Deep
breaths. I draw in air through my nose and then let it seep out past my
lips. As it goes I hear a moan that hurts to realize is my own.
Is
it even possible to simply consider the death of a parent in any way other than
painfully? If we are lucky we won't have to observe it with our own eyes.
We'd count ourselves fortunate to receive a call in the middle of the
night notifying us that they were just simply...gone. That'd be easy,
albeit still fraught with pain. But then wouldn't the guilt of
missing such an event still overwhelm us to the point of misery? Who should
bare witness to such a thing if not the child whose life is owed to the dying?
Hell, I don't know. Better men than me have certainly pondered and
debated these subjects for years to no better avail than the one I sit here
writing about now. This was a man who I can't remember in my life for blocks at
a time. Not moments...blocks. Yet his passing was no less difficult
for it. He may have felt like a stranger to me at times, but he was still
the only father I was ever going to have and I had no idea...read, NO IDEA
how hard it would be to watch him pass from this life to the next.
I'm
not sure if I wanted the time to fly by or not. But the eight or so hours the
doctors estimated dad would survive once home came and went with him still
clinging to his life, leaving us all to wallow in ours as we watched his
struggle. The hours stalled. They hung there before my eyes in midair
offering absolutely no reprieve. Maybe it's my recollection of it today that
seems frozen, but then I just knew that somewhere out there in time's
vast expanse was an end that I needed to arrive at but couldn't get
to. Each event of his passing morbidly unfolded like a giant piece of
dirty canvas cloth. It was heavy and wrinkled and smelled of death, and I
couldn't find its corners to save my life. These were the end times, the last
gasps, his death throws. I believe now, after seeing such things with my
own eyes, that every living being fights to avoid its end. A cut tree will sap
and try to regrow before finally falling to chord. A marriage will
flounder and reel and put its occupants through hell before finally dying on
some courtroom floor. And the human spirit kicks and claws for life
before succumbing to death and arriving at the entrance from which it
came. This is the natural order of things, and the way of the world I was
now living in as I watched my father die. Maybe it's something I had to see as
his son, as if somehow the birthright he left for me wasn't made of the gold I
always hoped for. Instead, it was made of burning images
searing their way through salty tears onto the fabric of my mind.
If he wanted to leave me with something permanent then he succeeded
masterfully, because after baring witness to his passing I would never be the
same again.
I
guess morphine makes the pain go away. I imagined him ingesting the black
liquid and then just peacefully slipping away to the place that would lead him
home. But it wasn't like that. He fought his end and even in a comatose
state I saw desperation in his eyes. He laid writhing and grunting animal
sounds that would scare the bravest man, which I certainly was not one.
They were like the fits of a caged animal. They came and went,
sometimes violently, as the long hours passed. He was there in his living
room on display like some dying king for all his subjects to see and pay
tribute too. I guess I kind of felt like I was there worshiping him
that way. As I watched him my mind relived moments from my life
that he was a part of. I could see him there as a young man, my daddy,
baring rough features and a sometimes gentle demeanor. I could hear his
voice telling me some story I'd ask him about. I so loved talking with
him about anything or nothing at all. Then I could see his aging, drunken
face as I tried to plead with it to stay or just say a kind word. Then I
saw the apologetic man who would show up trying with one hand to keep a hold of
the hat his prideful other was trying to throw across the room.
How he must have struggled with himself about the shame of it all.
And then I saw an old man with gray hair and a wrinkled, weathered face
that still looked like my father but somehow like me too. That old man
tried to love me, especially at the end. I recalled some of our last
conversations, where he told me of the cancer's toll and that he wasn't yet
sure if we needed to have a difficult face to face. Seeing him there on
his death bed I knew he'd lied to me about that. It hurt me to know
he didn't have the courage to tell me it was time to think about
saying our goodbyes to each other. Today I feel differently about
it though. My father was an optimist so how could he have known that
he'd lose this fight? I have to believe he didn't because the dying man
in front of me wouldn't have wanted those images to be my last of him. I
believe he had courage to fight for his final breaths, even if not for my final
goodbye. But that was always his way. That was my father too, selfish to
the end.
I
sat with him several times watching him fight. The sound of his breathing
beat the air like a war drum, and then it faded to almost nothing. He
would take shallow, quick breaths and then deep gulps of life,
followed by long moments of silence. His chest wouldn't move for what
seemed like minutes and minutes. And then he'd breathe again letting us
know he wasn't ready to go yet. Even though he was laboring I hoped that
what I was seeing was his metaphysical struggle and that there wasn't much
actual pain. I administered morphine several times trying my best to see
to that. I bet he liked that blissful state. I imagined he was
seeing golden colored skies and high Texas plains of green grass and mossy
oaks. Or maybe he was adrift on the dark blue sea he seemed to love so.
Or perhaps he was visiting with his God and getting instructions for the
salvation I know he received. That's a conversation I think he would have
enjoyed and have taken his sweet time concluding.
It
took about twenty four hours, and the span of my lifetime, for him to go.
No more fighting, no more life to summon strength for. No more
oceans to drift or desert expanses to wander. He let out one last long
breath and then never inhaled again. My hero, my tormentor, and the
greatest mystery of my life was gone. My father was finally dead.
-Jim
Franks
