Most of us live as though our lives were
permanent. They are not. We are really only here for a brief stay,
which we can extend only a little by our actions. Our stay is subject to cancellation at any
time. The door opens and we are
born. The sun shines warmly on our
faces. We stand in the light, or in the
shadow. We make the most, or the least,
of our stay here – but either way the final day approaches, quietly,
unseen. The door closes behind us and is
locked forever by disinterested hands.
When I was a child my father answered almost
every question I could ask. He seemed to
know everything that anybody could know.
I owe him much. He taught me how
to think, how to question, and how to listen.
He was as steady and predictable as the sun. Five days a week he worked, and many
evenings. Saturdays, and sometimes
Sundays, he spent with the family.
Sometimes we went to a shopping mall.
Sometimes we went to a museum.
And such was the routine – more-or-less, week in, week out. Year after year. When you’re young, of course, the days are
long and rich; the seasons are epochs; the years – eternities. But time deceives us. To the child, life is a long, slow, circus
parade – mixing the familiar with the new, the comfortable with the
terrifying. But always, father held fast
to his comfortable routine. If my life
was a parade, it was he who beat the quiet cadence. He was not a great man as the world saw him,
but he was an intelligent and purposeful one.
Kind but distant. Patient but
dark. But the calendar pages
turned. I grew up – and he grew
old. Aging is the most predictable of
all surprises.
What am I now but a fleeting disturbance on the
surface of events that aren’t worth mentioning?
A human being – scratching out words as the current of days and
relevance erases them. Anonymous, one
lost among lost millions, all plodding unthinkingly, inevitably, toward our own
final moments – all alone, amid the days, the small talk, and the innumerable
obligations – all infinitely, unspeakably alone. Dust we are indeed. We rise from nothing and return to nothing.
My father ebbs from the world I know. He lies in an unfamiliar nursing home bed,
pestered by well-intentioned nurses who do not grasp his sense of humor. He is a curious wreck on an empty beach. The seagulls do not know what to make of
him. He has grown tired of the sea and
will not be moved again. He shuns his
food. Little by little, the unforgiving
logic of starvation breaks down his flesh.
The forms of the bones are made visible under the muscle. The skull looks out from under his face. To lift an arm is a kind of work now – his working
life long done. His words chase after
his thoughts but don’t always catch them.
He dies in front of me, slowly, visit by visit, as though he were
unraveling his days one sentence at a time.
I try, when I remember to, to avoid self-pity and pay attention – even
as the conversation slowly loses its coherence.
When I ask, not for an answer, but simply for the reassurance of a
response.
I now have my own answers to almost every
question I could ask. Almost. But almost no one asks me questions. I live alternately in light and shadow – but
I fear the dark. The current of days and
relevance erases my footsteps also – as rapidly as I make them. Yet I must learn to walk with grace
regardless, even if no one in the universe sees. Especially – if no one sees.
Even the circus parade has a beginning and an
end. It begins with a clown. And it ends with a clown. It is crass.
It is beautiful. It is what you
make it, one illusion to the next.
The eyes ease open. His last lights have retreated there. Where the mouth fails, breathing out almost
silent words that smell of gathering decay, his eyes still peer at me from the
bottom of their wells. They still say
much. They ask much – all of it beyond
my means. How does one answer the
enormous question put so eloquently by those eyes? The old skin pulls them closed, for now,
though they remain alive and questioning – underneath. The breath rises and falls, not by will, but
by mere habit. How can I merely promise
to return tomorrow when I know that his tomorrows are in short supply? And yet I promise, merely. The clock ticks off the seconds and the days.
What he may experience in my absence I don’t
know. Does the room grow dim? Is it suffused with light? Do stars swirl above him like the sky in Van
Gogh’s painting? The wreck lies on the
beach in the moonlight. The sand and sea
wear holes in its paint; rust spreads stealthily across the skin and the bones
of the broken hull. Nature takes apart
what man has made – wave by wave, and day by day. When I am visible to him, do I pass overhead,
as steady and predictable as the son? Or
am I a ghost from another world? His
memory still grasps at me with the strength of desperation. His hand grips mine with unexpected
strength. Does he not know that I too am
helpless? I have nothing to say, except –
“I’ll be back.” Pushed about by the tide
– he rots uncomfortably and sleeps.
I make the long drive to and from the home. Day after day. The green corn, dark under the rain – the
sky, a suffocating blanket of grey cloud.
The cadence of the windshield wipers, hypnotic, coaxing me towards
sleep. But I cannot sleep. The parade is not yet done.
Today his words are gone. He thrashes like a fish left in a tide
pool. Restless, no more in contact with
the world – and yet stubbornly, wretchedly still in it – until the medication
pulls him under, down, down, down, leaving only the breath behind – a sigh more
like the wind than like the psyche of a man.
I might as well be a ghost. I sit in the darkened room. I wait for awhile, then, like the tides of
breath, I go.
Human beings are not the best of creatures, but
it is not for want of trying. We stand
before the insults of nature, clothed mainly in lies – defiant in the face of
unthinkable infinities, shaking and scared beneath the skin. Life and death are impersonal – that is
really what is frightening about them.
There is no wrath to be placated in heaven – nor is there any pity there
to answer our appeals. The grand
machinery of the cosmos holds us fast in our appointed places and appointed
times. The wheel turns – beautifully and
horribly. We live. We die.
Amid the glare of pain and the haze of opiate
comfort, he has stumbled upon a word perched by itself in a gentle patch of
sunlight. He reaches down to pick it up
with trembling fingers, pinching the wings together carefully to protect their
powdery surfaces. Having made his
capture he looks skyward, waiting for someone to release the word to. Anyone.
Anyone. A face looms out of the
fog. The astonished word flutters upward
– but he does not know what it means anymore.
“Yes!” “Yes!” His dry voice tries to shout. The nurse looks at me for an answer, but I
know nothing. A skyrocket has leapt
expectantly upward, only to arc to earth again – a dud. The eyes close quietly, alone – infinitely,
unspeakably alone. In such a moment the
entire universe seems to weep – but only seems.
In truth, it doesn’t notice. A
breath or two, and this also is forgotten.
The tan face of the nurse now hovers above him
like the moon. The strength of its pull
draws from his dry lips a dry smile. The
smile is reflected. The moon tells sweet
and pretty lies. Whether or not he knows
that they are lies – I cannot tell. If
he believes – who am I to correct him, and for what purpose?
Even the eyes grow dull near the end. They look at nothing. Unearthly guttural sounds exit the aperture
that was once his mouth. He is, himself,
like a portal into another world. I
speak to him, but largely for the benefit of the hospice nurse. And yet I do not know for sure. Is he there – or has he gone? If he has gone – where is he? The only things I say now are “I am here” and
“I’ll be back.” I tick like the clock on
the wall, saying little more than it does.
All is calm, apart from the quiet agony of the minutes going by. I am pulled back by the world to return
another day.
In my absence, the last moment comes. The door closes. I miss the actual event by 20 minutes,
speeding to get there, the last clown running after the parade – useless, but
inevitable. The first clown comes with a
raucous laugh, the final one – brings solemn pathos. Nighttime.
Darkness. The crickets
chirp. My brother-in-law and a nurse I
haven’t seen say the appropriate things to me and one another. The last remnants of the wreck lies still,
eyes closed, without a man inside.
Disinterested dark hands wash the empty vessel clean.
Most of us live as though our lives were
permanent. They are not.
