Last night my father woke me up every three hours. I stood, slit-eyed against the brightness of the room, at the foot of the bed. I dropped morphine onto his tongue and I lifted his legs, which he can no longer lift himself. He can't hear me anymore. He is almost completely deaf. I hate the sound of my voice when I shout to him, inquiring as to what he wants to eat, if he has pain, if he is okay. Sometimes I repeat the questions in my normal voice just so that I can hear them the way I meant them to sound, soft and pliant.

Now we just sit together in the room, our reticence forced upon us. He reaches out his hand and I lean forward to take it in my own, my chin balanced on my knees, my eyes drifting to the corners. We sit like that for an hour or more. There is nothing else to do. He fusses with the bed sheets and adjusts his position. I don't want him to die but I don't want it to go on like this. Even as I write this now, he is laying there alone in the room, unable to hear or even really see, yet conscious and present to where he is.

Mike came down today. We sat on the patio while my father slept and we said all the things we needed to say all along. I told him, for the first time, about things he'd done years ago that I'd never really forgiven him for, that somehow made this day inevitable. We talked about when we first met, about the first time we were apart after having been together. I cried and told him that I don't know how to stop being us. He held me for a long time and I soaked his shirt with tears, my breath hot and childlike on his neck. We agreed that this can be no more but neither of us could come up with an answer for how to do this. He talked with my father as best he could and then we stood by the door, hugging again. We kissed for the first time in a week and afterwards he whispered, Baby, what are you doin'?

After he left, I returned to the chair at my father's bedside, our hands clasped again, our voices mute.
8:50:56 PM     comment []