Breathing Words

In her poem, “Each Bird Walking,” the poet Tess Gallagher wrote, “tell me something I can’t forget.” Use Gallagher’s words to start your writing assignment for this week. In 500 words or less, tell ME something I can’t forget about the life experience that provided the impetus for you to enroll in this course.

He lay there—the man who had a cold once every three years. The man who never noticed bleeding, two-inch gouges in his arms. The man who survived a fall from the roof with a scratched elbow and bruised hip. The man who got attacked by a swarm of bees while trimming a tree, escaped, and returned to fetch the car keys he had dropped. The man who removed my splinters, who popped my blisters, who patted my head, who laughed with me, who lectured me, who schemed with me. He lay there—like an old man.

The doctors assumed it was pneumonia. Of course, when he passed away two days later, they realized that it wasn’t pneumonia and asked me to sign off for an autopsy so that they could pinpoint what it was and use the information to “help future patients.” But that’s another story, isn’t it?

That night, the last night that I saw Dad when he was conscious, he lay in the ICU, in a narrow bed, with glazed eyes and wheezing lungs and reminded me to keep going to church and to take care of Mom. Ominous words from a man who only had pneumonia and would be out of the hospital as soon as the antibiotics kicked in. I had smiled and reassured him as Mom fussed with his pillows and asked the nurse a thousand and one questions about… about what? I don’t remember. I thought she was being pushy and wished that she would just let the doctors and nurses do their jobs.

Before ten minutes had passed, Dad needed to use the restroom. But he wasn’t strong enough to get up, walk to the bathroom two feet away, and use the restroom by himself. He wasn’t even strong enough to sit up. His voice was so low that he repeated himself three times before we understood what he needed and ran in search of the nurse. And when the nurse came, he asked Dad if it was “pee or poop.” Twice, because he didn’t hear him the first time. Then the nurse grabbed a urine cup and asked Mom, my sister, and I to step away from the hospital bed.

Our visit ended there, with quick kisses on Dad’s cheeks, forced smiles, and promises to visit tomorrow. My final moment with Dad—with Daddy, conscious and aware and not the flesh, muscle, and bones of some humanoid whose life ebbed away despite the “latest technology” strapped to his limbs—ended there, that night, with his eyes staring into mine as the curtain closed. Was the quiet shame and tired acceptance in his eyes just my imagination? I’ll never really know. But, oh, how I hated the nurse.