with three kinds of glass, six kinds of plastic, two kinds of paper, compost and mulch and firewood, a book swap, and a section labeled Recycle, which was where you could get a pretty good pair of skis and where my parents got most of the furniture on the first floor of our house, including an antique Shaker chair.

My mother and I brought three of my canes there, and two walkers, including the one with the racing stripes.

And that day we ran into a neighbor, which was not uncommon. People went to the dump weekly, at least, to take a treasure hunt through Recycle. There were stage lights there that day, and I wanted to bring them home. Maybe because they were the heaviest things I saw there, and I wanted to see if I could lift them.

Our neighbor told us her mother had died just that week and that she was at the dump with some of the things from her mother’s apartment. Alzheimer’s, she whispered.

And my mother told our neighbor we were sorry, and that her mother, my grandmother, had had Alzheimer’s, too.

Then the neighbor saw the pile of canes and walkers we’d just left on the ground, and looked at my mother, and indicated she understood how sad it was that my mother’s mother had used those things until she couldn’t walk anymore.

How sure our neighbor was that her suffering was the only kind of suffering.

And how sure I was that mine was worse.