The disjointed memories, threatening since we stopped for gas in Flagstaff, confront me fully as we enter Phoenix on the Black Canyon Freeway. The voice of the disc jockey I listened to in the eighties sounds from the radio, enveloping me in the nostalgic melancholy of going home again.
My dad is sick. In five days he will undergo surgery. Arriving at the home where I grew up, I can scarcely bear to look at him. He’s weak, thin, spectral. The severity of his illness is evident in his gray skin and pained eyes. I avoid looking directly at him so he won’t see my anguished face.
For the next several days my husband Mark and sons Ian and Sam remain mostly at our hotel while I fix ham sandwiches and fried eggs for Dad. I tidy up, hoping he'll eat. Being there, in that house, that neighborhood, I feel out of place and time. The smells and sounds are so familiar–the acrid asphalt exhaust of this desert city. The pungent aroma of the Palo Verde trees, and the continuous buzzing hum of the cicadas. I see my younger self everywhere: I park out front with Bruce. Melinda and I hit a ball back and forth in the street, moving when a car comes. Terri and I giggle as we head for a night out. Standing on the front porch, Doug kisses me. Those old hopes I shared with them–painting, writing, playing competitive racketball, traveling, all abandoned now.
My brother, Jeff, and I drive Dad to the hospital. We sit uneasily together, talking quietly and infrequently. We wait for the jury to return with our father’s sentence, afraid to voice what we both suspect. A nurse appears hours later. The surgery did not go as hoped; Dad will be in Intensive Care for a week. The doctors keep this news from him.
My husband and sons have soothed me, but they must return home. And even though they’ve been here with me, I’ve been alone. This is a place that has no meaning for them. The meaning is all mine. I watch them drive away, filled with utter heartbreak and loneliness. They are my home.
The doctors tell Dad the outcome of the surgery. They say he needs a respirator to breathe. He won’t be able to talk, and he’ll have a feeding tube in his stomach. Does he want this? He does. He peers at the doctor. “Am I going to die?” The doctor tells him not yet. My father’s eyes widen with fear. “I don’t want to die--I’m not ready!” I squeeze his hand, soothe his brow, seeing no peace come to his eyes. Standing there next to him, I must hide my fear for him from him.
At my parents’ home I wander through chores, rarely eating, forcing myself to talk to neighbors and callers. I stare blankly through their Christian platitudes. I take to driving alone and with no particular destination, the city sprawling with so many different kinds of people than in my childhood. I find myself at my old grade school, see my dad gently tugging my small defiant fist as we climb the steps on the first day of first grade. At my high school I watch the spot where we made him let us out, down the block in case someone might see. I drive to houses where my friends lived and he dropped me off so many times, strangers living there now, interlopers.
The nostalgia is palpable, emotionally wracking. I am an anachronism, all alone. My thoughts are relentless, almost punishing. I think of my Dad's life, then my own. I will turn 40 in a few months. Married at 23, divorced in two years, I immediately met Mark and married him a year later. At 28 I was a stay-home mom devoting my days to my sons. Perhaps I was too young, too decisive. Is it is too late to create art, to write something of import? Have I given myself away?
Dad must be moved to an acute care facility. He receives morphine and I ride with him in the ambulance. It’s stuffy and the driver cusses constantly at the traffic. As we arrive I watch the expressions of the staff who receive us. Their faces tell me they do not think my dad has long to live. Greg is in charge; his face smiles kindly, but he asks many difficult questions about the lengths to which they should go to keep my father alive. I leave feeling apprehensive.
The next day I take the stairs to the 4th floor and see a group of four men in suits; three smile and say hello. The fourth turns and looks at me and something passes between us. I turn back as I reach Dad’s door. He’s still looking, this muscular black man. I ask myself what just happened as I enter the room. The next day, I see him again in scrubs, Eric the respiratory therapy manager. He asks if I need anything. I tell him I believe the water in the drinking fountain is poisonous. He offers me anything I want in the staff refrigerator. I like standing near him because he smells good. I think about how I never really had a close friend who was black. He reminds me of my profound absence of meaningful contact or experience with people who are different from me.
The days pass with me helping my mother and visiting Dad every day. The smiles continue from Eric, and I feel guilty. My father is sick, my husband and children are 900 miles away. Yet it feels good to be regarded as attractive by this handsome man. Nothing was obvious or overt. Nothing flagrant occurred. I was distraught; he was professional. But we knew. He knew, and I knew. We got acquainted. I both enjoyed and agonized over our friendship. I felt the need to conceal most of my chaotic emotions: I hid my fears for my dad from him. I hid my morbid fear of regret from my family and friends. Yet I hid almost nothing from Eric, this man I’d just met.
