Dad, listen.

I’ll never forget the day we found out. The day the phone rang. You mom and me, gathered in the kitchen, knowing who it was but not quite what it was. Mom found out first. She was turned away from you, towards me, and you didn’t see her face. How it crumbled.

You know what love is? It’s when you see someone else in pain and it causes you pain. Happiness is easy to share, so I don’t regard it as good an indicator. Pain, though…whew.

Cancer.

“Is it?” It sounded like you’d forgotten how to move your tongue. Leaned against the sink, head bent just low enough to catch a glimpse of the backyard. The wishing well and the flower bed, all just dirt at that time of year.

“Hug your daddy,” Mom ordered me, weeping.

I watched, waiting for a blatant indication you’d welcome ANY touch.

“The other kids need told.” So I told the other kids, took the phone to the dining room ‘cause no way I could rely on my feet. The sense of duty overwhelmed the sense of sorrow as I passed along the news, one by one. For once, the youngest child received 100% attention. Was taken, for once, 100% seriously.
How do you handle it here? Smells like chlorine and coffee. Smells perimortem. That’s word of the day, Dad. Drop it on a nurse and watch her eyes bulge out bigger than her butt!

Home’s weird now, of course. Moving room to room is akin to moving from jacuzzi to tarpit. Almost everyone’s been by to see you, I’ve heard. Almost. Oh, Dad. The rift between mother and son, once merely unfortunate, now yawns tragically.

Now’s the time I gather up the gumption and go. The words are spilling out of my mouth, sliding down my neck, pooling on the floor between my legs. Clear, syrupy, and must be a BITCH to clean.

Gotta go now, Dad. This room is leeching the perfume off of my skin. Yes, I actually wore perfume. Ambush. Because even when I’m trying to be feminine, I must be as belligerent as possible.

Doc, listen.

Can’t you make them leave? All that disconsolate moaning has me lit up like firefly guts. I’m up a wall with all of them, sir. See the older woman standing under the TV? The boxy body thumbing tears from her eyes? That’s my mother. His wife. She is vertical via miracle. In a way she’s the ultimate role model, and in another way she’s the ultimate cautionary tale. She absorbs blows like chlorophyll absorbs the sun’s energy. Emotional, physical, medical—you name it she’s endured it.

The women in the chairs are my sisters. Let’s see, we got the tender heart, the try-hard, the knucklehead, the stand-in. Each and every one of them torn to metaphorical bits over just a few minutes with our dad and his infection-induced hallucinations. Every woman in that room values the pastor over the doctor. Just thought you should know.

Well doc, if you can’t remove them, can you give me something to relieve my rogue neurotransmitters? Every few seconds I’m getting these heart palpitations that just ROCK my sternum like a shot from half-court that slams against the backboard.

It sure is a valiant effort.