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Feb. 8th, 2012 12:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonMy father only has a few more days to live. He's stopped eating. Blood pressure dropping rapidly. Oxygen mask breaths. The tumor makes him fidget, he keeps trying to peel out of his gown, so they've up-ed the morphine. Tag-teaming with mom, one night she stands vigil and then I take the next. Stayed last night. Couldn't sleep in the chair, crashed on the floor instead - on a mat they stretched out for back when he was falling out of bed. But dad needs constant care so that means every ten minutes there's someone walking through the door. An endless barrage of nurses, grief councilors, chaplins, assistants of every rank and each one has a machine, a test, a question, a job to do so you sleep in snatches of minutes instead of hours.
So mainly I just stare at him. Before he looked like a scared little boy, now he resembles his father only without the snow white beard. Sleeping the way he would on the couch the way he would after a big meal and when the hour was late and the movie on the television slow. But occasionally he pops his eyes open and stares at me and when he does I'm scared. Because in those eyes wide with horror and confusion, I see the man I remember, the man I love, my father, my fucking father trapped in there and I don't know how to pull him out. I want to reach in somehow and save him but I can't.
None of us can.
So I sit there and I force myself to look into those eyes. I tell him I love him. I hold his hand, mainly because he keeps trying to pull off the mask, and I squeeze it tight in mine as if I could transfer the strength into him.
And suddenly I remember when I was a little, little kid in Brooklyn and I had this bad stomach virus. The folks had me crash on the couch so they could keep an eye on me. It was bad. I couldn't hold anything down, not even soup, not without vomiting. A terrible fever whracked me and through the nausea a terrible delirium. I kept passing in and out of sleep. At one point I came to and he was kneeling by me... the way I am now by his side... and I looked down on my lap and he had laid this great big book on the history of science fiction on my lap and my eyes lit up. I looked over and he was smiling and I felt instantly better. I was sipping spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup mom made me and flipping through the pages of the book, scouring over the hundreds of illustrations.
But dad can't read and to be honest I'm not even sure if he can hear me. In those eyes I see no sign of recognition from him. Just my mother. That's the only time he regains a semblance of coherence. Deep down I wonder if I've let him down. All I can do though is focus on the details. I hold his hand in mine anyway. I readust the mask when he wiggles out of it. I wet his lips with ice cubes and a moist hand towel. I whisper that I love him. I remind him of the good times. I play Yo-Yo Ma videos off Youtube for him. Read Murakami in the world's most uncomfortable chair, step out for a smoke every hour and dick around on the internet in between.
While my poor mother is in Hell, it would seem I'm doing my time in Purgatory.
So mainly I just stare at him. Before he looked like a scared little boy, now he resembles his father only without the snow white beard. Sleeping the way he would on the couch the way he would after a big meal and when the hour was late and the movie on the television slow. But occasionally he pops his eyes open and stares at me and when he does I'm scared. Because in those eyes wide with horror and confusion, I see the man I remember, the man I love, my father, my fucking father trapped in there and I don't know how to pull him out. I want to reach in somehow and save him but I can't.
None of us can.
So I sit there and I force myself to look into those eyes. I tell him I love him. I hold his hand, mainly because he keeps trying to pull off the mask, and I squeeze it tight in mine as if I could transfer the strength into him.
And suddenly I remember when I was a little, little kid in Brooklyn and I had this bad stomach virus. The folks had me crash on the couch so they could keep an eye on me. It was bad. I couldn't hold anything down, not even soup, not without vomiting. A terrible fever whracked me and through the nausea a terrible delirium. I kept passing in and out of sleep. At one point I came to and he was kneeling by me... the way I am now by his side... and I looked down on my lap and he had laid this great big book on the history of science fiction on my lap and my eyes lit up. I looked over and he was smiling and I felt instantly better. I was sipping spoonfuls of chicken noodle soup mom made me and flipping through the pages of the book, scouring over the hundreds of illustrations.
But dad can't read and to be honest I'm not even sure if he can hear me. In those eyes I see no sign of recognition from him. Just my mother. That's the only time he regains a semblance of coherence. Deep down I wonder if I've let him down. All I can do though is focus on the details. I hold his hand in mine anyway. I readust the mask when he wiggles out of it. I wet his lips with ice cubes and a moist hand towel. I whisper that I love him. I remind him of the good times. I play Yo-Yo Ma videos off Youtube for him. Read Murakami in the world's most uncomfortable chair, step out for a smoke every hour and dick around on the internet in between.
While my poor mother is in Hell, it would seem I'm doing my time in Purgatory.