We pose for the photo.
We’re in the back and the sun beams down on us disrespectfully.
Dying deserves something more atmospheric or poetic. Maybe never ending rain?
But, the day dared to be beautiful.
‘You need sun,’ your sister in law says, ‘some vitamin D is good for you.’
We placed Dad in the center and we all crowded around him.
We raise, at one of my brother’s suggestions, our middle fingers in the air
and instead of saying ‘cheese’
we say ‘F*** cancer!’
We all lift our middle fingers high.
My father raises his middle digit, although not as high.
We all feel it too.
F*** cancer!
In that moment, through forced smiles, we all feel it:
Anger at the human body for its fragility, anger at the gods, resentment towards the sunshine.
You have little disagreements with Mom about Dad.
She pushes him hard to move around with his walker.
‘You’ll never get better’ she chastises.
‘Leave me alone, woman.’ he shouts in Portuguese. Some days he doesn’t even sit in his chair.
Mom yells at him for being lazy.
She urges him towards a full recovery with the volume of her voice.
After the last hospitalization the doctors suggest hospice.
You bring it up a few times.
Each time Mom gives you a look that can silence all of Hades.
‘No,’ she says ‘that’s a place that gives up on people. They won’t treat him well there. I can handle it.’
‘By screaming at him?’
There’s a delicate persistence to the knocking on the door.
Mom enters and apologizes for disturbing you, but it’s happening again. Dad can’t breathe.
You leap out of bed to check on him. You place the same call to emergency services, you shoot a look at Mom, you tell her it’s time for hospice.
He hadn’t been back from the hospital for more than a week.
‘Now do you understand?’
You sounded bitter. More bitter than you had intended.
The fire red lights flood the living room and two able bodied men hoist Dad up and he's carried away again.
At the emergency he’s in a special room with special machines. You enter and see Mom and your Aunt Marie. You stop dead in your tracks.
On your father’s face is a thick plastic mask that covers his nose and mouth.
The mask is attached to a hose which is attached to a high powered oxygen contraption that has a display screen with numbers that jump.
You don’t initially realize that you're staring.
‘Look who it is Antonio.’
You come into view and Dad opens his eyes, just for a moment, and gently nods his head as if to thank you for coming.
Aunt Marie is holding one hand, Mom is holding his other hand.
No one knows what to say.
The next day he will be moved upstairs to hospice care.
It’s located on the top floor of Charlton Memorial Hospital.
The room he’s in has sunlight tinged in sepia.
There’s two beds in the room, Dad’s in the one closest to the window.
The other Mom will use, because for the last two days of his life, she never leaves his sight.
A nurse with a gentle face enters and tells us ‘He can still hear you. He will not be able to respond, or open his eyes, but he can still hear you.’ She urges us to speak to him.
We talk to him. One brother whispers into his ear.
He thanks Dad for his help in starting the butcher shop.
He says without him, the business would never have been successful.
He kisses Dad on the forehead and leaves.
This will be the last time he sees him alive.
A nurse comes in and explains to us that she will remove the large plastic mask and replace it with the nasal cannula to test whether he is able to breath on his own.
Your mother is against this idea.
Your sister in law, the nurse, explains that this is standard procedure in hospice.
Mom’s skeptical but stands back and allows the nurse to do her work.
When the mask is removed, Dad’s eyes open momentarily, he gasps, his eyes slide close again.
He was looking right at you. You will wonder later if you were the last person he saw.
‘Put it back please.’ Mom says.
Your sister in law echoes the sentiment. She says ‘It’ll make her feel better.’
As the nurse was replacing the oxygen mask she looked down and said ‘oh?’
‘What? What’s wrong?’Aunt Marie asks.
You notice it too.
‘Usually, when the body gets to be this color, it means it’s time. He’s beginning to transition.’ The nurse says.
He looks jaundiced. The nurse places her stethoscope to Dad’s chest. She moves it around a few times.
‘Huh?’ she says.
Your Aunt Marie cries. The nurse turns to look at everyone.
‘Let me call the doctor. Excuse me.’
‘Oh my god. They killed him.’ Aunt Marie says in between sobs.
Your sister in law steps in to console her.
You’ve never actually seen someone go into shock before. It’s quieter than what you’ve imagined.
There’s no drama.
No fanfare.
Shock is deeply quiet.
Eyes instantly devoid of color and light, like someone turning off a television, a lower jaw that falls limply, nervous hands that seek the material.
Mom’s in shock.
But, at least you are here this time.
‘Hey mom,’ you say as you stand by her side holding her, ‘Mom? Look at me.’
She turns her head. She doesn’t see you. She looks through you, at an unknown spot in the distance.
She turns and she touches Dad’s chest, feeling for a heart beat. She mumbles that he can’t be gone.
Impossible.
You ask her to sit. She does, then immediately stands.
She’s lost. There’s no other way to phrase it. When you're in shock, you lose yourself. You disappear.
You call your brothers, you tell them the news. One of them comes.
The other can’t have this image as the last image of Dad.
Your father’s last breath was on the fourteenth.
Ten days later, on your birthday, his cremated remains would be ready for the service.
Dad was very specific about how he wanted his remains to be handled.
‘I don’t want a funeral at a church and this nonsense. Cremate me! Take me to Narragansett Bay and dump me in the water.’