2/6/07
The Old Man hadn't quite made it to the bathroom in time. We'd been watching TV in my old bedroom, the room in which my mother died, the room my dad had painted a cheery robin's egg blue after tearing out the bunk beds. My uncle, my sister, and I had sort of gotten used to the unconversation and had taken to watching movies in the evenings when I would come to start the night shift.

It's rude to talk about dying people in the third person when they're in the room, but once someone's communication skills have dropped as far as my dad's, it's hard to maintain decorum. Though none of us had seen the movie before, we unconsciously took turns glancing over, looking for any sign of communication as Dad drifted in and out of drowsiness. What we really wanted to do was sit around him in a circle, staring and hoping and pleading and loving. So we watched the movie.

He'd reached the point where solo bathroom trips were ill-advised, but we had such respect for his dignity, and we believed so much in his spirit, that we just helped him out of his chair when my uncle managed to ask the right question at just the right time and get a discernible nod. He did nod, right? Yes, we had consensus. Shuffle shuffle shuffle.

After ten minutes outside the bathroom door, victim of the irony of verbal inquiry through the door, my uncle did the unthinkable and opened it. I have a lot of complaints about my uncle, but here he managed to cross a threshold heroically. I cowered with my sister, determined to remain interested in the movie which we both agreed we hated but had to watch just then.

We rallied at the news that a change of pants was in order, and our little congress went into session. My sister wanted the Hefner look, while I argued for pants of some kind, determined to maintain masculinity. My uncle suggested we move the TV into the master bedroom and just let him rest, but my sister and I vetoed. We knew once the Old Man bivouacked in the bedroom, all would be lost. We settled on wrestling him into his drawstring wet-weather hiking pants, figuring they would withstand any further storms and still be reasonably comfortable.

Despite his distended sixty-inch belly, a gift of his pancreatic cancer, his pants still fit his thirty-four inch waist. In hindsight it seems ludicrous that we debated whether to get his shoes back on, but we did, my uncle finally asking the Old Man his preference; shoes, slippers, socks? I made some smartass remark about rochambeau. Dad just sat on the edge of the bed and breathed awkwardly. He should have risen slowly and slid off to the TV room, but he didn't. He sat in a slump like a mound of wet sand, his head tucked into his chest.

It was the same demeanor I had seen as a child when my parents first got married. I tended to scamper a bit in the mornings, but this new adult force in my life wore a ratty terrycloth robe and battered slippers and didn't talk. His combover in disarray, his glasses a little crooked, his ignorance of me was complete as he stumbled through a foggy routine of Rice Krispies in a wooden bachelor bowl, followed by lowfat milk to make them sing, and a mild sprinkle of sugar to make them taste like something. It was the same thing every morning, and eventually I decided to just sleep in, rather than try to talk to this four-eyed Cyclops hunched over a spoon, staring at toast. There were mornings he didn't say a word, not even to tell me what to do.

After twenty minutes I became worried that my dad's head, tilted so far forward under its own weight, was cutting off his air supply. I could see the bony top of his spine through the skin of his neck. I tried to lift his head, surprisingly heavy, but he grimaced and made painful noises. We tried to pull him into a standing position, with the same result. And then all three of us got scared; the current situation was clearly wrong, but we had no idea how to fix it, and he couldn't tell us even if he knew, through the fog.

Goddamn-it-what's-wrong-with-him, my sister mumbled, and after a second we sort of chuckled about that. My uncle started in with the twenty questions thing again, and I watched for response. The Old Man's brow wrinkled, trying to figure out a complex algorithm, a hypothesis, a quandary. Deep in that face, which I had often been afraid to look into as a child, I could see concentration, determination, a life or death struggle to do, or say, something. I cursed my lack of familiarity with the terrain.

Finally, with a Herculean effort, he did the last thing we expected. He leaned back, his head flopping roughly against the mattress, and groaned. My sister and uncle grabbed his arms to steady him, but at the last second I saw it and in my command voice told them to let him go.

The consensus-be-damned moment was enough, and my dad's hands flopped to his waist, where he managed to undo the smartly-tied bow knot cinching his waist. His body shape shifted past the rope with which we had bound him, and a truly human blend of triumph, pain, and relief escaped his lips.

He had been sitting there like a trussed ham for thirty minutes while three people who loved him deeply struggled to help him in almost complete incompetence. Despite how badly we all wanted to be in his world and understand him, our empathy had limits. So we leaned against the dresser, and sat on the floor, and drummed our fingers on our chin. My sister reminded me about the morphine dose due in two hours. My uncle started the daily load of laundry. And two days later, we called for hospice.




For Mel, for Vincent, and for me.