Practicing for widowhood

My husband and I sometimes have conversations that others might consider morbid, but really they’re a kind of love talk. My husband will tell me that actuarily he knows he’ll die first, since he’s a man and older than I am, so he wants me to know how to do such-and-such. And I’ll protest, saying I know I’ll die first because of my history of cancer and its treatment, so I want to make sure he knows where I put this or that. Needless to say, our daughter freaks out when she hears us talk this way, so we try not to do it in front of her. Truthfully, I’d have been grossed out if my parents talked like this.

A couple years ago, that same daughter got a cat. And since she often travels for work or pleasure, she often needs a cat sitter, and she often asks me. If I’m free, I pack a suitcase and take the subway from the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I live, to Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, where she lives.

I don’t have many friends in Brooklyn, but I make dates with those I do. Mostly I roam the borough on foot, trying to get, well, my footing. Thing is, Manhattan is mostly linear, narrow and long, with parallel streets and sensible naming conventions, whereas Brooklyn sprawls in all directions and has streets, avenues, boulevards and “places” with the same name. So I spend a lot of time lost and confused, feeling a little demented.

When I get back to my daughter’s apartment, which is in a hospital that was converted to residential use and retains some of the original institution’s hard surfaces and sharp angles, the cat is my only companion. And much as I claim I savor solitude, I have to admit I get lonely. Just me and the cat, in an old hospital ward, both of us looking forward to the diversion of our next meal.

I go to bed early, like an old person, and hope the cat will get under the covers with me. Usually she’s comfortable enough with me to do it by the third night. We’re both up before day breaks—two companions in the dawn, me eager for coffee, she for kibble.

If this is what widowhood and dotage are like, it could be worse. I could be all alone without the cat.