January Sky
by Mary Callahan
I drove to the VA hospital with the setting sun in my eyes. I was alone
except for the multitude of cars jockeying for position on the road.
Why did I have to get stuck in 5:00 rush hour traffic? People jousting
with their cars, fighting to beat someone else to get to the next red
light. For these faceless, nameless people it was just another day.
They were wending their way home to pick up kids from soccer or heading
to the grocery store to shop for dinner; I would give anything for life
to be that uncomplicated right now. Instead I was heading to the veterans’
hospital to say goodbye to Tom, my father, the man I feared above anyone
in the world.
The sun slipped beneath the horizon, the red ball giving way to inky
pink and purple party streamers. I thought of Tom and how much he loved
sunsets. When I was seven, he took us kids out to watch the sun gracefully
slip past the Manhattan skyscrapers in the distance. We watched from
the bridge of a highway overpass, with traffic coughing fumes in our
faces. Yes, Tom would have loved this sunset, but he would probably
never see it.
The car behind me beeped angrily. I had done the unforgivable; I did
not leap through the light in the first second after it had changed.
Slipping my foot off the brake, I eased through the intersection, uncaring
that the irate driver swerved dangerously around me. He leaned on the
horn and gave me the finger. I drove along numbly, letting the car make
all the right turns with little attention from me. Too soon I turned
the corner and saw the large brick building that housed all manner of
ill veterans from every war in this century; and Tom.
Walking into the ICU, I was assaulted by the overhead fluorescent lighting
as it careened off the white walls and bed sheets. The room smelled
faintly of antiseptic, overlaid with the dry pungent whispers of death.
Large machines beeped and hummed from every corner. They all appeared
connected and I imagined that by pulling one plug everything would go.
The nurses also appeared to be part of the machinery of the room. They
walked briskly, every move appearing choreographed; death was routine
to them.
I walked past the nurses’ station and headed for the third bed
on the right. That was where he was the last time I visited. Three days
earlier, my mother, my sister Irene, her husband Richard and I visited
Tom in this very room, this very bed. That day the respirator was on
the far side of the room against the wall but it was not in use. Tom’s
jovial mood belied the seriousness of his condition; he asked for ice
cream. I pondered the oddity of this strange man masquerading as my
father as I returned from the vending machine, Cremesicle in hand. His
eyes had lit up, looking for all the world like any three-year-old receiving
a promised treat. He slurped and sucked at the melting, dripping mess
he created. Was this the man, I thought, who used to eat a banana with
a knife and fork? Who dissected a pizza slice like he was cutting the
Hope Diamond? He gave no attention to the trickle of vanilla that trailed
down his arm and the wet sticky sheets that bore evidence of his voracious
handling of the treat. This was not a man to fear and revile. Could
this adorable, loveable, boy child have ever hurt me?
I knew this time was different. It was time to say goodbye. The first
bed was empty and the man in the second one looked dead already. Frightened
and unprepared for what I would see, I approached the bed. I saw a shrunken
old man, gray-skinned and unconscious, being breathed on a machine.
I inhaled in shock. Was this my father? He looked so different. Gone
was the imposing despot whose piercing blue eyes could pin you like
a butterfly mounted for inspection, whose incongruously soft, almost
effeminate hands could, rattlesnake quick, turn cruel. I stared at the
sheets that covered the small shape and wondered how I could have been
afraid of this pathetic old man. As my breathing began to keep pace
with the cadence of the respirator, I remembered.
Once as a teenager I had served Tom dinner alone in the kitchen at the
7’ long table he had built with my brother John when there were
ten of us to feed. I prepared a small short rib, barely heated, blood
raw, as he liked all his meat. He ate, forking up peas delicately as
he demanded truth from me. His truth, of course, because that was the
only kind that counted. As I scrambled through my mental file folder
to find the truth he was looking for, he grew impatient. “Liar,”
he spoke softly. He changed the course of the steak knife he was using
and poked it into my upper arm. The shock bit off the pain. He then
calmly went back to cutting his meat, my blood mingling with the blood
juices on his plate.
The memory jolted me back to the present. I looked around for a window
to see the passage of the sunset but found only sterile white walls.
I checked my watch: 5:30. The sun had already set, the sky had turned
black.
Whoo....shh, the machine breathed. The man in the bed twitched. Tom
would have hated this helpless man lying in the white room. He would
have hated the man he had become: feeble, childlike, simple, a man whose
pleasure could be found unashamedly in Cremesicle bars and messy sheets.
He would have despised the diapers and sponge baths but mostly he would
have hated not being in control of his world.
The sun had set on his life. His final moments belonged not to him
but to a room of nameless nurses, sterile sheets and the soulless sound
of a machine breathing. The lonely end had come at last, yes, but this
ending had really been ordained long ago when he turned his back on
life in favor of the kingdom that he could create. In his dominion,
truth was dictated by his moods and reason begot insanity. That world
had crumbled. His only legacy was stories no one told, lies not yet
forgiven and the pain not yet healed. The king was nearly dead.
I kissed my fingers before placing them on the forehead of this stranger
in the bed. This was not the threatening, frightening man of my youth
who could draw blood with a whisper and fill a room with the tinkle
of a bell. This hollow-cheeked man did not hold my life hostage to his
whims. This was not my father.
---
Mary Callahan is a student of anthropology at Rhode Island College,
a member of the NAACP, and a Youth Minister for the Catholic Church.
Copyright © 2002 Mary Callahan. All rights reserved.