My sibling and I went out of state to our childhood home, where our father is dying. This will be a memento mori of sorts, where I first chronicle thoughts as they happen, then edit them into a cohesive-ish document.
Everything feels taller here. Ironic, as my father is objectively and figuratively much smaller. The trees are different, and more numerous, and taller. The buildings are taller, not being in a hurricane prone area. There are basements, because this city is not built on shifting sand. The sky is a clearer, deeper blue than in Florida, being several hundred miles north than I've come to be used to and much higher in elevation. Just five minutes from here, there is the ruin of an old mill where, up the trail a bit, I used to climb a cliff and hunt for loose garnets. The river nearby is cold year-round, and along the stretch he lives near, it's possible to ford it on foot. The tarmac is, in most places, darker and less rippled, because while it's hot here in the deep south, the angle of sunlight is less punishing. The old junkie house is still here, and looks to have been fixed up. Three of dad's old neighbors are still here, but the rest that I remember have moved on. Dad's house is a time capsule of antiques and death.
I remember this city - I grew up here. I was here a month ago, before my father's sudden fall off of the cliff into hospice care, but I spent almost no time away from him. I'm glad that I did, but it's become another in the retrospective "last time we ___" list that's slowly being created in my mind; the last time I saw him with hair, the last time I saw him outside, the last time I was able to have a coherent conversation with him. I remember this city, and a lot has changed, but most of it is the same city I remember.
While sitting outside during the many breaks I've needed to take from the hot, non-air-conditioned house where my father is living his final moments, I started to write in a stream-of-consciousness style about the things that occurred to me. In fits and spurts:
The sound of cicadas contrasting with traffic and the old window unit sloshing water into the drip tray. Crickets, at night, along with the cicadas. Decaying house, decaying sentience, decaying time, cars. Heat. Heat and blue skies. An old millstone in a sea of pine needles and decaying poplar and maple leaves, too heavy to move, and has been in place for so long that I wonder whether anyone recognizes its historical importance.
Waffle House is a different beast in the morning than it is at night, but the staff is still fantastic, and the cheese eggs are still best stuffed inside of the toast for a late-night dinner. Eggplant with garlic sauce is one of the few things he wanted to eat; we decided, without speaking or deciding to do so, to eat only at the places that we knew dad remembered and liked, and this one particular restaurant made his favorite food. Slowly and quietly sleeping, watching his stomach move up and down just to make sure that he hasn't passed in the intervening thirty minutes, and eventually, watching his heartbeat rather than the breath in his stomach because the heartbeat was more regular. The whisper-quiet responses of "I love you, Dad," not knowing if his quiet "I love you" will be his last. Not always getting an audible response, but his lips sometimes move in an echo of words.
Cranky, and downright nasty. Understandable, given the brain radiation and cancer. Hospice nurse. Prayer groups. Singing in Portuguese and accepting Jesus as his lord and Savior from multiple sects and denominations and in multiple languages.
Poplar trees growing in pups along the side and front of his house. Poplar, red maple, white pine, white oak. Holly, Virginia creeper. Hummingbirds and finches, a deer grazing along the neighborhood's foliage. Hand-feeding raccoons. Sunflowers. So very many deer, the occasional distant howl of coyotes.
It doesn't feel like home anymore, and feels more like home than it ever did.
How did I forget about traffic? I suppose that the world moves without all of us, when we are too wrapped up in our own personal tragedies to actually hang onto it or, in dad's case, too busy dying.
Cold hands, cold feet, and back pain. Lock-boxes for morphine and hydrocodone. Poop problems. So much marijuana, and out of all of these, marijuana is providing the most relief. Rick Simpson Oil is not a cure - not for him - but an incredible relief. The pills, which are the same as the dropper, are metabolized differently and give him a bit - sips and nibbles - of an appetite. But he's not had an appetite at all for a couple of days, regardless, and hasn't had water. He's probably only a few days away from death.
Dogs barking, tall cedars and shaped junipers. Getting sunburn in the shade, when being inside is too much to bear. Broken downspout on a decaying townhouse in a row of decaying townhouses in a decaying neighborhood that was only meant to last thirty years but is still nominally hanging on 10 years past. Overdue bills, and finding old photos, and documents for my grandmother's accounts that are no longer claimable. Didn't want to do the traditional sit-at-someone's-deathbed thing and doing it anyway because that's what needs to be done. The smell of cancer and the salty chemical smell of medication. So much gabapentin. An old hippie bringing sherbet and talking about how she moved to the keys for her midlife crisis in her 50s and moving back to Atlanta when she had her fill. Another old hippie walking up with a joint and a lighter and not taking no for an answer, and realizing that you didn't want to say no in the first place once the edge has been smoothed - not getting high, but getting the space for breath. Feeling conflicted, when I know he can't draw a breath.
Teslas and jeeps, and also Oldsmobiles and a Ford galaxie that needs a muffler. An old GMC van that drinks more fluid than it should, an old Honda that can't keep coolant, and an old Jeep that also has cancer and needs a muffler. Big red ants, and little black ants, and sugar ants. More brick than vinyl. Apartments and condos replacing homes and old factories. "Millennial White" is certainly represented - replica row houses that are too close to the street all white-painted brick, with grey doors and black trim, and I'm willing to bet that they're overpriced claptrap.
Specific vocabulary: transitional care, aspiration, lucidity and the slide into dreams. "Sediment from a big picture, and can you get my shoes?"
My trip is not done, but this is all I can write for the moment.
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