Sweet Breath of Memory by Ariella Cohen

Author:Ariella Cohen [Cohen, Ariella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2016-06-08T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

A few days later, Cate received a letter from Jenny. She stared at the envelope for a long time, for the handwriting was so achingly familiar it made her breath catch. Steeling herself to accept whatever came, she slipped a fingernail under the flap and gently ripped the blue stationary. A single sheet of notepaper was inside. As she pulled it out, a snapshot fell in her lap. The photographer had caught the infant gurgling a smile and kicking her pudgy legs in the air. Dressed all in pink, the baby girl wore a T-shirt embroidered with her name: Catherine. Cate swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and read the letter through a film of tears. Jenny wrote of how happy she was that Cate had phoned. She sent regards from her husband and a few mutual friends. Then she dropped the bombshell she hadn’t wanted to on the telephone: Her firstborn had been named after her childhood friend. I should have known, should have been at the christening. I should have—but it’s not too late to be part of little Catherine’s life. To make her part of mine.

* * *

As one day melted into the next, Cate acclimated to life in Amberley. Her work on the novel was progressing slowly since she could only work on it in the evenings, but ideas for how to present the underlying themes continued to take shape in her mind. As for caregiving, she still found the work demeaning, frustrating, and emotionally draining. But as trite as it sounded, at the end of the day she often felt she’d made a difference. Providing her patients with simple comforts—clean hair, laundered sheets, or hot food—was satisfying in a way she couldn’t put into words, even to herself. And the payoff was so immediate, not like writing where one might invest years in a project only to discover that the time had been wasted. And not like office work, where the difference between a shoddy job and one well done was measured in profit margins. The work of a home care aide might be humbling, but it was also fulfilling, for Cate helped lessen the pain and discomfort her patients felt. She did for them what she hadn’t been able to do for John, and that beat making money or running after a publishing dream. Most days.

What got her through the rough patches weren’t the times when she’d been no more than a pair of hands and a strong back. No, it was finding ways to tend her patients’ spirits as well as their bodies. That might not be her job, but she considered it an essential part of their healing. Wondering what drove her to do more than many other aides, Cate questioned if she was so eager to help ease the mental strain of her patients’ battles because she hadn’t faced the end of John’s life with him. Or was it simpler than that; was she doing for her patients what she hoped would one day be done for her? Helen believed it was the latter.

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