February 7th 2009

Dad’s been pretty quiet today. He’s convinced that he’s blinder than ever and that it’s getting worse by the hour and he’s quietly brooding. He says “I’m trying to put on a devil-may-care façade but I don’t think I’m making it.” I tried distracting him with music (the pan flutes again) and food (ice cream with homemade chocolate sauce) and it worked – for a while.
We were finishing our ice cream, when he suddenly asked, as polite as if he were at a formal luncheon “If you don’t mind my asking, what did your mom die of anyway?” Here we go, I thought. At least he knows she’s dead today. “Breast Cancer,” Breast cancer. How old was she?” “56,” “She was older than I thought.”

I so don’t want to go over the details of the long, horrible night of struggling to breathe before her death in the morning, but I cautiously venture, “you were there, Dad.” In fact, he was the only one there – I did the never-ending night watch, while she pulled out her tubes in a vain effort to get us to let her go and the nurses, more frustrated each time, kept jamming them back together and pumping oxygen into her failing lungs. I was there for her last words “I’m thirsty” – heart-rending because she couldn’t breathe in enough to drink so all the nurses and I could do was wet her lips and tongue. And I was the one sitting there in the middle of the night when, across the room, I saw her roommate draw one last breath and then start spilling blood from her nose and mouth. I went and got the nurse and this lady’s whole grieving Italian family crammed into the room while I tried to shrink into our corner. When Dad got there in the morning, I was exhausted and hungry, so I told Mom I was going home to feed the cats and she nodded. He climbed onto the bed and put his arms around her and started gently kissing her neck and shoulders – the only time I ever saw them that intimate – and I had barely gotten home and fallen asleep when he called to say she was gone. Anyway, Dad just said “I know” and let it drop.

I was telling Dad about my latest plumbing troubles – a bedroom radiator that suddenly started squirting water from one of the valves. I was grumbling about how expensive the plumber is going to be, and Dad said “What’s expensive?” “Plumbers,” “Summer?” he asked. “Plumbers!!!” I said, very loudly. “Oh.”

The phone rings, and Dad listens while I talk to a potential new client for the shelter. When I hang up he says , “Some of them drop off and some of them get new, some of them stay quite a while, all kinds of people.” It’s a pretty accurate, if somewhat jumbled, description of the shelter residents.

As I’m getting ready to leave, Dad says, “I’ll miss you,” “I’ll be back tomorrow ,” I remind him. Silence. “At 84, you can’t complain.” “You’re 85.” “85? Are you sure?” “Yes, 85 and a half.” “I’ll be 86 next august?” “Uh-huh.” Dad seems to be brooding again, so I lower my pitch, and use his words: “Time Marches On,” I say to him. Dad giggles, then says “Nothing stops it.” He pitches his voice lower: “Nothing stops it.” And then he repeats it over and over in all kinds of voices. “Nothing stops it. Nothing stops it. Nothing stops it.”