Aaron M. Fortkamp

I routinely only keep one blanket on the bed, winter through summer, excepting the occasion of the coldest or warmest nights. It was bought at a Target in Norfolk to be used as bedding in the McDonald house. On clearance. Touted as a heavy (but not quite weighted) blanket, it blends the steadfastness of a weighted with the flexibility of regular cotton. It’s got a velveteen texture to it, patterned lengthwise in ridges you want to spread your fingers wide enough to trace, almost like holding its hand. A deep navy blue, but it does lighten and darken according to the brush of a hand. I bought it resignedly, shaking my head. This would be the time I’d find the best blanket ever to swaddle these bones. Perversely excited, even, to get to take it home again after all this, before we’d ever removed it from the thick, clear plastic tote it came in, and without even knowing how all this would end up. If nothing else, was the feeling, if I can count on absolutely nothing else, I have the blanket issue taken care of. 

I don’t know how I ended up with it in the divorce. I’m not the superstitious type, typically, I always figured my ex to lean that way a little more than me, so the blanket that saw us through, that weathered the storm? How is it mine? I don’t remember there even being a debate over who got it. Did she not appreciate its protection, its warmth?

I am fully aware, of course, she does strive as best she can to move past that period, as if they were the worst days of her life, and perhaps they were, but if that was the cost then I’d pay it again, and again, and again.

How do you care for the chronically ill? What words of consolation can you provide? It’s okay —wow, starting off poorly, you can’t say that because things are not okay, nor will they be okay. You can’t just lie like that, but you can’t tell the truth either, not in plain words. It won’t last forever, except if it will, eventually you’ll get used to it, well now that’d be a silly thing to say to someone dying, and even if they’re not dying, or perhaps not for a long while yet, who deserves to grow accustomed to pain, to exhaustion, to depression and despair? And anyway, friend, that depression and despair out to be where you come in, if you can. If you can only find the right words. 

Except—no. You can’t put that on yourself. Giving care, giving comfort, is not the same as relieving a person’s symptoms, subverting outcomes, healing, curing. No. All you could possibly do for them could never change their diagnosis. So what do we even mean by care or consolation? Condolences? Are we sympathizing with their loss? Pitying them? No one wants pity, but when we are sick we all need to be cared for, we need that person who will play that role for us. And we usually have a pretty good idea of who we need it to be.

Of course, those we tap for the role are automatically given a user’s manual or anything.

My girlfriend wants me to ponder the possibility of life itself. Life as a quantifiable, a tangible, not a descriptor but an extant thing, a sort of container of energy we all carry with us, why, because thinking of it that way begs the question: what becomes of this energy when we die? Not literal “energy” energy, just a shorthand way of talking about it, not something quantifiable, visible, palpable, or definite, not something you could catch with a net, but something. Some thing. On some other plane. Some spark. Could it be possible that the spark does not simply go out, when it ceases to animate the body? After all, what lights it in the first place? That’s perhaps the real question, because we know what sustains it, we know how to feed it and we know how to quash it, we understand what makes matter organic, and we know the difference between alive currently and not alive anymore. To a limited extent we know how to make it “alive” again. But that’s just, literal energy. Literal electricity. Actually, literal oxygen, and drugs, a lot of drugs, and keeping the body body-temperature the whole time is key, and that time is one hour, we can wait one hour and keep most all of the body’s cells functional, is the point.

I don’t think anyone would call that “alive,” though.

So she’s got a point. We can strip all the chemistry and physics away, but it still feels like there’s a piece of the puzzle we don’t yet understand, a necessary piece, with some extraplanar function, perhaps a catalytic of some sort.

Except not just a catalytic. Because, physics and chemistry aside, I will say, it sure does feel like life has momentum. I’ve watched things with momentum, and a life sure behaves like it has momentum. Like a kindled fire, it flares up swiftly in the beginning, and once it gets going it doesn’t want to just stop, you never see one disappear in a snap, at least not of its own accord, people don’t tend to collapse and die just walking down the street, and if they do you’ll never hear it described as “natural causes.” If you leave life be, just let it do its thing unmolested, it’ll go on and on, wasting fuel with glee while it’s in abundance, and but all too soon sipping at it slowly like an alcoholic nursing the last of a bottle. Which begs another question: how do you feed it properly? What fuel does it need? How do you sustain life, extend its duration to the max?

Again. Not literal food. Or a cocktail of drugs and oxygen.

Let me share my blanket with you. You don’t have one, I do, let’s share. Am I depleting my resources? Am I making a sacrifice? Conventional wisdom says yes. I am a single-cell reactor, the ratio is one to one, what comes out must first go in, and if I give my own potential energy away I’m dooming myself to its lack. If I use my time to care for you, instead of for myself. If I use my resources to feed you, I have to be literally taking the food out of my own mouth, right? I suppose. Perhaps. You do these things once, one time, you give that sign-wielding dude at the intersection a five-spot, or you let a corporation donate for you, from the profits they make off you, if you round up at the grocery store or pay higher prices at Starbucks knowing they’re donating more to charity because of it, then yes. It is. Just that simple. Transactional, accountable, as in a ledger, remove from column A and add to column B.

Doesn’t feel like that with your own kid, though.

(Usually.)

Here get under this blanket with me and see how much warmer you make me, how warm we can make ourselves, together.

I know you’re sick. I know. It takes its toll on you. I see it. It takes a toll on me, too, in the seeing. I can’t fix everything for you, and there’s only so much room under the blanket besides, and so much to care for in the world besides, but that’s why you agreeing to be under here with me is so special. You let me choose you. You let me make the attempt. Not to fix things, but to make things better. To attempt better, the better is not a guarantee and in a lot of aspects not even possible, but you don’t use that as an excuse to push me away, to keep yourself cold, to spare me the effort and attention. I can’t change your conditions, but I can invest in you and you can invest in me, and I don’t know, maybe you understand this already while I’m only just figuring it out, but my efforts and attentions only seem to redouble, with you under here, with our collective glow. I feel like I could do anything. Maybe there’s more room than I thought, or could be. I feel the potential for growth, maybe this blanket is stretching out, molding to the two of us when it used to cover just one.

Or maybe you’re reshaping me, the blanket’s the same size but maybe I’m figuring out new ways to contort and posture myself within the boundaries, perhaps yes this leaves me closer to the edge sometimes, a greater chance of exposure, just a sliver of an opening and cool air cascades in, but when we spoon just right baby, I tell you, I can’t say for certain what it does for you but for me—

Well. That’s it, isn’t it. If absolutely nothing else, I know it’s you. My big blue blanket. My comforter. And I’ll do my best to be yours.

(Again again. Not literally.)