This morning I cried for the first time in two weeks. Maybe this helped me feel as though I could.

When my father first went into the hospital in March of this year he was eventually transferred to a rehabilitation ward in order to work on gaining some of his strength back. At first he was the only patient in a room of four beds. The rehab clinic was in an older ward of the hospital, with 1973 colored walls and old windows that looked out across Anaheim. It was a quiet room, plinths of late afternoon sunlight slanting across the floor.

One day, after about a week, my father got a roomate. His name was Hugh and he was in his seventies, recovering from a brain tumor operation. He had lost the use of the right side of his body and spent each day relearning how to walk. Hugh's daughter, Joan, who is in her early forties, would come each day, as would I, to visit her Dad. She tacked up pictures of forests and beaches along the walls beside his bed. Hugh spent a lot of time sitting beside those walls, listening to Willie Nelson on his headphones and scribbling in his journal.

When Joan and I were both there our fathers seldom spoke but we knew that when we left, they talked often. Hugh went home before my Dad but only a couple of weeks later both of them had to undergo radiation in the same clinic. Joan and I would pass each other in the halls, each of us wheeling our father's into or out of the building. We would pause, pulling the chairs up next to each other so that our fathers could talk and she and I would smile at each other.

When my father went back into the hospital in May, Joan would bring Hugh to visit on occasion. Sometimes they spoke on the phone. By July, both Hugh and my father were at home and under hospice. It was difficult for each of them to talk on the phone, especially for Hugh who had begun to lose his speech capacity, but they would call every other day or so anyway. By late July the phone calls had stopped.

My father was too sick and I had too many things to do. I did not call to check in on Hugh. Today I called. I spoke with Bernice, Hugh's wife, whom I have never met. I asked how Hugh was doing and she told me that he had died ten days ago. She called Joan in from the garden and while I was waiting, holding the phone so tightly against my cheek, I began to cry. I spoke with Joan for a while, this woman almost twice my age, whom I know nothing about, and we each cried.
1:12:36 PM     comment []