I'm sitting here next to my Dad's bed with my laptop, right now. He is two feet away from me and sleeping. I'm afraid to leave the room, even to smoke. I think that he could go any time now.

Along with the deafness and poor vision, he's getting very confused. This morning when I came in to wake him up, I sat quietly beside him while he looked around, remembering where he is and what day it is. After a few minutes he motioned for me to give him paper and a pen. Why?! I shouted. Can't you speak to me? He insisted. I passed him a pen and a small notecard. He began to write a series of numbers down.

19 9 6 487 9 00 13 .98 0.6 19. 088.7

My father was an engineer at one point in his life. He has a very high IQ and dispostion for numbers and math. What are you doing?! I shouted. Here, just write a number, he said thrusting the notecard at me. Why?! I shouted again. Where do they come from? he said with a look of awe on his face. I laughed and we both shrugged at each other.

The day has gone on like this. He is in and out of lucidity. Everytime that I leave the room he becomes very anxious. So now I'm just sitting here next to him. For the last hour I read In-Touch Weekly and then moved on to Us. It seems impossible to read anything of depth when I'm already in so deep. I held his hand and flipped past Justin and Cameron, Trista and Ryan. His mouth opens wider and each breath becomes deeper. I can tell that he is sleeping, even though his eyes are partway open. The tendons in his fingers jerk, like the way a dog twitches in his sleep. I stare openly at his face and wonder what is happening in his body, his mind. It must be so difficult for the body to stop functioning, these organs and tendencies, nerves and synapses to just stop after almost 83 years of knowing only their function. How does it happen? Am I about to see it happen?

After a while, I began to kind of pray. Pray isn't the right word because I don't pray ever but I did that thing that anyone does when they think about something really hard and try to put all their energy towards a place or a person. I thought about my mother and my father's mother and father. I tried to will them to hear me and to come and get my Dad. I imagined my mother greeting him, pressing herself to him to feel the warmth that my hands had, so recently, left in his.

He woke up shortly after that, my efforts clearly thwarted. He looked at me and shrugged again. I shrugged in return. He leaned forward and put his hand on my face, my hair, my eyes. I closed my eyes and let him. I don't think he's touched me like that since I was a kid. When he withdrew his hand I looked at him and saw that there were tears in his eyes. I haven't seen him cry since my mother died.

Life IS worth living, he said, looking at me. Death and Birth are such sweet sorrows. If there were no death, you would never know how sweet life really is. Somebody was smart enough to put that down in writing one day.

I've been at this post on and off all day. Tonight was the first time that he didn't want to eat dinner. We went back and forth about it. I held up various notecards upon which I had written in black marker things like, Dinner? Meatloaf? Gnocci? Enchiladas? Noodles? He finally settled on some noodles with cream sauce. But only a few bites in and he handed the bowl back to me. I ate leftover pizza from yesterday. I haven't been eating very much at all in the last two weeks. I've lost over ten pounds. Been trying to lose those ten pounds for a few years now. Oh well.

It's strange to be in this apartment all day. It's so quiet. The humming of the oxygen machine and the hissing of it's tubes. Muffled shouts from the pool outside. I hate these prefabricated, gated condominium complexes. They make me sick. During the day we keep the shades open in my father's room. We sit in silence, holding hands, watching the occasional resident meander by the window. It's always so shocking to see them. Walking by on their cell phones or with armfuls of groceries. Huge entire lives being lived all around us, above, next door, families and children and lonely people. I wonder what they think when they walk by this corner unit. They probably don't think about it all, can't imagine what goes on in unit #95. A 25 year old girl and her dying, 83 year old father, holding hands as the sun goes down in California.
5:34:47 PM     comment []