John gave Susan's hand a final squeeze, trying to feel her grip again. He wasn't sure if her last pulse of strength on his hand was dramatic enough to be stored in the long-term memory bank. His memory was already bad, and now he had to remember something he had barely felt. He'd better write it down. Record it before it's lost. He kissed her forehead. Not soft enough to be the young, silky skin she used to have, but still nice. Like the feeling of a comfortable, worn-in baseball mitt.

He sat down in his big green chair beside her bed. Susan's deathbed. It wasn't natural to call it that. She had spent many years living, many good times in that bed. He remembered all those nights she woke to tell him about her dreams. Those lively dreams that made him laugh and tease her about her sanity. Once, Susan had dreamt that they were forced to defend the bedroom from dinosaurs. She had woken up and thrown herself across his belly, calling out, "Stay back, you reptiles from hell!" No, definitely not her deathbed. She had too much life to now be labeled as dead. He sat beside her lifebed.

Leaning slightly over the armrest, John wondered if the creaking noise was coming from the chair or his own arthritic joints. The drawer was just within reach and he pulled out the bottom notebook. He creaked in return to sitting as upright as his back would allow.

He let himself crumple way back in to his chair, watching the dust particles rise up around him. She hadn't cleaned in quite some time. He watched her lay so peacefully that he began to envy her serenity. He had never slept that peacefully. He wrote this in his journal. Details, details were important. If he could just remember everything about her, record every detail, maybe she wouldn't really be gone.

But John couldn't begin a sentence. He couldn't think of a way to start the journal entry about his wife's death. Eventually he stopped trying to form a sentence and just wrote down facts as they came to him.

Soft hair. No tight curls. Wedding ring on chain and finger. Feet like mountain peaks. Blanket. Nightgown. Salmon? Coral? Baby pink?

How can this be enough? They were just words, words that would never really fit together. John noticed every little detail at that moment, but he no longer knew how to describe them. He noticed that even in death, Susan glowed. Her hair hadn't been permed in a while and the curls were starting to fall out. It looked nice. He wished she had worn her hair like that more often.

He had noticed that her wedding ring was directly over her heart. She had threaded the ring on a long necklace, just long enough to fall between her breasts. Now it was over her heart and she had put her finger through it, chain and all. Her fingers had become thin - too thin to fill the ring she had once been unable to remove from her finger. He tried to remember where they had been when this had happened. John and Susan had snuck into the hotel kitchen and stole some butter to grease it off. They were in the Caribbean, or was it Mexico? He would have to look it up later.

John sat there, like a statue, remembering the times he didn't have to think before he wrote. It used to be compulsive. He could do exactly as he wished, expressing himself in any means possible. Any means were possible. For their 10th anniversary, he had painted her. He didn't even need her to pose for him; he knew her every curve, freckle and scar. And now he sat in that dusty, worn-out green chair, with the cushions too thin and the armrests too far apart, and he could do nothing else but stare at her bed.

He pictured all the ways he might put his thoughts into matter. He always thought of himself as rather creative. He knew so many forms of expression. Raw talent was never the issue, picking the medium was. The image of his wife's bed floated through his mind like a leaf in the wind.

He saw himself painting a masterpiece about time standing still. The bed would be in the center, catching the viewer's eye. There would be layers upon layers of mismatching covers sprawled on the bed. Between each layer would be people, animals, books: anything that had touched the bed over the years. All the occupants of that very same bed - starting with the first couple to ever bring it home - would be painted strategically to overlap without cluttering this wonderful work of art. He would call it "Time Tied Together," or some such nonsense. But he hadn't painted since his hands began to shake several years ago. He had given away all his paints and brushes to his granddaughter, the one who always showed an interest in art. He closed his eyes, admitting that maybe the arthritis had conquered him slightly.

Perhaps a story. Every chapter would unfold a different conversation, event or feeling that transpired on that very bed.