I feel you

I stroked her hand. I stroked her hand and held back every urge to cry.

"Can you feel this?"

"Yeah, but you can't feel me. See, I can't hold your hand."

Looking down at her left hand, she raised it up and down with her right.

"I can't move it anymore."

She tried so hard to wiggle her arthritic hand; her crinkled and splotched immobile hand now useless.

My sadness swells in my throat, choking me. She feels it too. Her good eye sheds a tear, and another, and another. The eye which no longer opens, the right eye, is not leaking. This is usually not the case. If her eyes begin to leak, it's the right one, the one she can not open. Since it is the left, she is crying. Not the unexplainable result of her unexplainable closed right eye.

Squeezing her hand I reply, " I feel you."