I keep picturing the hospital room ten minutes after he
died. I see his nineteen year old son first alone, and then joined by his
former high school coach and friend and I see him begin to crack and then to
burst altogether. I picture the father’s lifeless body, still warm and
cancer-ridden, and I see his son standing next to him. I see the son cry for
the first time tears and then his soul. I see the high school coach 6 foot 3
with swishy sweats and a baseball hat he takes off on entering the room. I see
him pause as the son starts to break, walk slowly to his side. He holds the
nineteen-year old son, and no doubt didn’t say much of anything least of all
the fateful words “it’s going to be okay.” I see three men, two alive and one
dead, who are caretakers and providers, who are strong sturdy reliable. One of
them too young and too soon, given the torch of responsibility with his
father’s last breath unwillingly yet without resistance or complaint.
I keep picturing this because as the swishy sweats coach
held the boy who has to be a man, the sorrow was split into a fraction—maybe
one half, maybe one-seventeenth, maybe one-one-hundredth—but at any rate, the
sorrow split and the coach felt pain for the son, and I hold onto that.
When the father was diagnosed less than three month ago, my
sister called me and we spent a sufficient amount of time trying to create
silver linings to the ominous cloud. With everyday his body got weaker and his
wife got confused and his kids got terrified and the silver linings faded, and
I wanted to take back the positive things I had tried to say because maybe I
should have said
I don’t know.
One thing I do know: the son needs his dad. The three
daughters, ages twenty, sixteen and fourteen need their dad because as much as
a man will love you, he will never tell you you are beautiful in the way that
your dad does. My dad tells me I’m beautiful and innately I know that it has
nothing to do with how I look.
The wife needs her husband. Because as much as other people
love you, they will never tell you you are beautiful the way your husband does.
He’s the only one who really knows.
But still, the father went downhill fast and my parents
swooped to the rescue with cookies and love time and time again, but their
kindness didn’t stop his cancer or his wife’s heartbreak or his son’s
toughness. Finally it had reached the end, and his son arrived from college two
minutes before his dad died. I keep picturing the son run into the room,
anxious and frantic but for something awful and frightening, and I picture his
dad dying in the middle of saying I love
y…
And then my mind goes back to the son and the coach and I
keep holding onto that.
I draw circles around the people that I love—little
cookie-cutter circles, like when you cut out stick figures from paper or
decorate gingerbread men. They are safe in their circles and they are all that
exists outside of me. And then Dan dies and their outlines and safe circles are
erased by some terrible eraser, and I am forced to watch as the world expands
to something much bigger than I first anticipated. It is huge, unbearably
massive, growing every passing moment, and its hugeness crushes me.
I got the call that the father had died and I sat on the floor and
cried. I told my husband that I wanted to take the pain. I wanted the
daughters, the son and the wife to divide their pain among all of us, even you,
and I wanted them to feel nothing. I wanted to hurt instead.
The coach entered the room after the rest of the family
left, all but the son. And they cried, and I know it wasn’t an accident that the
coach was there when the son cried out his soul.
I’m convinced that the only silver lining left about life
that I can really figure out is people. It is that beautiful part of sorrow
that makes even the worst type of person want to share it with the grief-stricken.
It is the most raw vulnerable naked ferocious people enveloped in fervent
prayers uttered by those who don’t pray and it is the coach holding onto the
boy and feeling a fraction of his pain. And I can hold onto that.