Fall With Grace

Ba-humbug. It’s that time of year again, Christmas. It’s a strange holiday. It’s stressful, it deepens loneliness, it brings about conflict among families, but it’s beautiful, it’s fun, and you get stuff. Growing up, Jesus and Church were involved, but not in a way my brain has ever been able to reconcile- how does Santa play into the savior being born? I didn’t get it then and I don’t now.

That’s not really what comes to mind when I think about Christmas as a kid though. What I remember is one scene, vividly. The stairwell of my house was just off the foyer, with other parts of the house off to the right or directly forward, past the stairs. I remember sitting on those stairs, hanging large ornaments and garland. The ornaments were a peach color and a mint green, both with a pearlescent sheen. I was doing this decorating when my dad’s hospice nurse arrived.

Sandy would come once a week. This week she sat with my dad a while. I could hear him telling stories in the dining room, where he’d lived with his hospital bed and bedside commode since my birthday,  a few weeks earlier. The last time he had left the house was my birthday, to bring me to a friends, a break from caregiving. I had just turned seventeen. That was the last time I’d left the house too.

I sat on the stairs eavesdropping. I couldn’t hear much, but the parts I heard fascinated me. They were stories I’d never heard. About growing up. California. Women he’d loved. Things he’d regretted. I didn’t know it then, but it was clear he knew his time was coming. I’ve witnessed that moment dozens of times myself. When the dying find audience in a stranger, passing along the parts of themselves that their loved ones just don’t know. But they want to honor those unknown, forgotten parts as they say goodbye to themselves, detaching from the here.  It’s a beautiful thing. But I didn’t know that then.

I sat there, knowing that something big was happening, but not understanding what. Hanging my decorations. I helped my dad stand to come see. We didn’t get a tree that year. So I decorated the hall, the stairs. Because by god, something must be decorated. I see now what I couldn’t see then; my young heart was terrified by the big heavy presence of death approaching, but I couldn’t name it. I just knew desperately that I wanted something, anything, to be normal.

My memories after that are a jumble. I remember asking a friend to go rent us Julia Roberts movies- any and all. My Dad couldn’t get enough of Julia Roberts in his last weeks. I think he hoped her smile could give him back some life. So we watched movie after movie. The last was America’s Sweethearts. My dad fell asleep before the end.

The next day was his birthday, January nineth. I don’t know if he knew it was his birthday. My mom had come by and cleaned him up, bathed him, changed him. She left my brothers with me when she left. Chad and Cody were 14 and 12 at the time. I remember my dad asking us to play music, something he could dance to. To my disbelief and horror, he got up to dance.

I’d not seen his emaciated body before. He stayed in bed. I would rub his legs, but they were huge, swollen from the tumors invading his liver and blocking bloodflow. When he stood, I saw his spine, every bend and bump. I saw his thighs and arms, a thinness beyond my understanding. Now I know, there’s a word for it, cachexia. But I didn’t know that then.

There was his half naked body, rising as if from the dead, and swing dancing! He was talking to himself, or someone we couldn’t see. He kept trying to get me to dance, calling me by some other person’s name. I was terrified. I called the hospice nurse. She suggested I allow them to bring him to the hospital.

I allowed them to bring him. By the time the ambulance came, he’d collapsed on his bed, too weak to rise again. Naively, I thought this hospital trip would be like all the rest, he’d go, they would give him some medicine and he’d come home. I knew he was dying, but he wanted to die at home. If I had known then what I know now, we would have stayed home.

But I was seventeen, and I didn’t know. When they loaded him on the stretcher, he looked at me, said the words “pot, money” while raising his hand signifying money. I didn’t know these would be the last words I heard from him. I didn’t know it would be the last time I saw his eyes open. I didn’t know a lot.

My brothers and I got a ride to the hospital. They put him in a large room and told us we could stay the night. I didn’t want to. I didn’t know. I said I’d come back in the morning with my brothers. I went home and found my dad’s money and weed, as instructed. I smoked more weed that night than I thought possible. I smoked and smoked and smoked trying to stop feeling enough to be able to go to sleep. I slept a few hours and we got a ride to the hospital from a friend of mine. We stopped to get breakfast at burger king. I didn’t know.

We got to the hospital, my mom and stepdad were waiting. They planned to have my stepdad and brothers go out to start working on cleaning the house. My brothers said bye. My dad wasn’t awake anymore. My mom called one of my dad’s ex wives, held the phone to his head and she said goodbye, one last time. One of the hospice workers was there. She was going to leave, so I took the opportunity to walk out with her. I didn’t know. We got outside and she asked if she could have one of my cigarettes. She’d quit years ago, but needed one today. So we smoked and cried and were silent together.  I. Didn’t. Know.

I finished my cigarette and went back in. I stopped at the gift shop. I bought a picture frame that had decorative acorns on it. I didn’t know. I got in the elevator. I turned left, past the cafeteria. I heard my Mom, “Where is she, where did she go?” and all at once, I KNEW.

I turned around and tried to get back in the elevator. My mom and the nurse saw me. They came. They held me back from the elevator. They told me it was over. He died. My dad was dead. The world imploded around me, but somehow still looked the same. I slid to the ground. The nurse held me up. She told me to go in, to say goodbye. She told me he could still hear me.

I went. Louis Armstrong, It’s a Wonderful World, was playing on the CD player I bought. My dad loved music. His eyes were partially open, fixed. The blue was clouded, muted, the life gone out. His jaw hung open slightly, thrust forward and to the side, as it does. Death’s grin.

I threw myself over him. I held him. I wept. I cried out for him. I held his hand, and I said to him, I love you more. Over the last month, every day I’d say I love you, he’d say I love you more, and I would look away, embarrassed by this man giving me affection after years of alienation and anger. I said it to him, over and over, tears and snot running down my face and onto his hospital gown. I love you more. I swear I felt him squeeze my hand, just a little, one last time. And then he was gone. And I knew. Somewhere, the song went on, it’s a wonderful world.