evening ebb tide

A feeling of weight awakened Peter Cosgrove in the middle of the night. Being seventy-two, and a man consumed by irony, he immediately thought of his heart, and the insult of having his sleep disturbed by the fact that he was about to die, rather than having it mercifully happen to him while he was asleep. Then he noticed the sensation spreading out over most of his body, from his shoulders to his knees. More phenomenally, he was quite literally being pressed deeper into his soft mattress, the sheets wrinkling and gathering ever so slightly around him. He glanced at the illuminated clock on his table.
Red numbers: 12:01.
The date below: 3-4-11.
His wife's birthday.
She had been dead for almost one year.
When she was alive, up until her death, she would often climb atop him and sleep. She was a petite woman, all of 94 pounds, and her small body was always a reassurance to Peter, never a foreboding weight.