“When Your Father is Dying” by W. Scott Hanna

After you get the call at work and learn they are stopping antibiotics and switching to morphine, after you hear 24 to 48 hours but maybe longer because everyone is different, after you nearly break down in your boss’s office, after you somehow make it to the parking lot where you hope nobody can hear you inside your car wailing, you somehow finally get your shit together enough to drive.

After the elevator, after the fourth floor, after the doctor says It is up to God now, after you translate God into Nature, Cosmos, Universe, after your body wills you through time and space, you crest the highest point of I-70 in Belmont County, your senses heighten and fine-tune the world into eyes and ears and nose and skin and mouth, into the shape of the crescent moon, ribbons of orange-red cloud underlit and silvered by the setting sun, the curls of your daughter’s hair, the perfect curve of her chin, the wide bright blue of your son’s eyes, the lavender-soft skin of your wife’s neck where you bury your sobbing face, the sweet sting of whiskey, the sad notes of a song.

*

You remember the decades in the nursing home, only it was just a few weeks, every day, spoon-feeding your father ice cream or cutting his favorite sandwich into fork-sized pieces. You say No when asked if you want to see a picture of the wound on his back that’s exposed his tailbone. You can’t fathom how your mother has the strength to deal with this. You collapse wailing on the basement floor during your workout at 6am.

You take a break from the hospital room once a day and walk down the hall, stare out the fourth-floor window, across the parking lot and into the trees of the hills beyond thinking When will this ever end? You hold on to your sister so hard, wondering What the hell would I do without her? You gather around to watch the ballgame, hold the computer screen close while he tries to gather the strength to open his eyes and see the touchdown on replay.

You resist the memory of twenty-five years of never missing a gameday Saturday. You break down with your sister in the fourth-floor corner waiting room, knowing you’ll never have a Saturday with your father again. You realize you’ve been mourning for days someone who is still alive. You tell him you’ll see him tomorrow and watch his slightest head nod.

You know he knows.

*

You arrive in the morning and notice the nurses jacked up the morphine overnight. You don’t know your father is only twenty minutes from dying. You sit by the bedside and listen to his breathing, strained, labored. You hold onto his hand for the first time since you were a boy. Your sister arrives, thank God.

You both tell him you are there, and he manages another slight head nod. You tell him you love him. You tell him he doesn’t have to feel any regret. You tell him you had the best childhood. You tell him Fuck Michigan, and your sister laughs through her tears. You feel death arrive in the room. You know this is it.

You clench his right hand. Your sister holds on to his left. You think how all he wanted six weeks ago was just to be outside again, see the sky, feel the sun, hear a birdsong. You watch him breathe, then stop, then breathe, then stop, then breathe, then stop. You see his eyes snap open for the first time in days, for the last time ever. You see him staring up into the void, searching beyond the ceiling for just one glimpse of clear blue sky.

You feel it happening. You watch his final breath. You sense, deep in the sudden stillness that follows the last exhale, a weight in the room lifting. You feel silence and time converge, and you are awash under waves of grief and peace.

*

You find your way across the sand to the edge of the sea holding your father’s hand. You are still you, but you’re a boy now. Your father is standing tall and walking you into the surge. You hear and feel and smell and taste the sea swell rolling in. You wade in against the cold, the salt, the wind, through the shallows further out, and further out still where the water wraps you in a womb of past and present. You feel the complete absence of half of who you are. You wonder What comes next now that all the waiting is over?

You know your father is gone.

You stand waist-high in the swell under a crystal blue sky, a perfect orange sun rising. You look straight into the glittering calm just beyond the break-line. You hear on the shore behind, the ocean keeping time. You pull in your own breath deep. You exhale the weight of a thousand memories.

You let go of your father’s hand.

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