Sarah’s mother called early this morning. I was still in bed enjoying the cool half-light of dawn on a hot day and listening to the uneven splash of water running in the bathroom sink. It was my favorite kind of morning and I was in my favorite state of consciousness - aware, but not really awake. The brash electronic yodeling of the telephone, however, yanked me out of my waking dreams and I rolled over to answer, but Sarah picked it up in the living room first. I was thankful for a moment - not having to speak to anyone meant another few minutes of lazy indulgence.
It didn’t last. I could hear Sarah’s voice stuttering in brief, low tones - a sharp contrast to the chipper facade she would be effecting if someone from work was calling. I heard her sigh twice during the brief conversation, and then I heard the phone go “click” back into it’s plastic bed. She opened the door with one hand, quietly - not wanting to disturb me if I was still sleeping - but my eyes were already open.
What is it?
“Grampa’s in the hospital again,” she said drily. “They think this is gonna be it.”
My first reaction was a pathetic form of self-pity. Terrific. Here we go with the hospital visits again. Long hours sitting in sterile rooms, surrounded by “Get Well” bouquets and reading the same issue of People Magazine dated sometime last year. Long minutes of uncomfortable silence while I lean against the bedroom wall next to people I don’t know and nodding sympathetically whenever our eyes (dammit!) chance to meet.
I hate myself when I react like that.
Outwardly, of course, I was all concern and affectation. “The doctors have said that before.” “He’s a strong old man - he’ll hang on for another year or two at least.” All the meaningless sympathies are rendered as I shower and get dresssed and drive us to work. Our day is just beginning. Grampa’s is almost over.
All day Sarah calls me from the other end of the building. I strain to hear over the sound of telephones and dry sales pitches as she recounts the latest update that she’s received. Her mom is on her way here from Lexington. Gay and Warren are driving up tonight. Uncle Tony (who the heck is that?) will probably be here by four o’clock. Sarah wants to go to the hospital immediately when we get off work. Of course, I oblige, but not without a small sigh that is meant to imply that I would rather be at home shooting hoops. Anything but sitting in that hot hospital room.
Grampa looks little, a fraction of the man that I met just three years ago. His back is turned to me because he’s facing the window, and I prefer to hang around by the door. The family is crowded around him, talking loudly because it’s hard for him to hear (and talking softly from time to time for precisely the same reason).
The irony in all of this is that nobody likes Grampa all that much. It has always amazed me the way they all talk about his impending death without the slightest hint of emotion. It has always seemed odd that no one ever talks about how much they will miss him when he’s gone. But in time I have come to understand that none of his children will miss the sporadically abusive father who never once put his arms around them. All of his grandchildren love to reminisce about when they were young and he used to take them for ice cream, but they also gracefully avoid visits to his house unless it’s absolutely necessary. Most of the family agres that it’s the cancer that has changed him these last few years - affectionate and joking one minute, bellowing obscenities and ordering people out of his house the next.
But the whole family is here in this hospital room anyway. I wonder if they’re here for the sake of Grandma. She moved out of the house and into her own apartment because he was driving her crazy with his constant bitching, but she’s over there every day taking care of him anyway and now she stands next to him with red rimmed eyes and her lower lip trembling even as she complains about him. Cold and unloving as he was, he’s all she’s ever had.
Why are they all here?
For a while I thought about how I don’t want to die like this - all my family gathered around, solemn but not heartbroken. Troubled but not moved.
I thought about my own father, and how I would be so lost if something like this were happening to him. How I would be an emotional and physical mess and how I would rage at the world and the sky and God and the devil. I thought about how I would never be able to stand there quietly and stare at the wall with vacant eyes while my father expired.
But in the moments before we quietly took our leave, real sadness rose up in me. All I could think about was how I don’t ever want to die. I don’t ever want to be old and sick and unable to take care of myself. I don’t ever want to have people talking sadly about me in the third person while I lay in front of them, unable to hear what they’re saying. I don’t ever want to see my family walk out the door, konwing that they’re going to Bonanza to talk about my condition while I’m left to lie alone and stare in whatever direction they left me facing.
In the moments before we left, all I could think about was me.
I hate myself when I react like that.
© 2001 Paul Christian Glenn