The Simple Pleasures

 The Simple Pleasures

 

I felt helpless trying to help

My helpless father.

His eyes are almost always shut like curtains

Drawn to block the menacing light

Piercing his pupils with blinding violence.

 

His voice is almost indistinguishable

As he labors to push air over tired vocal chords

Into a mouth that is desert dry

No longer producing saliva,

Void of taste, 

Filled with thrush.

 

His appetite, still present,

Pesters him for sustenance,

But his body is on strike

Holding up picket signs, refusing to work,

Standing out in front of a dilapidated building

With a “going out of business sale” banner

Hanging crooked on crumbling cinderblocks.

 

I bend down to ask him basic questions

Requiring little more than yes or no answers.

The days of long-form conversation 

Have vanished in a matter of days.

What a difference a week makes

At this stage of the human pilgrimage.

 

He wants food, but can’t taste it.

He wants drink, but can’t swallow it.

He wants sleep, but can’t stop itching.

He wants conversation, but can’t talk.

He wants life, but can’t outwit death.

 

I sit by his side, taking his hand

Feeling the squeeze of acknowledgement

Mixed with rhythmic twitches

Caused by Lord only knows what.

“I love you, Dad.

I’m right here with ya.”

 

He opens his eyes wide and abruptly

Working hard to move them laterally

Turning his head to make brief eye contact.

I see a fleeting glimpse of the former him

Before heavy eyelids eclipse

His greying and cloudy irises 

Once blue as an Oswego summer sky.

 

I feel like I want to do more than hold his hand.

My heart pines for deeper connection,

But as imaginative as I am

I can’t for the life of me

Move a muscle of mind or body

To satiate the longing of this son’s soul.

 

Dad leaned forward wincing in pain.

So I placed my hand on his back to comfort him.

The nerve endings of my fingers

Felt the spine of my father protruding

As the covering of flesh fails.

His shoulders and ribs covered only in skin

Surface under his long sleeve pajamas 

And I began scratching his back softly.

 

To my surprise he bent toward my moving hand

Almost leaning against my fingers.

“Dad, does that hurt?”

He shook his head, “No. Feels good.”

So I felt a permission to massage his back

With long strokes applying pressure

To the areas he seemed to particularly welcome.

 

Growing up, he always scratched his back

On the door frames of our home

Like a grizzly bear on a Paper Birch.

I kept asking if I was hurting him

And he kept shaking his head 

Arching toward my untrained compressions

Moving around his back with an eye on his face

To see what brought that unique look of relief.

 

“I want a pitcher, not a belly itcher.”

These eight consecutive words rolled off his tongue,

More than he’d spoken in the previous 3 hours.

I snickered and he smirked—CONNECTION.

I don’t know what that phrase means in baseball speak,

But I recall him saying it growing up

And it always got a little laugh

--If not from us, from himself.

He always enjoyed laughing at his own jokes.

 

I kept massaging his back 

Until I couldn’t hold my arm up anymore.

(almost angry at the loss of my own strength)

As I finished he slowly leaned back in his recliner

Sighing and groaning 

With what sounded like an ephemeral reprieve.

“It’s the simple pleasures these days isn’t it, dad?”

 

His licked his pasty chapped lips

Pursing them in his preparation to say something.

I waited with bated breath.

As he labored, the words finally surfaced: 

“Thanks, Jay.”

My eyes teared up as my heart tore up.

 

It’s the simple things coming down the homestretch.

The little touches and rare words.

The concrete act of being present,

Often without talking or touching, 

Solidarity in the blank spaces

Filling the cruel passage of time 

with meaning in the meekest of moments.

 

I hope I’m making the most with what is left.