Empathy

Some people feel it. Some people don't.

This is Anty.

There was an ant in my shower yesterday. I have no idea how she got there. My house was built to be air tight. It has a complete air exchange system. We aren’t just breathing old farts in here. But the house is air tight. Very efficient. The siding and roof are metal. It sits on a cement slab. No unwanted guests can come in or get out.

So how did one ant end up in my shower on the second floor of my air tight house? I still don’t know.

I was fascinated watching this ant. I’ll call her Anty. Almost all ants are female except for the few male ants called drones the queen produces to mate with her. After that, they die. They’ve served their purpose. Then they’re toast. Unneeded and unwanted. Women rule in the ant world. They should rule out here as well.

I watch Anty. She’s on the tile floor of the shower. She goes from one side to the other but finds no exit or her buddies. She makes this same maneuver back and forth the length of the shower looking for the way out. She makes a fast, high-pitched chirp or squeak to call for her friends. She rubs a scraper on her belly against a ridged surface to communicate, call for help. I put my ear down close to her on the shower floor but her cry for help is too high for me to hear.

At this point she has long forgotten how she got here to Adams Court or how she made it all the way up to the second floor of my metal encased house, but here she is.

She transitions from checking the floor to climbing up the walls. She undertakes the same process as she did before. She goes up one wall and then back down to the ground. She walks around a little bit then tries going up the wall a little further down but the magic rabbit hole is missing. She can’t find it anywhere.

There is no water or food in my shower. She’ll soon run out of fuel. She has a life expectancy of one to three years, but only if she can make it out of my shower.

I watch her for ten minutes or so and then my husband calls me for dinner. We eat. We talk about how he is doing physically since he is now dying. We talk about how he is doing emotionally. Not much conversation there on his part. He prefers to discuss the flavors of the dinner he made. He says he wants to hire a death doula. As we finish up our dinner he calls our daughter for the name and phone number of a doula she knows.

I do the dishes and then go and check on Anty. Anty hasn’t been napping while I’ve been gone. She’s still looking for the hole in the tiles that doesn’t exist. She wants desperately to get back together with her buds. She also needs food and water. I picture her calling for them even though I can’t hear her. Even calling isn’t going to help her get out of my air tight house. She’s lost and frightened, or so I suspect. Yes, I know she’s just an ant, but I can project if I want to and at this moment, I do.

Here is my dilemma. I have three choices: I can leave her in the shower. Eventually she will run out of energy and die. I have never gone without food or water to the point of death, but it is a horrible way to die.

I can put her outside but it’s 30° with a small dusting of snow. It’s a quicker death than starvation but even so freezing to death is painful.

Or, I can kill her.

I don’t like any of those choices. I don’t want to be in her situation. I want someone to rescue me from the situation I am in. My husband is dying. I will be alone trying to figure out how to fix the garbage disposal. Here’s what I know about my garbage disposal: There is a switch next to the soap dispenser. I push the switch up and the disposal goes on. I push the switch down and the disposal goes off. It’s the same lack of awareness that Anty has as she climbs up the wall and then climbs down. We are both unprepared to save ourselves.

My husband asked for a stack of 3 x 5 cards to write down the things he needs to help me with before he dies. That was two weeks ago. So far I’m the only one frantically writing down all the things I don’t know how to do. He has handled pretty much every physical and financial situation from the beginning. His dad died when he was 17. He assumed his dad’s role taking care of his mom and younger sister. He’s used to it. It’s very familiar to him. He’s also very good at it.

I may need another stack of 3 x 5 cards to list everything I don’t know how to do.

I want to turn in his car. It’s a lease. But now I realize that the garage door opens and closes when he pushes a button inside his car. If the car is gone, there is no button to open the door. Yes, I can get an opener at the garage door place but then it has to be programed to my garage door. I don’t know how to do that. Yes, I could watch a YouTube video. I’m sure there is a Youtube video that can teach me how to do every thing he has always done. But just typing in ‘Youtube’ overwhelms me at this moment.

We’ve been playing this game of you’re the man who fixes everything for 42 years and me closing my eyes singing la de da, la de da.

I am back to being Anty climbing up and down my shower walls looking for help that soon will no longer there.

I envision a very steep learning curve directly ahead of me.

I did the best I could for Anty. I gently picked her up and put her in the basement with a little water next to her. I hope she lives her full life potential to the elderly age of three.

I hope I live my full life potential too when he dies.