Dad experiences weeks of hopeful improvement and sudden crushing setback. Will we ever be able to remove the breathing tube? Can he have physical therapy? Will he ever go home to Jeff’s house? The staff will not commit. They take good care of him, friends visit, relatives come and go. I do my best to comfort him, but Dad wants nothing more than to leave.
Even as the unyielding sun fades on this day, my face shines with sweat as I sit on the front porch of the house where I played and kissed boys and grew up. A family next door comes out for the evening air; I hear the father speaking Spanish, recognize a few words. What is it all about, this life, past, present, future? What does it mean, turning forty, mothering, being a wife, a daughter? How do I create meaning, happiness? What do I fear? I fear leaving this life undone, "not ready."
My friendship continues with Eric, and he somehow eases the upheaval in my heart while simultaneously causing agitation by my attraction to him. I wonder about the secret of attraction and chemistry. Is it pheromones, eye contact? I have felt it before, good vibes with people I liked instantly. But this, right now? Maybe this is about aging, lost youth, the evanescence of womanliness. My ego. Perhaps attraction is the ultimate method for feeling alive, denying death. And I know that death for me is far away. But it feels so much closer now. It’s closer.
People continue to visit Dad intermittently; I tend him daily, cleaning his mouth, scrubbing his hair, turning him. I rub his shoulders and tell him what is happening outside his antiseptic world. He’s concerned about a gift for Sam’s birthday. I struggle to decipher his strange form of hand signals, whispers, and often illegible penmanship. He becomes frustrated easily, asking again and again for the time, always surprised how late it is. He asks for the date, amazed that weeks have passed.
I dwell obsessively on his life and how he spent it, knowing it is ending. He must have many disappointments; I have so many for him. He was the one who could answer any question I asked, the honors graduate of Kent State, the young lieutenant who fought in the Pacific. Yet he accomplished little more in his life. Treated with neither warmth nor love by my mother, he anesthetized himself with drink. Why did he stay all those years? Now he has days left, hours. I can't stop thinking about the meaninglessness of the days. And then it’s over, a fractured life, lacking something crucial. Regret lingers with me, but for the past or future, I cannot say.
My brother and I awake to a 6:00 a.m. phone call. Come now. Dad is sedated for pain. I rush to him, cradle his head in my hands. Our eyes lock for an instant and I know he sees me, feels me. His face moves and relaxes. I stroke his cheek and hair, hold his hand for hours. By 11:00 his blood pressure has dropped frighteningly low. The alarms on the machines sound continuously and are turned off. Jeff notes the fading heart sign and warns me with his eyes–our father’s last moment has arrived. My wet face up to his again, my eyes search his for one last connection as I tell him I love him, he was a good daddy, and it’s OK. One single tear rolls from his left eye and he is gone.
The staff had faded to the back of the room but now appear very busy. My brother moves me out of their way, hugging me as we cry together. I hear Eric say the time as people slowly begin to disconnect machines; my brother moves to help them. They all look toward me, uncomfortable. I don’t want to be in this room anymore, but I don’t know where to go or what to do now that my dad is gone. This is what I’ve done for weeks. Eric leads me out. He takes me to his office, making sure I’m all right. He hides me from outsiders, and I am so grateful. Sitting there at his desk, I think about how we inhabit this planet, take ourselves very seriously for 75 or 80 years if we're lucky, and then we die. And everything just goes on without us.
The hours disappear and a year has gone by, almost. From 900 miles away I keep my dad in my heart while his ashes rest with thousands of veterans on a lonely patch of desert.
My days fill up with laundry, basketball, soccer, my job. I think often about creating a life of greater warmth and meaning, avoiding those who would cause harm or waste my time. My brother and I have grown closer than ever, as have Mark and I, as we eliminate the superfluous; laughing seems more important, and the faces of my sons have never looked sweeter. Eric is still in my life, from a distance, bringing something to it that was not there before.
Memories of my dad stay with me and make me wonder how I will look back at these days forty years from now; will I possess the peaceful consciousness he lacked? Or will I lie in a hospital bed wishing I had lived differently, admonishing myself for a life incomplete, not ready? Still, I welcome the days, both anticipating what they may bring and cursing Time for its interminable plodding nature, all the while knowing it will leave me, eventually.
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