The old woman, thin and frail, lies motionless in a hospital bed.  A single intravenous tube drips precious fluid back into the collapsed veins of her emaciated body.  The room is still and timeless, yet the hall outside is a constant bustle of noise and activity.  The woman and her husband don’t seem to notice. 

I stand, unnoticed and unneeded by the foot of the bed.  I am a trespasser here.  I feel useless and don’t dare speak lest my presence betray the seriousness of the effort before me.  The woman’s husband, also very old, stoops as he lovingly, carefully, spoons tiny bits of cooked carrots into her mouth.  A carrot slips from the spoon and falls to the floor, but its escape goes without note.  The man and woman speak to each other in short, soft sentences - hard to hear.  They understand.

The woman is dying.  They both know it.  There is sadness in each spoonful.  They have spent a lifetime in each other’s presence, a lifetime of moments.  But now they cling to these last precious moments together.  It is all they have – that, and each other.  

A large nurse pokes her head in the door and the room is temporarily filled with cheerful, meaningless chatter.  The nurse comments on how well the woman is doing, and everyone nods uncomfortably, but no one really believes it.  And when the nurse leaves, the room is thankful for the calm.   

The meal finally finished, the old man kisses the woman tenderly on the forehead and promises to be back to feed her breakfast.  She nods.  They understand.   He and I don’t speak as we pad slowly down the hall toward the elevator.  We are in slow motion compared to the rhythms of the hospital. 

Soon, possibly very soon, the man will be alone for the first time in fifty years - cut adrift in a world that is too young and too digital to notice.  His daughters will lose their mother.  My daughter will lose her grandmother.  The world will lose another old woman, and we will all move up one place in line.