so, hey.... so yeah... sooo.....
So how do you tell people your dad died. That sentence sounds wrong; it is far less than it should be. I has lots of heavy "d's" but no importance, really. How do you tell people, that even if you hated him some of your life, and disliked him lots of it, and begrudgingly found his crankiness... what, refreshing? no, still annoying.... That you ultimately found his crankiness utterly inseperable from who he was and so at the end you grinned at it.
How do you tell people, I sat 4 hours in a cluttered, sterile, AWFUL room, holding my dad's widow, who, in her mangled Japanese/English, is convinced she killed him by calling 911 because the firemen didn't know how to monitor his oxygen (she had it on 12, they turned it down to 6... big no no to her.) Do you tell people that it's most likely that in those last hours he DID suffer, horribly, and pissed off, and alone, since they wouldn't let her in the room.... and since he was already dead by the time the rest of us got there.
He was dead when we got there. My littlest brother, Dave, who towers over me, was my strength. He handed me a purple bandana, folded, because it matched my shirt and I had something to clutch. We were in front of the curtain. Inside the room past was Dave's wife, Erica, Waco, and dead Fuzzy. Dave couldn't go in. He'd seen the last of his dead bodies some other where, and wanted nothing to do with this old man, tubes still jutting from places, face uncovered.
I wavered. B was out front with the kids, and I wavered. Was my brother right? Don't sear that into your memory? Or did I need to see my dad, my Fuzzy, my daddy, once more for... closure? Stupid word, that. "Ok, all zipped tight now. Closed." RIGHT. Finally I knew I had to go in and I gave a desperate squeeze to Dave and went to look upon my first face of death.
It looked like Fuzzy, except he was not there anymore. He's not there anymore. I touched the cold hand (he had pretty hands, narrow fingers and always-tended nails), noted with distaste that it seemed to be clutching desperately at the very edge of the table there. He had a tube down his throat... not so much intrusive when you're dead... and eventually they taped the eyes shut. He was my daddy. But he was gone away. Death.
In the room were little splatters of blood, some on his covering sheets, one that called to me, on the floor. I wanted to dip my finger in it... in that same way you want to poke a Brinx security guard in the back just for the reaction. I hoped it was my father's blood, because that one little spot was pretty. I hoped he didn't hurt in the bleeding.
My daddy's dead. My father. Fuzzy. I shall never hear his crabby diatribes again, and he shall never say, at the end of a phone call, as if pissed in the saying of it "love you, babe."
Wow. Death is a motherfucker. Always and in all places.
Wow.
How do you tell people, I sat 4 hours in a cluttered, sterile, AWFUL room, holding my dad's widow, who, in her mangled Japanese/English, is convinced she killed him by calling 911 because the firemen didn't know how to monitor his oxygen (she had it on 12, they turned it down to 6... big no no to her.) Do you tell people that it's most likely that in those last hours he DID suffer, horribly, and pissed off, and alone, since they wouldn't let her in the room.... and since he was already dead by the time the rest of us got there.
He was dead when we got there. My littlest brother, Dave, who towers over me, was my strength. He handed me a purple bandana, folded, because it matched my shirt and I had something to clutch. We were in front of the curtain. Inside the room past was Dave's wife, Erica, Waco, and dead Fuzzy. Dave couldn't go in. He'd seen the last of his dead bodies some other where, and wanted nothing to do with this old man, tubes still jutting from places, face uncovered.
I wavered. B was out front with the kids, and I wavered. Was my brother right? Don't sear that into your memory? Or did I need to see my dad, my Fuzzy, my daddy, once more for... closure? Stupid word, that. "Ok, all zipped tight now. Closed." RIGHT. Finally I knew I had to go in and I gave a desperate squeeze to Dave and went to look upon my first face of death.
It looked like Fuzzy, except he was not there anymore. He's not there anymore. I touched the cold hand (he had pretty hands, narrow fingers and always-tended nails), noted with distaste that it seemed to be clutching desperately at the very edge of the table there. He had a tube down his throat... not so much intrusive when you're dead... and eventually they taped the eyes shut. He was my daddy. But he was gone away. Death.
In the room were little splatters of blood, some on his covering sheets, one that called to me, on the floor. I wanted to dip my finger in it... in that same way you want to poke a Brinx security guard in the back just for the reaction. I hoped it was my father's blood, because that one little spot was pretty. I hoped he didn't hurt in the bleeding.
My daddy's dead. My father. Fuzzy. I shall never hear his crabby diatribes again, and he shall never say, at the end of a phone call, as if pissed in the saying of it "love you, babe."
Wow. Death is a motherfucker. Always and in all places.
Wow.