Walking under the ocean

There’s a voicemail on my cell phone that I can’t listen to but I can’t erase. It’s been three months, since the night Dad died. It’s hard to write about.

The message is from my step-mom and it starts, Andrea… Andrea!  which is not something anyone wants to hear. It’s a sound you won’t ever hear unless someone you love is drowning but you may still have, like, 10 minutes to get to the hospital to save them. Because someone has gone into cardiac arrest, but no one has said the “D-word” yet. And your sister, who is listening to her own voicemail, swears and slams her phone down hard on the kitchen table and covers her face. And, standing there, in her house, you start to wonder if this is the moment you always feared, since you were a child. But you’re not a child now.

When your brother-in-law drives you through a blizzard to the hospital, you sit in the backseat with their 8-year-old son who plays on his iPhone, and you think about how someday this will be a strange, dream-like memory for him. When you get to the hospital they won’t let you in. They tell you to wait here while an ocean begins to flood the lobby. Your sister comes close to your face as the water rises above your heads and says, we aren’t really here and none of this is real. And strands of seaweed float up through the filtered, milky tide.

The dividing glass doors part as a team of doctors and nurses in scrubs walk through the ocean toward you. It’s exactly like a scene from a movie. They want you to come with them to a room where they will talk. But you don’t let them wait to explain about your dad because you seek out each and every pair of eyes until you find a face that can’t lie. When you find the vulnerable eyes, he tells you everything. I’m sorry, he mouths, bubbles floating away from his mouth before he can pull them back. He looks like he could be your little brother or a younger version of your dad. And then you follow the team into the room.

It’s dry and comfortably lit. There are waiting room chairs, no windows, a counter with a sink, a phone, and a large, echoey bathroom.

They first tell you that they did everything they could, then the facts. They apologize for the slowly rising tsunami of sadness that is about to overtake your life, and infer that legally, of course, they’re not to blame. And then they want you to ask questions. They keep wondering about your questions and you can’t think of any. You don’t have any to give them because your voice is underwater. And, you don’t need to show your feelings, because your sister is handling that part of things for you. So there aren’t any emotions or questions left and, because, fuck them.

Then the door opens and closes and your step-mom is standing, dripping wet in her long parka. But she hasn’t looked into the male nurse’s eyes who could be her son or her young husband, so she doesn’t yet know. The walls begin to sweat and you try to nod knowingly – yes – at her, but she only smiles and looks puzzled. After she’s been told and the team leaves, you all take turns trying to call your brother and sister who are out of town, but no one can get a signal out from the room in the ocean. Someone sends a text, there’s confusion. Finally, you have a short, soulless phone conversation with your 25-year-old sister in which you speak to her like a robot about her father dying before the phone cuts out. There’s a long, heartfelt text about enduring from your 27-year-old brother who is at a bachelor’s party in Colorado and is stoned.

You are so thirsty. You need to drink a gallon of water.

Your brother-in-law takes his 8-year-old son home and then someone brings in the body. You yell Dad twice and shake him to wake up. There is red blood by his nose where the tubes were. You need to clean his face and wet a napkin at the sink. A man comes in who seems to be the hospital’s God representative, whatever religion you need. He talks about the homey-looking colorful quilt covering your dad and how very caring ladies made it out of love. You dab the blood by your dad’s nose.

The man wants you to feel the love from the quilt? He wants you to be thankful for the quilt?? He wants you to know your dad is covered in love from the quilt??? You have never been so thirsty.

He wants to pray over the body. You don’t. He wants you all to circle the bed and give a blessing to the body, but it’s not a Catholic blessing. Did Dad get Last Rights and would he care? But who asks for last rights when death isn’t a possibility? His doctors never said anything about dying being a possibility.  The hospital linoleum floor is slick and you notice the sink faucet drips. You want this man to leave. You have no words to give him, but your sister does, so that is a relief.

You hug your dad for hours. All the hugs you will get for the rest of your life. You take pictures of his body which doesn’t seem at all strange. You hold his hand and take a picture of your hands together. You notice, finally, the yellowish discoloration already claiming his skin.

You are ready to leave. You step into the ocean of the hospital hallway and your hair floats into your face. You look at the back of his head before the door closes, the last time you will see his gray, thinning hair. Why did you not touch his hair when he was alive? You wonder later about the quilt and if you were supposed to take it, but the thought of pulling it off your dead dad and leaving him is nonsensical, and you didn’t know those ladies. The male nurse with the truthful eyes doesn’t notice as you swim by. It snows for the next three days.

One day you will write about these moments in the first person. For now, the words just needed to be cut out of your heart and anchored to the page.

So that’s done now. I love you Dad.