Grandpa's Ax

Wind whistles around the dilapidated shed. I’m huddled, back against the rough plank door, chin on my knees, arms wrapped around my shins. I barely dare to breathe. My husband’s footsteps fall to a stop in the thick leaves outside. His shadow blocks the sun coming through a crack in the wall. Across the dark, crowded room, Grandpa’s ax hangs on a nail. If I can get to it before the man outside gets to me…

The lit butt of a cigarette flies the gap in the wood. The burning stub lands on the dirty floor, smoke curling toward a rusted gas can. I can’t move. Can’t scream.

My eyes open to the dark ceiling above my bed. Sweat clings to my skin. My breath comes in gasps. There it was again. Grandpa’s ax. I glance over at the wedding photo on the dresser. Have I been married to the man in the photograph nearly twenty years, or have I never been married to him at all? The question could be argued in philosophy classes across the world.

Rain beats against the roof, and storm gusts whip the corners of the house like they are threatening to tear it down. I lie here, my life a lit cigarette near a gas can. It could either be the start of a fire or burn out without so much as a spark. You might think limbo is a dead space, but it’s not. The cloud of not knowing is where demons come out to dance in the rain. Nothing makes a more fertile field for neurosis than an undecided mind.

I wipe my cheeks. I’m not typically a crier. I’ve held in countless tears throughout my marriage. Swallowed that hard lump at the back of my throat when it was the size of a baseball. Held my chin up and plastered a smile on my face when my heart was so battered I didn’t know how it could still beat. I could have walked away years earlier, put my children in a sub-par school, given up the nice safe neighborhood where they rode bikes to play with their friends. Instead, I stayed. I looked in the mirror every day, checking for lines on my face. I skipped lunch and dinner if my jeans seemed tighter than the last time I wore them. I kept up all the necessary appearances. I held lively intelligent dinner conversations with his colleagues on the rare occasion he asked me to join them. I did what I was supposed to do.

And I slept alone every night. For years.

I’ve studied the women he flirts with, asked myself what they have that I don’t. I’ve tried seducing him. I tried communicating my needs. I tried asking what he needed. I read self-help books. I searched the internet. I went to therapy. I did everything I could think to do to fix myself.

And then I decided I wasn’t the one who was broken. At least I hadn’t been until he broke me.

And now all I can think of is Grandpa’s ax.

I was a child when Grandpa stumbled into the kitchen, bracing his forearm against the doorframe, a red river pouring down the side of his face. Grandma ran to him and helped him onto the floor where the river became a puddle beneath his ear. She grabbed a dishtowel hanging on the oven door and pressed it against his head. With her other hand she reached into her apron pocket for the cordless phone and called for help.

I sat on a chair at the kitchen table, chin on my knees, arms wrapped around my shins while Grandpa told Grandma how his ax handle had broken and sent the blade flying into the side of his face.

After he healed, he put a new handle on the ax and chopped more wood.

I filed for divorce a week before my husband’s accident. Before he signed the papers, I got the call that sent me running to the ER check-in desk to blurt his name. I hadn’t felt anything but cold as I followed the signs down the hospital corridor to his room and stood at the door watching his chest rise and fall. I wouldn’t know the extent of his injuries for another two weeks when the swelling of his brain subsided enough to ascertain the damage.

This morning, it’s still raining as I get the kids off to school and make the daily drive to the rehab center. Two months later, he understands I am his wife, not because he remembers me but because he has been told and shown photos of our life together. He doesn’t remember our children either. He doesn’t remember anything.

I arrive in time to see the end of his morning therapy session. His occupational therapist hands me a list of things I can work on with him at home once he’s released. Things like tying his shoes. She tells me muscle memory is likely to come back even if his other memories don’t. The heart is a muscle, but I don’t mention that. I watch him give a flirtatious smile to one of the nurses, and the thought of an intimate physical relationship with him repulses me.

His therapist leans close to my ear. “Make a point to hold his hand. Reacquaint him with your touch. Chemistry is a mysterious thing. He fell in love with you once. He can do it again.”

I cross the room and take his hand, but after years of feeling rejected the only thing that rises in the pit of my stomach is resentment. At the door I remove my hand from his to turn the knob. Outside, I recoil when he reaches to take my arm. Guilt washes through me as I realize, I don’t ever want the man I married to touch me.

More than one of his doctors has tried to make me understand he isn’t the same person he used to be. One said he is a blank slate. It’s likely I can expect a different personality, a different reality from the one I’ve known. He might not even like the same foods. That doctor gave me a list of therapists who can help me cope with the process.

“Not the same man at all?” I asked.

The doctor shook his head and frowned. “I’m afraid not. There’s a slim chance some of his memories can be recovered, but it’s very slim and I’m not seeing any indicators that give me hope of that happening. Brain injuries like this are challenging for loved ones. A lot of marriages struggle to survive it.” He offered a sympathetic smile.

Later, I sit bedside as my husband naps. A nurse comes in. She puts a reassuring hand on my arm and offers me a magazine opened to an article about a married couple who found their way back after a similar incident.

“They fell in love all over again,” she says. “You could, too.”

I read the article as I sit there like a dutiful wife. What if he doesn’t fall in love with me again? What if he does? Do I want to repeat history? What if we both fall in love like some fairytale, and then his memory comes back?

On the drive home I think of Grandpa standing at the workbench inside his shed. I had walked in as he was setting a new head onto the ax handle he had replaced.

“Doesn’t want to stay sharp anymore,” he explained when I picked up the old one and turned it over in my hand.

“Why didn’t you just buy a whole new ax?” I asked.

“Maybe I did. Maybe I didn’t.” He told me about the ship of Theseus, an old philosopher’s riddle that had been retold many ways including using an ax like his. If all the parts of an object are replaced, do you have a new object or is it still the old one?

Do I have a new husband, or is he still the same one? He doesn’t remember all the reasons I filed for divorce. But I do. Is it possible he can be a different man, while still being the same man to me?

All those years ago, I had asked my grandpa if he thought his ax was new now that he had replaced both the handle and the blade.

“Not at all,” he said. “This handle is worn just the way I like it from all the swinging I’ve done with it. It feels like my ax. When I replaced the handle, the old blade cut just how I expected it to when I hit the sweet spot in the wood. New handle or new blade, still my ax.”

So according to Grandpa I am married to the same man. According to the doctors, I’m not. My mind understands that my husband’s injuries have irrevocably altered his sense of being, and theoretically he can become whoever he chooses to be. But my heart stopped loving the man he was before the accident and stopped trusting him to ever change. Which part of me has the answer to this riddle? Head or heart? Should I stand by my marriage vows and see if I can forgive the past and fall in love again with this new version of who he is? Or is he forever going to be the man who hurt me, who left me feeling lonelier when I was with him than I would ever be alone?

A sunbeam is pouring through a break in the clouds as I park my car in the garage and pull Grandpa’s ax off the wall behind the workbench. I carry it inside and lay it on the kitchen counter.

My daughter glances over on her way to the refrigerator. “What’s that?” she asks.

“Grandpa’s old ax.” As soon as the words come out, I know. I know exactly who my husband is to me.