Swinging in the Dark
Wednesday, December 7, 2022
We talked by phone several times a week on my walks up Rivermont Avenue, but once you entered Brooks Rehabilitation to recover from surgery after your fall, we talked daily. On this day, you were tired from physical therapy, but hopeful.
“Man, Mar, they work me hard”—you paused to cough—“but working hard is what’s going to get me home.” We still thought, then, in terms of home, Dad. You going home. No idea that in three days you’d test positive for Covid, in five you’d be rushed to the ER, in ten you’d be gone. A different home.
As I walked from Rivermont onto North Princeton, you coughed again and then said out of the blue, “You know, Mar, parenting doesn’t come with a manual. There’re a ton of Dr. Spocks out there. But their parenting books are”—and I quote you, Dad—“a crock of shit.”
What works for one kid, you said, doesn’t work for another. “You have to know the individual kid. Even then, most of the time, you’re swinging in the dark.”
Spring 1979
When I was twelve I stopped eating under the guise of a stomach ache. Shelley Feese was mean to me—today we call it bullying—and I needed an excuse to stay home from school.
During this time you traveled from Pennsylvania to Virginia for work. You returned one Friday after a week away to find me in my room, still in my pajamas at dusk.
I heard your footsteps on the stairs. My stomach clenched with fear that you—a stern disciplinarian—somehow knew I’d been faking it and I was about to get in trouble. But that’s not what happened. “Hey, Maripoo,” you said, entering my room. “Mom tells me the doctor couldn’t find anything wrong with your stomach.”
Still in your business suit, you sat on the edge of my bed. I breathed in your smell of Winstons and Folgers and Old Spice. The knot in my stomach loosened. No matter how gruff you could be on the outside, the smell of you made me feel safe. “Mom says you’re still not eating.” I shrugged. “You don’t look good, Mar. You’re very thin.”
A tear rolled down your cheek. I’d never seen you cry. You wiped that tear away with your thumb, but not before it reached me in the place my hurting self was crouched and hiding.
“Tell you what I’m gonna do,” you said. “Have you ever had one of my famous burgers?” I shook my head, pretty sure there was no such thing as your famous burgers. I now suspect this was one of those moments you pulled parenting out of a hat, swung in the dark. “Get dressed and meet me in the kitchen.”
I dressed in shorts and my lacrosse T-shirt. Pulled on my Puma cleats, still new in the box. I’d asked for them after Shelley made fun of my no-brand sneakers. I hadn’t been to lacrosse practice since.
When I got to the kitchen you stood at the counter shoveling a burger the shape of a golf ball onto a plate. You’d changed into a white T-shirt and your red weekend pants. You reached for the bread box, paused, looked at me. “You want a bun?”
I shook my head, sat at the table. You spooned corn from a saucepan onto the plate, set the plate in front of me. “You don’t have to eat the whole thing,” you said. “Maybe if you take small bites and chew slowly it will stay down.” You had to mow the lawn before dark. It had grown a lot since you’d been gone. “But if you need me,” you said, “I’ll be on the tractor. Just flag me down.”
I took small bites, chewed slowly, kept it down. Then I went outside to break in my Pumas. I ran the perimeter of our yard, a square acre. Spotted you on the red riding mower rounding a cherry tree behind the house. You waved. I waved back. I don’t remember how many laps I ran that evening. Only you on the mower, waving—a place to re-tether myself every time I circled the yard.
Saturday, December 17, 2022
Carla and I arrive at the hospital early.
The night nurse stops us in the hall. “Room 489?”
We nod and tell her we’re your daughters.
She tells us you’re upset because she won’t give you water.
Late yesterday, before we left, the speech pathologist performed a swallow test to determine the source of your persistent cough.
“If I were a betting woman,” the speech pathologist said, “I’d say you’re aspirating food and water to your lungs. That’s why you cough every time you eat or drink.”
She recommended NPO—no food, no water. You shook your head. “I won’t go through that again,” your voice stern, adamant.
You’d been NPO at Brooks and thought you’d die of thirst. “Okay,” the speech pathologist said, “as long as you know the risks.” But this night nurse is going by the speech pathologist’s report in your chart. “Feed him ice chips,” the nurse tells us. “One at a time, eight to ten an hour.”
We enter your room. You’re propped in bed in a sitting position but asleep. Your mouth hangs open. Your cheeks ashen, gaunt. I know, now, death is near. It catches in my throat. “Dad?”
You open your eyes. Your mouth so dry you can’t find your voice. You whisper, “They’ve put me back on NPO.” Your eyes race.
Carla rests her hand on your wrist. Her fingertips brush the blood-soaked IV bandages on your forearm. She repeats the nurse’s caution, but you already know.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” she says.
You close your eyes.
It’s unlike you to close your eyes to reality. “Everyone has problems,” you told me when I got caught skipping school sophomore year. “It’s how you handle them that shapes who you are.”
How much can a person handle who’s not been home since he tripped over the dog in the middle of the night? That was a month ago. “It wasn’t Maizy’s fault,” you insisted. “If only I’d turned on the light.”
Two days ago, when the doctor announced that, in addition to Covid, your blood culture tested positive for bacterial infections, then asked if you had any questions, you replied, eyes wide open, “I don’t have a question. But I do have a comment. I’m tired of receiving bad news.”
Your eyelids are paper thin, your lashes short, mousy, like mine.
“Dad?” I say, “Would you like an ice chip?”
You nod but do not open your eyes. I spoon a single ice chip from a Styrofoam cup into your mouth. Eyes closed, you suck on that ice chip then chew. Ice chips absorb into the mouth and throat, do not aspirate to the lungs.
When your mouth stops moving I say, “Another?” You nod. I spoon. You work the ice chip. We go on this way, me spooning ice chips, you chewing with your eyes closed.
The nurse said eight to ten ice chips an hour. When I count seven in under ten minutes fear closes in. What am I afraid of?
“I’m not afraid to die,” you told me on one of our walk-talks up Rivermont right before surgery.
Spoon, chew 8. Spoon, chew 9. I can see you thinking behind your closed eyes. I stop counting.
Several ice chips later, enough, perhaps, to whet your whistle, you open your eyes wide, look out at me and Carla, smile, and say with what voice you can muster, your Dad voice, “Hello.”
No manual for parenting, no manual for dying, you reach for your daughters one last time.
