Final Days

I did the work from early June and into August. It’s hot that time of year and you can barely stand to breathe any time around noon when the sun rose without a battle of the clouds or the low buildings of the Midwest. Buildings is an exaggeration, barns, or hay stacks and garages, nothing you couldn’t build beyond a painter's ladder. I was always scared of things that went that high, and still am to this day. So I stayed on the flat ground mowing the lawn, the way he wanted, twice around the mass and then diagonally the rest of the way, between the white picket fence in a small town no one would ever remember besides the Midwestern kids who cared for the lawns of the prairie. My whole family is buried there, alone, next to the other dead bodies. Small town West Central Illinois are the graves that my family occupies. Places I’ve only been when they died. Places I rarely consider.

He was very particular about the care of his lawn and other yard work around the house that only we were forced to care about. Not a bad force, but a force that kept us longing for a place like that, for the people we would learn to love one day. I was, of course, upset about the fashion in which we worked on those hot summer days under the force of him, I was mad in fact, but never in my life have I ever had a boss as rewarding as him. I didn’t know that then, hadn’t even had a taste of it, but now, older and having witnessed the actions of a person how has no love for the man standing next to him, the struggles, the issue at hand, I didn’t understand for a second the love and work he put into me. Shit, none of em were strong enough anyway.

He was strong for many years, be outside right there with me helping take care of the blades of grass, planted flowers, caged blooming tomato plants, and perfectly placed rows of peppers. The essentials, the basics, the amount of space and produce to keep a human well nourished and busy enough to maintain a decent bowel. When he was a kid, in the 50’s, it was quite different, much more work had to be done without the modern food industry we have today. In those days, you ate what you made, and what God allowed to grow. No pesticides, no frozen vegetables or pizza from the market, sometimes, especially if it didn’t rain much that season, you didn’t get to eat. Which is why he is so strong, he paid his dues as a human very early on, and understands the struggles of the world, and can look around and say “ hey I’ve had it an awful lot worse before” and pick up his shovel with perfect form and stick it to the earth. He was strong for many years, until, of course, the year that he died, and not died to me emotionally, but the year he physically died.
It was late July, and in that time of year on the Prairie if it’s not raining, it’s hot, even at 7 am. So I would typically wake at 6, say good morning to the old man, wheezing in his chair and in the same clothes he had on the week before, watching daytime t.v. and fan blowing the little patch of hair he had left towards the window.

I would cut the grass about once a week starting in the front going around the square edges of the yard twice and proceed to slice the square diagonally back and forth until the grass was all the same length “creating an aesthetically pleasing pattern and consistency of work habit” he would say. And he was right, he was always right about those things, it’s the little places in life where you’re able to make a mark and when that opportunity arises you jump on it with integrity. We all want to make the world a better place and in these moments, where seemingly no one will care, will echo throughout your life and in the rest of the work you do. On the same day, I would gather the trash from the backyard, driveway, and living room then drag it to the curb. Go in the modest house and began to prepare lunch for him and me.
He never really ate much at that time, said “everything tastes like sand” and not a complaint to the food I had prepared but to the reality of over-medicated chemo-therapy to a body that would undoubtedly never live the way it used to or desired. I always said that I would rather be euthanized than live a life where I could no longer control my bowels but, now too the feeling of paste and sand with every dish you attempt to digest, is on that list. When we ate together (or when I ate next to him) the nightly news would be lighting up our entire bodies and audio blasting every decibel our ears could manage to tolerate out damage. “ 45 people dead today in an attack in Paris so far….” the news anchor would say in an overacted disturbed tone. It didn’t phase me, not in the least, half the fucking world could’ve been dead, but it didn’t matter, because he was dying, next to me, every day. He was asleep by now, I turned the t.v. down to a sleep-able volume and headed to my room, leaving him exactly where he was two weeks ago and where he will be until the day he dies.

I woke up in the morning to the sound of a bucket of water dropped into the toilet and a sound a vacuum sporadically wheezing when a fur ball gets caught in the rollers. But it wasn’t that, the smell was worse, the sound was worse, coming from a human and the clock ticking with every spout of vomit and blood. He started smoking when he was 9 by way of his mother leaving cigarettes around the house and lacking the respect as a mother and ignorance of the damage it would create because of the parents and society that raised her, she didn’t know any better like most parents and most humans. I had my first one when I was about 14, I hated it, and kept of them for a long while, till I started working in the restaurant business, till I learned it would give me extra breaks and that my peers would hate me for smoking. He left his out like his mother did and didn’t count them. I always wondered that in those days, do they how many they have left? Does he know that I’m taking them? And now, as a smoker, I have no idea how many are in my pack at any given time, except when drunk in my underpants at 3 a.m.

The clock ticks at a strange and subtle pattern when you’re around someone who’s days and minutes are numbered. Every tick-tock of the machine seems to strike a nerve in one’s body that is uncontainable. Unbearable moments. He can’t hardly walk anymore but he’ll do it until he falls over. Which scares the shit out of me. Which is why I don’t leave the house anymore and my phone rings and rings and I never ever consider answering it. But as the clock ticks more and more as the days pass I wonder when I’ll have to pick it up myself to call the professionals. I’m not sure what it looks like when someone is actually dead. Do they kick and scream like in the movies? Will I get some final words from this man? Some prolific secret that he’s been bottling up inside of him ever since I was child? He hasn’t spoken in weeks so I really doubt it. He just grumbles and grumbles. He grumbled the most when I mentioned the idea of having professionals come and check on him to make this all the more comfortable. The neighbor’s are getting suspicious of the situation forming about. They ask were he’s been and how he’s doing. They know he’s sick but they don’t know the truth of the matter. And neither do I. I haven’t done anything like this before and don’t plan on being involved in this mess myself. I keep looking out the windows thinking that James at the pharmacy is gonna call the cops on me soon for continuing to fill his prescription over and over again without the presence of the actual man who the script is written for. I keep making excuses and people around here don’t go stepping over people’s lines of personal problems. Usually just keep it to themselves even if it begins to interfere with their own damn life. Just like this man has done mine. But I won’t say nothing to him. Not a thing. Just wait till the clock ticks, write down the time and date, and when I assume he’s dead I’ll probably go on a drive to the hospital. Take the long way there and smoke a few before I show up. Do I go to the E.R? OR should I call for an appointment? Anyway I don’t have time to think about that. The old man is wheezing again. Better fetch some water.

