Real death is not like in the movies, and my father’s begins on a Tuesday. His energy has been flagging since last week; his blood pressure was low and his arthritis was flaring, but nothing was urgently wrong. Nedra recommended rest: “Let him do his favorite things.” Now, his favorite things are to drink ginger beer and pet the cat, so that’s what we did. But two days ago, he wouldn’t get out of bed. He was tired and in pain. Nedra spent much of that day with us, and she deduced that his kidneys were starting to fail. When I heard this, my thoughts began to deceive me, and I needed her to explain everything two times, sometimes three. I heard her words—“He’s starting the process”—but the information didn’t stick at first, so I blindly followed her lead.
Now, we sit by my father’s bed, his ragged breath beating a steady rhythm that has become our metronome. He is no longer responsive, but he is not gone. Nedra affirms, “He has one foot in this world, and one foot in the next.” He is between selves, I think, as I hold his veined hand.
Nedra asks if I want her to stay, or if I’d prefer to be alone with my father. I choose the latter, and she says she and Lawrence will be available, to call if I need them. She leaves me with instructions on how to keep my father comfortable, and once she is gone, I call Nina.
“Cricket? I’ve been texting you. How is he?”
“It’s hard to tell. They don’t really give you a manual for this, but I think he’s almost gone. Can you come?”
“Yes, of course. I’m looking at flights. I can be there in the morning.”
I settle in beside my father. I am supposed to give him morphine every two hours, but sometimes those hours seem to pass in a flash, and others crawl. Time is a vapor, impossible to measure. At one point, I realize it must be afternoon because a golden band of sunlight cuts diagonally across the covers of my father’s bed, as if holding himin place. There is a lump at the foot of the bed: Dominic. He has been there since last night, and his steadfastness reminds me that this—not the impatient Hollywood version—is the plodding pace of death.
A while later, Paula, Carl, and Max come by to spend some time at my father’s side. They ask if I need anything, if I want company. I am grateful to have their support, but I tell them they should go, that Dominic and I prefer to handle this on our own.
On and off, I read to my father. First, it’s something whimsical and nostalgic:The Wind in the Willows.Mole, Rat, Badger, and Toad. I imagine them all rowing alongside my father, chatting away, accompanying him on this final outing. Then, we switch to poetry. Mary Oliver, Walt Whitman, Richard Wilbur.
They say that hearing is the last sense to go. I want to say something profound before it’s too late, but there is no script for this moment. All I can think to say is “thank you,” so I say it over and over.Thank you. Thank you.“Thank you for loving me, Dad,” I say one last time. “I know you don’t remember me, but I remember you. I always will.”
My father’s face has become drawn, and his chest rises and falls. It’s so still in the room that each of his breaths is a cataclysm. He sounds like he is working hard to get somewhere, and I think of the Robert Frost line, “The best way out is always through.” It’s hard to listen to him breathe this way, but I know he is working his way through, finding his best way out. I squeeze his hand, knowing that my only job now is to see him off.
I think about his conversation with Anita, and I remember how much conviction he had about the fact that when we die, we go somewhere much better. Though it breaks my heart, I touch his cheek and whisper, “You can go whenever you want to, Dad. I am launched. I’ll be just fine. You go when you are ready.”
Chapter 51
In the morning, when the paperwork is done and the funeral-home guys have carried my father out of the house for the last time, I finally sit down. It has been hours since I actually rested, or really even breathed. I’m not yet exhausted—that will come later—but I curl up on the couch and try to settle my nerves. I wonder where my father is now. Not his body, but the more enduring aspects of who he was, is, will continue to be. Maybe he is in a place where he can reconnect to the memories he had lost, or maybe it’s a place beyond memory, beyond thought, beyond what I can imagine with my little human brain.
“Where are you, Dad?” I ask aloud. I know he’s not here, but I also know he’s not gone.
A few hours later, I wake to the sound of tires in the driveway, and I step outside just as Nina is lifting the car seat from her rental. She sets it down and we look at each other. She knows our father is dead without my having to tell her. There are no words for this moment, no reconciling these extremes: within the span of a few hours, I am meeting my nephew for the first time and seeing my father for the last. I pull Nina into a hug that thrums with all of these layers, and then some.
“I miss you so much,” Nina cries into my shoulder. When we finally part, she asks, “When did he go?”
“Early this morning.” I peek into the car seat, where Anders is asleep. “Oh wow, he’s perfect. Nina, you did this. You made him.”
She laughs. “I sure did.”
Finally, I turn to Nils, who is rummaging around on the passenger side of the car. But when I make my way over to greet him, I stop short. Nina’s traveling companion is not Nils. It’s my mother.
“Mom?” I look at her, then at Nina. “I didn’t… Where’s Nils?”
“He had a last-minute work thing.” There is a slight edge to Nina’s voice and she doesn’t elaborate, so I don’t press the issue for now.
“So here I am!” My mother embraces me, her Chanel handbag driving a wedge between us. When she stands back, I can see how hard she is working to refrain from commenting on the state of my hair—long, unwashed, still two different colors. Instead, she says, “It’s freezing out here.”
It isn’t. It’s actually a perfect late-October day, fresh and bright; but we make our way inside.
Nina looks around and then peeks into my father’s empty room. When she comes back, she is smudged with tears. “Cricket? Thank you for doing this.”
“For doing what?”
“For being here. For taking care of Dad like this. I never could have done it.”
“What do you mean? You took care of him for years,” I say.
“Yeah, but this part. The end. I always knew I wouldn’t be able to face it.”
I start to contradict her, but then I stop. Maybe it’s true what she’s saying. Maybe my sister has limitations after all, even if I could never see them.
