When I find Dad’s room at the hospital, he is sitting up against plumped pillows, tears running down his cheeks.
“I’m crying a lot,” he says. “I go into this altered state where I am so deeply immersed in a memory — something from my past, something with one of you girls, or your mother, or some friends — that I can feel every detail. It’s all so real, it’s like I’m really there. And then I wake up, and the reality of what is going on with me — my body, where I’m living, being so isolated, no one visiting — is so overwhelming...”
He chokes up.
I pull my chair closer. Take his hand — the hand with the IV needle taped to it. The hand that still works. The hand he uses to pull the other hand, limp and lifeless, up and onto his belly to rest, patting it gently, the way you might pat a kitten. Or a baby.
“There’s so much,” he says. “So much I’m not going to do again. I’m not going to play poker this Friday night. I’m not going out for bagels and the Sunday Times. I’m not going to work at Camp Edalia this summer. I’m not going to swim in the ocean with Beth or build sand castles in Nantucket with Jenny.”
He pauses. Gathers himself.
“I’m not going to go to Parkwood to watch you swim. I’m not going to act in any plays anymore. And I’m not going to...” He chokes up again. “Do anything with your mother.”
Now I’m crying too.
Dad’s roommate arrived last night with pneumonia. On life support, his breath reminds me of the sound we used to make blowing eggs for Easter — like a straw sucking along the bottom of a cup, damp and gurgly and underwater. Every five or ten minutes, a bout of coughing so violent it lifts him from his bed. Then, as his throat clears, he slaps back down on the mattress. Fast asleep.
“I know it wasn’t a good marriage at the end,” Dad sniffs. “It wasn’t a real marriage. But at the beginning, we were good friends.”
This is a scene from The End of Men, a memoir I started years ago. The previous chapter, Linen Napkin, is here. If you’re new to the project, read the first chapter here: Keys. The full list of scenes, in order, is here. Want to support the work? Leave a comment. Share a chapter with a friend. To receive the chapters by email, subscribe here. To support the writer (me) and the project, become a paid subscriber. Paid subscribers also get SOSI: The School of (Words and) Images.
Tough stuff, Amy. Sending lots of love to you as you excavate it all.