It’s been three months since you nodded to me and gave me what I believed to be your most lucid moment in a barrage of foggy moments. I remember trying to help you get to the car to take you to the ER because he were in so much pain. I remember carrying you like a baby from the car to a wheel chair at the hospital. I remember being in that sterilized and white-lit emergency room. I remember the doctor asking me how I was doing afterwords. I was supposed to be there to take care of you. I thought I was but she knew things that I didn’t. She knew that he was leaving this cold and confusing existence and moving onto the next. She was certain of it.
“How are you doing?” she said.
“I’m good. I’m worried about my dad. I don’t want him to have this pain.”
She put her hand on my shoulder. It rested there lightly but firm in its touch. She told me about his state and that there were options all with a low probability of success and all painful. If I was not emotionally involved in the decision I would have marveled in her execution of empathetic communication. She was the perfect person for that moment, even though that moment was unfair and awful. After reviewing my options I was clear on what he had wanted. I was clear that he wanted to fight death but didn’t want to have it all be for nought. The futility of my options were simple but buried under layers of circumstance.
“This will likely take more strength than your father has,” she said.
“You don’t know my father,” I said.
She smiled out of some sort of understanding to my situation despite her acute awareness of the reality. I was none the wiser.
“My father wants options he doesn’t care about the pain. He doesn’t want to prolong just to extend his life. But he wants a shot at it. He wants a shot at…” I was unable to complete that sentence. I stared at the lights in the ceiling that were patterned across the cream colored hue of the room. I could see myself through a the lens of 360 degrees, spinning, and impersonal. Then I was thrust back into my head. I looked at the healthcare posters on the wall and the collection of tubing and plastic containers, and various types of bandages and syringes. I looked at my dad he looked into me. His eyes trained on mine and he shook his head east and west, left and right almost too subtle to see. He mouthed something, “no”. I felt that feather like touch on my shoulder get heavier. I couldn’t cry but damn I wanted to.
My dad made it through that night, and the next. Well his body did. He was there, and breathing but he wasn’t alive. That was the last moment I had with my father. The medications and the coldness of life have numbed my emotions over the years. Much like they did my dad. He was a tough son of gun for so much of his life. I admired that and at times wished I had his toughness. I didn’t. I was built differently despite the bloodline. I aspired to be like him at times. Just like he did with his father despite their differences.
It’s poetic how life starts and ends. I’ve had that burden thrust on me too often in a short span of time. The weight is hard to bare. I can’t imagine doing it alone. He had moments of vulnerability that I was blessed with in his last few weeks. I saw a side of my father that allowed me to know who he really was, and that he loved me. That was a question that despite his insistence over the years that he did — I needed reassurance.
Now it’s 2020. What a shitty decade it’s been for me. It’s important to remember that despite the lows, the highs are there. Sometimes it’s hard to see the good. In reflection, as my dad had done late in his time, you see things more clearly. You remove some of the discontent and the raw emotion, and the self-righteousness and you see the new family members, the laughter, the memories, the connections, the new experiences, the new places, the rapturous love, the smiles, the wins. The days that go smoothly and without event that seem so mundane that you don’t take a moment to be thankful. Rainy days and sunny days happen without regard to the balance and fairness of it all. Dad shared something with me in my two months I had with him that meant so much to me. Yeah, he told me he loved me and that he was proud of me. But it was more than that. It was the quiet moment together watching a movie and smiling at the exact same moment, a moment that I won’t share because that was our moment. We looked at each other, and recognized how it made us feel without a word. Despite the genetic connection it was in that moment we knew something about each other that was ours. Not father and son, but two lives connected by a feeling that was unique to us at that very same place in time. Life may have robbed us of that over the years, and evermore. Damn it, that was our moment and I’m never giving it back. I still haven’t cried. Maybe I’m out of tears. It may be years from now when I share a moment like that with my son, or daughter, or someone that I love where I will be overcome by occasion and the nostalgia. I welcome it. October 5th, 2019 is owed some tears. I love you dad.
*Thanks to my mother-in-law Grace Parson for keeping me updated and sending me pictures of my father’s grave stone. He is buried at Salisbury NC National Cemetery. He wanted the military burial and marker. He was his most proud when he was in that uniform hidden in the masses of white and gold adornment. I’ll visit often.
