Sharon Waller Knutson
Shannon, Sharon and Linsi
By Sharon Waller Knutson
The most traumatic event of my life was June 30, 2025, when I found my husband/soulmate/best friend/caregiver dead on the floor. I was devastated because I loved being part of the team of Al and Sharon for thirty years. Now I was totally alone or so I thought until neighbors, most of them strangers, started showing up to help and some are still here. As the first anniversary of his death approaches, I share their stories.
After Paramedics Tell Me My Husband is Gone
Kathleen is the first neighbor to show up.
All six feet of her. Silver pony-tail
swinging like the tails of the mules
she rides past our house before
her husband got dementia,
and they gave up the livestock
and now she walks an old dog
and feeds an aging cat
on forty acres, three miles from us.
She hugs me, murmurs sorry,
and then heads for the bathroom
to say goodbye to my husband
who lies on the floor like a mannequin.
She sits by my side when the medical
examiner, a tiny doll like woman, arrives
and asks me in the voice of an accuser
why it took me so long to call 911.
“I couldn’t get a dial tone,” I say
“So I kept shaking his arm and telling
him to please wake up. I thought he fainted
like he did three times before.” When
the medical examiner looks skeptical,
Kathleen puts her arm around my shoulder
as if to shield me from being arrested
since my home is swarming with cops.
“Phone service is terrible out here,” she says.
She is still by my side when I say “Goodbye
Sweetheart I love you” and kiss him on the forehead
as he lies on the stretcher like he is sleeping.
“He looks so handsome, just like when I first met him,”
I say and the medical examiner leaves with my husband.
As does Kathleen, but she is back banging on the window
as I field phone calls from family with her husband
and a bowl of cantaloupe and cottage cheese
which he spoon feeds me as food and fork
flies from my shaky hand while she fries up
the lamb chops my husband had defrosted for dinner.
I feel faint in the shower the next day. “Panic Attack,”
my son says. I tell him to call Kathleen, who is a nurse.
“You look so pale,” she says as she takes my pulse.
“You might be anemic.” She exchanges nurse’s cap
for angel wings. “There is an Afterlife. I’ve seen it
when I was seventeen and survived a car accident,”
she says, confirming that I will see my husband again.
She says a prayer for me and then gives me a bed bath
and promises she will be back on her day off
from her job at the hospital and her husband
would check on me every day. After six weeks,
she returns the key and says she is sorry
but at seventy she is too exhausted from working
12-hour shifts at the hospital to help me.
“Hi Luv,” says Sylvia as she sashays into my house
at five foot two. She brings me spinach, tomatoes,
a dozen eggs and fig biscuits she baked with oats.
As she helps me shower and shampoo,
she tells me her German grandfather built
a brick house when he was her age - eighty.
.
Sylvia
After My Sons Return to their Lives and I am Alone
I answer the doorbell and there stands a seventy-
year-old short stout sumo warrior dead ringer
and I sniff the scent of baked fish and chicken,
vegetables and mashed potatoes. He introduces
himself as Bobby, the owner of the men’s retreat
a few acres away and says he brings free food
his partner, Rick, prepares at the bed and breakfast.
Every Tuesday and Friday afternoon he shows up
with food and advice, “Take it one day at a time”
as he does at the 12 step meetings he runs at the retreat.
Our hands and feet chop the air as we do Tai Chi
to build up my strength and solve balance problems.
He sings songs he wrote himself or covers in a band
and strums the guitar as I clap and compliment.
On some Fridays he brings pictures of his dearly
departed wife and mother and says he still talks
to their photos every day and advises me to speak
to my late husband. “It’s okay for you to be angry
at him if you feel abandoned,” he says. “Get it all
out. Scream and cry,” he says. I sit there numb.
I never cry until Bobby says goodbye
and moves his retreat 100 miles from here.
After I Take too much Benadryl in the Middle of the Night
I am lying on my back
on the cold, hard tile
in my shorts and top, frigid air
freezing bare skin, scooting
towards my Life Alert button
dangling on the bedpost
and walker desperately to reach
the phone that shrieks nonstop
like a May Day Signal
when I hear a familiar voice calling
“Miss Sharon” and see the blonde
in the ponytail, thinking she stumbled
upon me while delivering free meals
from the café she runs with her husband.
She takes my outstretched hands and lifts
me to my feet and puts me back in bed.
Weeks later as Robbin feeds me roast chicken,
mashed potatoes, broccoli and baby carrots,
she tells me my son had called and asked her
to check on me after I didn’t answer the phone.
Driving the three and a half miles on the dirt road,
she worries what she would do if she finds my dead
body. When she leaves, she says, “See you in a day or so.”
“What if I die?” I ask. “Well, I’ll see you in heaven,” she says
hugging me tight as she does every time she leaves.
I find myself on my back on the floor again.
But I think it’s morning and when a painting falls
on my head, I think I’m back in bed until I see Sylvia
with her short gray hair teetering on wedgie sandals
and a strange man standing over me. They each take
one hand and pull me to my feet and get me back
in bed. “I brought my husband since I can’t lift
more than 70 pounds,” says Sylvia. “It’s nighttime.
Your son will be here in the morning.”
I pick up the phone in my hospital room.
It is Robbin saying she called every hospital
in the area to find me and she will take me
home. But it is Sylvia in her trusty truck
who pulls up the curb and helps a nurse
get me out of the wheelchair and lift
me into the passenger seat and drive
me forty miles home as my back aches.
