He Asked Me to Marry Him

The first time Carl asked me to marry him, he was holding seven wooden Scrabble tiles in one hand and trying not to cough.

“Will you marry me?”

He said it so casually that I laughed.

I placed the bowl of tomato soup on the rolling bedside table and shook my head.

“You know that’s a terrible proposal.”

He smiled.

“I’ve never been very good at speeches.”

The tiles slipped from his fingers and scattered across the blanket.

L O N E L Y.

He looked down at them and chuckled.

“Well… I guess the universe answered for me.”

I gathered the tiles one by one and dropped them back into the little cloth bag we’d been using for months.

Carl had been living at Rosewood Hospice outside Portland for almost five months when we met.

I had started volunteering there three years earlier after my mother passed away in another hospice across town.

After watching strangers make her final weeks gentler simply by sitting beside her, reading to her, or bringing warm soup from home, I promised myself I’d do the same for someone else whenever life allowed.

Every Tuesday and Thursday evening, after work at the public library, I drove to Rosewood.

Sometimes I read books.

Sometimes I wrote letters for patients whose hands shook too much.

Sometimes I simply sat beside people who no longer had anyone coming.

Carl was one of those people.

He had spent thirty-two years teaching American history at a public high school.

Never married.

No children.

No brothers or sisters still living.

Stage IV pancreatic cancer had reduced him to a thin frame that seemed almost too light for the hospital bed.

But his mind stayed wonderfully sharp.

The nurses all warned me about one thing.

“Don’t let Mr. Bennett beat you at Scrabble.”

I laughed.

“Why?”

“Because he’ll remind you about it for weeks.”

They weren’t exaggerating.

Our first game ended with Carl spelling “Reconstruction” across two triple-word squares.

He looked unbearably proud.

“History teachers have unfair advantages.”

I rolled my eyes.

“That’s cheating.”

“That’s education.”

After that, Scrabble became our routine.

If he felt strong enough, we’d play.

If he was tired, I’d read aloud instead.

When swallowing became difficult, I brought homemade soups that could be blended smooth.

When his hands trembled too much to hold the tiles, I arranged them on the board while he pointed.

The routines became so ordinary that I stopped noticing them.

Until one Tuesday, I walked into his room and found the Scrabble board untouched.

Carl was sitting by the window.

The autumn sunlight rested across the blanket covering his legs.

He wasn’t reading.

He wasn’t watching television.

He was simply staring outside.

“No game today?” I asked.

He smiled without looking at me.

“Too tired.”

I sat beside him anyway.

Neither of us spoke for several minutes.

Finally he asked,

“Do volunteers ever get attached?”

I looked at him.

“Sometimes.”

“Is that allowed?”

“Nobody’s ever made a rule against it.”

He nodded slowly.

“Good.”

That was all.

But something about the way he said it stayed with me the entire drive home.

A Question That Didn’t Feel Like Goodbye

By early October, Carl could no longer walk without help.

The nurses adjusted his medications almost every week.

His doctor began visiting more often.

People in hospice learn to recognize those signs even when nobody says them aloud.

One Thursday evening, Carl surprised me.

He was dressed in a clean blue sweater instead of his usual hospital gown.

Someone had shaved him that morning.

His hair had even been combed neatly.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked.

“You always complain I look like I lost a fight with my pillow.”

“I never said that.”

“You were thinking it.”

I laughed.

He still had that gift.

Making people laugh before they noticed he was struggling to breathe.

We played only one round of Scrabble.

Halfway through, he pushed the tile rack away.

“I’m tired.”

I started packing everything up.

Then he cleared his throat.

“Selena?”

“Yeah?”

He folded his hands together.

For the first time since I’d known him, he seemed nervous.

“Would you do something unreasonable?”

I smiled.

“Depends how unreasonable.”

He looked at the floor for several seconds.

When he finally spoke, his voice was almost too quiet to hear.

“I don’t want my last good memory to be another goodbye.”

I waited.

He looked back at me.

There were tears gathering in his eyes, but he didn’t let them fall.

“Would you marry me?”

The room became impossibly still.

I could hear a nurse laughing somewhere down the hallway.

A food cart rolled past the door.

Outside, someone was blowing leaves from the parking lot.

Life continued as though nothing extraordinary had just happened.

I pulled my chair closer.

“Carl…”

He raised one hand.

“Please don’t answer because you feel sorry for me.”

Another pause.

“I’d rather hear no than pity.”

I looked at the wrinkles around his eyes.

The IV taped to his arm.

The oxygen tubing resting across his face.

Then I looked at the Scrabble board between us.

The last word he’d completed was HOME.

I reached across the table and covered his hand with mine.

“If we do this…”