Cousins

In one room of a large oncology hospital

near the Victory Monument, which is where

most all the vans from the north and northeast

of the Thai countryside end up, are six beds

and eight “sois” or spaces between beds.

Soi is Thai for alleyways and on the floor of one

of these sois my wife is sleeping, keeping faith

with a cousin who is undergoing chemo and

languishing in much the same way my wife’s

father did when I got here ten years ago.

This cousin comes from my wife’s mother’s

village some hours to the north and west.

“Good God,” I asked, “doesn’t she have some

one in her village –where she’s lived all her

life – to sit with her?”  My wife doesn’t answer,

nor will she ever answer.

I like this cousin who was one of the very few

of my wife’s cousins who would look at the

situation, roll up her sleeves and start sweeping,

mopping, picking up or cooking without being

told to.  When a hundred or so weasels show

up on your lawn for a party you tend to remember

the good weasels.

My wife has shuttered her salon for three

days now and outside of sleeping at the hospital

I know she is spending money I don’t have.

When I get mad I dance like Donald Duck and

yell things unintelligible to a Thai.

“I don’t like it when you yell,” she says.  I yell:

Well, well!

She pauses and then says, “When she dies there

will be some insurance money for me.”

Money is a part of every Thai transaction:  birth,

marriage, and death.  But the Thais are

superstitious to a fault.  I once saw my wife,

 as the sun set at the Night market in Ayutthaya,

wipe all her for-sale clothes with a hundred Baht

note to bring good luck.

Home is the place where, when you have to go

there, they have to take you in, I guess.  In Thai 

families,though the truth may be closer to the dying 

can say“Red Rove, Red Rover, send my wife 

Plaupplung – whohas had more success in life 

than I – right over . . .

 

and you must obey.

FG  4/30/2015

There are 65 million of my wife’s cousins living in Thailand.  This is just one of their stories.

I’m taking some liberty with the word soi here.  Many businesses in Bangkok are located on soi 15, etc.  The Thais do have a word for aisle.

If you stay in a hospital, it is common here, maybe even required, for a family member to attend the patient.