Does it feel any different leaving someone you loved and cared for your entire life than the person who served you beers for a significant portion of time at a local bar? I mean I got more out of an old woman I used to see before he got sick in a matter of a few nights than I ever did out of him. Is that wrong? Like I said before he doesn’t say much. I take care of the shit around him not for his sake but for his former sake. He wouldn’t notice if this place was on fire. But I still mow the lawn the way he likes it. Take out the trash. Bleach the bathroom. Just in case he wakes up from his spell and begins to torment me about the laziness I’ve ensued on this family and this household. I still worry he’s gonna do that. Just keep up and start living again.

I wonder if the History Channel as a statistic or a number of the people who have died watching their programs. Documentaries on the Korean War or Vietnam. I wonder if the commentators or people involved have ever wondered about their literal, quickly, dying audience. “And President Nixon . . . “ Dead. Another one lost to the emphasize battle in South Korea. You’re never too young for war I suppose. I sit out front on the porch when I can and try to hide from the absurdity of it all. Just a minute to myself. The flowers I planted earlier this year are beginning to welt and I know I won’t be able to manage much time out here without a sweater. The pinks have fallen to dark tones of brown and the leaves are slowly managing their way to the ground. But they’ll be back again and again as the birds will fly high above our heads much after we’re gone. I set up a baby monitor next to the couch where he sleeps. Well, what I assume is sleep, again, I’m no professional. But I know the moment I hear any sense of human life that he’s awake again and needs pills to not be alive. Of course, I’ve considered deleting this whole situation, taking care of it. It really would be easy. A human body can only sustain so much. There are enough pills in there to take care of a village of people’s in a snap of a finger. But I’m not sure what’s stopping me, the cops, god, morals, ethics, what have you. For some reason as humans who are healthy and have a much longer timescale to play with we tend to play with those who don’t have much time at all. If he would tell me to kill him I would, I honor his word, his whisper, his manner, his existence, but he doesn’t speak anymore. Neither do I.

There’s a church across the street and the folks are lined up and shuffling into the place for their Monday night prayer. Shameful really. To be around so many healthy folks and to pretend to be oh, so, ok about their lives. Fuck them. They laugh because their all fucking lost, more lost than I am. I’m right here taking care of a dying man, alone, without God. That fucker ain’t around I know it. And if he is, he hasn’t said a word to me or the old man. Why should he? That’s the path, that’s the direction, there’s no impulse of instant long-lasting happiness. Just total devastation waiting to be uncovered by the sorry souls who decided to wait it out.

Next to the old man again. His breaths are that of a pattern of a broken two-cycle engine. Inhales are tough but the exhales are worse. That’s what things like COPD do to a person. Smoking. But he never took oxygen. Not even the few days before he died. Suffocated in his own lungs. The body couldn’t take in any more breaths. I wonder if these sporadic accounts will ever manifest into anything that is worthy of a magazine that no one cares about to read. Or if it could be altered into a radio story about a person’s father dying in the last of their days alone and quite. Death is uneventful. Well, at least that’s my perception. It’s slow and passing and unexpected. They just stop breathing. They stop. He’s been sitting in there for a few hours now and I haven’t done a thing about it. The baby monitor hasn’t gone off and the History Channel is still blaring. I suppose now it would be effective to go into the details of the moments of when it happened. I won’t spare you any realities. And attempt to give as little as advice as I can.

The yard looked fabulous that day. As best as I could do with the conditions at hand and how much time I had to manage the blades of grass. I would stop the mower every few rows and run inside to check. The neighbors were outside and so were the churchgoers. I imagine they had everything nearly figured out by that time. But rest assured they could sleep easy once the coroner's office left. Who knew that’s how it worked? I guess the paramedics aren’t useful when it’s painfully obvious. I had just got done with the yard. And honestly the only glory it shown was from the post concept of death. The imperfections really shown to me in a way that I had never really thought could do to one’s mind. We realize after a death how worthless and beautiful all of the concepts of ugliness can bring to a human life. A dent in a car, the spots of your Grandmother’s eyelids as you go through the catalogs of photos of her “when she was beautiful”. Bullshit Grandma, you’re more beautiful than you’ll ever be before today. And that beauty will only grow even when you’re dead. His eyes were wonderful. He never allowed me the time to look into them long enough to effect any emotion upon myself and to consider the powers the human eye has. Large, blue, magnificent wonders of the world that were next to me nearly every day had only shown their glory upon me under a puffed up face of a dying man. I’m still in awe. I still cannot consider those moments when he starkly looked at me for what seemed like hours and hours and hours. I didn’t expect this situation or event to become such a part of my psyche until those events happened. I’ve built my days around those looks. Those ghastly stares of inconvenience where I was obligated to maintain my composure next to a dying man. My assurance had to be powerful and demanding to allow a person to leave the earthly planet. So that once he was gone I could really pour out. Emotional people under the watch of a dying person are the worst, especially to those who are dying.