It is Sylvia who checks my vitals and gives
me oxygen as she helps my sons nurse
my bruised bones back to health
so I can walk without pain.
Hank and his wife, Jeannette
After the Holidays, and my Sons Leave Again
“Do you know my name?” asks the six-foot tall
sixty something muscular man, his mop of white
hair flopping, as he stands holding a carton
full of bowls of omelets, salads and meals of mashed
potatoes, roast chicken and vegetables. “George,” I say.
“I’m a chef and I own the café,” he says.
“I know. You’re Robbin’s husband,” I say.
I figure he’s testing to see if I am senile
and I fear I’ve failed when I remember Robbin
calls him Scott. I apologize and he says both names
are correct. He’s George Scott the second.
Sometimes he delivers food with his wife Robbin,
a beautiful blonde who refuses any money for the food.
Robbin says she wants to help me because she cooked
for her mother and grandmother when they couldn’t
cook for themselves. “God will reward me,” she says.
George and Robbin give me updates on the orange
tabby they rescued from my courtyard and adopted.
“Survivor almost let me pet him today,” Robbin says.
“I roll around on the floor with him twice a day,”
George says. “But he hisses at Robbin.”
One day George says he just found out I was a famous
published writer and wants to be my manager
and sell my books in the café. As he leaves
with a handful of books, he says. “If the paparazzi
contact you, send them to me, your manager.”
When it is cold, windy and rainy, George shows up
with a hatchet and his buddy, Hank, a short, slim
sixty something man with gray hair and heart trouble
and they chop wood and light a fire in the wood stove.
When the wind blows over my satellite dish and I lose
internet service, my son messages Hank, who helped
him repair the leaks in the roof. Hank calls me
and says he is on his way and is bringing George
in case he gets dizzy from the heart medicine.
I am so tired I fall asleep and awaken to George
waving a bowl under my nose as if it contains smelling salts.
“We’ve been on your roof,” he says. “I brought you a shrimp salad.
Where do you want it?” As I go to the table to eat, I hear
Hank say, “Try the internet now. I bolted down your satellite dish.”
I tell Hank to take care of his heart and not worry about me.
“I think of you like a mother figure. Like it or not, you’re part
of my family now and I will help you,” Hank says.
“By the way, the wife is baking you some banana bread
since you loved the last batch. She bought organic bananas
just for you.” The doorbell rings and Hank introduces me
to Jeannette and she visits with me as I eat a slice of her banana
bread and murmur, “Delicious.” I’m addicted and eat another
slice. “That’s why we brought you two loaves.” Hank says
as he splits wood. “We’ll be back with more banana bread
when you run out. Just call me.” They lock the door behind them.
Shannon and her niece, Lindsi, bring salad, sour dough bread
and chocolates in the fall. “The last time I called your husband
from Wal-Mart in the spring, he said he was fine,”
Shannon says. “When I emailed him in the summer, your son
emailed me back that he was gone.” We didn’t know them
when we lived in Idaho, where they still summer. but Shannon
knew us for a decade when she and I hosted church potlucks.
I meet Lindsi for the first time, tell her I went to high school
with her Aunt Sue, who died shortly after my husband died.
Lindsey recognizes my husband from the photos on the wall.
“He used to come into my father’s Ace Hardware store in Idaho.”
In the Month of March: My First Birthday Without My Beloved
Hank builds a fire and turns up the space heaters
when I shiver as Sylvia suds my body and hair
in the shower. The phone goes dead as it rains
slow and steady. I hear my son’s voice
from a thousand miles away talking
through the Ring camera speaker in my kitchen
telling me he has scheduled a repair but when
the rain stops, the phone rings and I hear Hank
and Sylvia’s voice on the line loud and clear.
Outside temperatures climb from 50 to 95
as the refrigerator door warns in red letters
to change the air and water filter.
I stand at the sink shaking as Sylvia simmers
salmon in a skillet and George shows up
with salads and entrees and holds me
in his strong arms. “You’re okay,” he says.
Fire ants march in the kitchen like soldiers
and I drown the army in the sink. The skin
on my arm stings and itches and I see a burn mark
left by an ant that escaped the massacre
and soothe it with gel from the aloe vera plant
growing in the courtyard. When Sylvia
shows up, she pours cinnamon on the heads
of ants and traps them in the plastic garbage sack.
Shannon and Lindsi are back with salad fixings
and sour dough bread. Shannon washes dishes
while Lindsi empties the garbage cans.
They say they will return in April with food
and friendship and do household chores.
One of Robbin’s meals goes rancid and I dump
the chicken, mashed potatoes and broccoli
in the front yard for the birds. Hank delivers
new meals for Robbin and George and after
he leaves I find a box of new filters on my doorstep.
George shows up with food and his friend Donnie
and shows him the house and furniture my husband
built with clay and cactus and says he will bring smoked
salmon, salads and sour dough bread for my birthday dinner.
Donnie buys my poetry book dedicated to my husband
and says his 80-year-old widowed mother would love
to see the house and meet me. I tell him to come anytime.
A voice on the computer shouts “Severe heat
Warning” as the thermometer soars to 105 degrees
two days in a row and 84 degrees when I wake up
at sunrise on my birthday to the shrill voices of quail.
For supper, I dine on smoked salmon, spinach salad
and sour dough bread at the table my soulmate built
with saguaro cactus and imagine him sitting on the chair
across from me smiling and singing Happy Birthday,
glowing as bright as 84 candles and a full moon.
