A Series of Bungee Cords: Part Two

by Lily Landers

Each morning I came down the stairs prepared to find him. I was very worried about the details. Would his eyes be open and staring at something terrifying? Would there be a weird smell? What about the whole poop situation? If I overslept would the hospice nurse think I was a horrible person because I didn’t find him until 9:30? I used to be able to wake up and then fall back asleep. But that was no longer possible because each morning before I opened my eyes the reality came rushing back to me that my dad was downstairs getting ready to die.

So each morning I took a deep breath and knocked on the door before I went in. And each morning he said, “I’m not dead yet!” Or, “I made it through another one. I’m still here.” I would help him to the bathroom and wait outside until he was ready. We’d walk out through the kitchen to the futon on the back porch. At first he could walk out by himself. Then he used a cane, then a walker, and the last few days I wheeled him out. The weather and construction noises didn’t bother him — he wanted to be outside no matter what. My whole childhood he complained about leaf blowers — noise pollution! But when I apologized about the neighbor’s loud construction he said he didn’t even notice it.

“All sounds are Om, right Lil?”

Mornings were my favorite time. He gave me specific instructions on how to make the oatmeal and told me when it was undercooked. I ate it with him on the porch and did the dishes while he rested and looked out at the back hillside. Then I would go into his room and make the bed, open the windows, light some sage, make sure the room looked nice for whatever visitors would be by that day. Hospice staff and a very short list of close friends and family only. Dad gave everyone a thirty minute time limit on visits.

“When we want them to leave, I’ll hobble in to the bed and you set me up with the oxygen. That’ll freak ‘em out.”

The oxygen tank beeped loudly when I turned it on so he made me say, “Fire in the hole!” with enthusiasm before I pressed the button. He made us do a lot of stuff. I think his dying wish was to boss us around like he used to when we were kids. The last few weeks we watched sports on TV and he would say, “Tennis!” and I’d change it to tennis. “Baseball!” and I’d flip it back to baseball. Finally I handed him the remote (he always called it the commander) and he said, “No, I don’t want to change it, I just want to tell you when to change it.”

It was a Tuesday morning when he said, “I think I’m going to die today.” I held his hand and cried and whispered okay, okay. I knew all the stories. When he was leaving his house for kindergarten one day, his grandmother stopped him and said, “You know, Matthew, your grandma’s gonna die.” He protested but she told him not to worry and sent him off to school. When he came home in the afternoon she was gone. His grandfather Angelo died a few years before that, and the story was that he covered his head in a white sheet and walked around the house announcing his own death.

Angelo said, “I’m gonna go into that bedroom and die and I don’t want no doctors, I don’t want no priests, I don’t want no bullshit.” And all the Italian women in the house cried and screamed and wailed and my Grandma Mary had to shut everyone up.

“Let the man die in peace!” she said. Angelo got into bed and asked Mary for two nails to hold, like Christ on the cross. She brought him the nails and he held one in each hand and looked up at the ceiling and died.

So when my dad said he was going to die on Tuesday, I believed him. I wheeled him out to the futon and he reclined (getting horizontal was always his fave) and I made the coffee and oatmeal like usual. We ate together and I asked him how he would do it, like how would he actually die?

“I think I’ll just slip away into the sunshine,” he said. So I did the dishes and he reclined. Fiona got to the house and he said it again: “I think I’m going to die today.” We cried and held his hands and told him we loved him.

“Slip sliding away, slip sliding away,” he sang and then drifted off to sleep. He must have been able to tell that I was staring at him, trying to tell if he was still breathing, because he popped his eyes open and said, “I’m still here! Deathwatch 2015!”

My boss sent two pies to the house, Apple Crumble and Buttermilk but the way they wrote it looked like Butt or Milk. “I’ll take the milk, please,” he laughed and then burst into song again, “Slipping into darkness!”

“Lil, I’m really gonna try to die out here on the futon because I don’t want people to be weirded out that I died in your guest bed. This way you’ll just have a haunted futon.” I told him he could die wherever he wanted.

“Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’ into the future,” he sang.

And it still does.