Isn't it amazing what can make you sad? A few weeks ago I wrote about shirts bringing tears to my eyes. This past week it was a parking garage. Not just "a" garage, but "the" garage where I parked every day when Ralph was at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center. My gastroenterologist moved his office to the cancer center a few years ago, and I was there for my annual checkup and to get the expected news that yes, this is my colonscopy year, but, yuck, let's not focus on that.
As soon as I start up the ramp into that dim, gloomy place, I am overcome with dread. I must have spent hours in there, driving around looking for parking spots, then trying to maneuver into them without scraping the paint off the car in the next space. I know that I spent almost $2000 on parking that year because I added up the receipts after Ralph died.
I lost my car there twice, the last time just two days before Ralph died. The nice man from parking services who drove me around trying to find it, said politely, "Think someone maybe repossessed your car?" Oh, gosh, I thought, I wasn't a debtor, just a woman who was about to lose the person she loved most. We finally found the car and I headed out for an appointment with our attorney and promptly got lost on the way.
Loss of one kind or another permeated that year. I lost my mother--she made it past her hundredth birthday and died a couple of months later. I lost my wallet several times, I lost a file folder from my office, I lost my keys. Most of those items I found after panicky searches but all of those memories seem connected to the garage.
I parked there during Hurricane Rita, the non-event that sent thousands of people fleeing from the city and getting stuck on highways with no air conditioning,
no gas, high tempers. I spent the weekend at the hospital and kept an eye on the garage from Ralph's window. Fortunately, the storm made a turn and Houston escaped its wrath.
I often left the hospital at night, trudging through the dark garage. Someone asked me if I was afraid and I replied that fear had never crossed my mind. I was too focused on Ralph's illness to worry about running into a mugger or some other unsavory character. Besides, I think people who park at cancer hospitals have other things on their minds than accosting someone in the parking garage.
There is another garage that links to M.D. Anderson. It's Garage 4, which is newer, airier, and has larger parking spaces and a sky bridge that connects to the hospital. You may wonder why I choose to park in Garage 2 instead since I hate it so much and see it as a symbol of Ralph's last year. I think I'm compelled to face the demons of Garage 2, to try to exorcise the ghosts that haunt me there, and maybe this doesn't make sense but I guess I also park there to prove to myself I can.
