- WATERCOLOR BY CHANDLER WOODFIN Woodfin is a featured artist in the December edition of the local art subscription project LxWxH, titled “se Détériorer.” You can subscribe to LxWxH by going to lengthbywidthbyheight.com. Click on the illustration to see more of Woodfin's work.
I know the right word is "widower" but everyone turns into a girl when the person they love most dies. Their bodies get small and they make small sounds. They don't know what to do.
Everyone dying turns into a girl too. Their eyes get surprised and wide and they look at you like "What?" but you don't know.
We were all at the hospice to help Julie die. The three of us, her husband Bob and Tony and I, had been there all along, and Brian was coming up from California because we told him we thought it would be soon. Brian had been made a widow too, back in the '90s when Jim died. Julie and Bob had taken Brian out a lot after that, to dinner at a new place every week, to shows and movies, etc. The rest of us had lost people too but only friends or family, not our mate. So if anyone knew what it was like, that would be Brian. Plus, in the past few years, Brian had gotten a new, good life. He'd met a great guy, another great guy we all adored, and he and the guy, Eric, had adopted a kid and moved to California and gotten married.
When people get close their bodies get light, like sticks or wadded-up paper, and you can move their limbs like a doll. Their heads don't, though, their heads mostly stay the same, but heavier somehow, and harder without their hair or only baby hair where it was starting to grow back. You can learn how to move their bodies, you lift them slowly and tell them what you are doing, I'm lifting your arm, your leg, I'm putting my arm behind your back and I am going to pull you up, I'm turning you on your side. But their heads are so heavy, like a rock, but covered with something thin and tearable that you can feel when you lift it up to plump the pillow or change the sheets or straighten the neck, if it is bent, to help them swallow or if they are trying to say something or look at you.
Sometimes you looked away from them and when you looked back their whole face looked like teeth like they were almost already a skull.
