9:41 a.m. - 2005-09-21
The Best I Could Rant
Still, for all the fits and starts of our troublesome love, I was the one entrusted with the journey to eternity. The one there to witness the sudden rush of angels, the intimacy of a last breath. Staring at the pager, black and ominous on the desk at the training, I felt a panic I had never known. An urgency that flocked my mind with hideous pecking things, pushing me on. The writhing together of doubt and fear and all things unspoken which could forever remain so. By rote, I jabbed at the buttons on the cell phone strangely poised in the unfamiliar hand that shook. His voice emerged as if from a paper cup attached by string to mine. Far away. Small, but firm. It seemed to be coming from the beginning of time. "Let me call an ambulance," I begged, tears everywhere at once. "I will meet you at the hospital." But he spoke in a way both authoritative and tender. "No." And "No." And, again, louder, "No." My car was flying off in all directions, darting madly everywhere at once. Around horrible obstacles that may have been human. "Do the best you can," he said. The best I can. The best I can. I have always tried to do the best I can. I have always failed him, failed myself. Failed. Erratically, ecstatically, I manuevered around the things that are ordinary, the things that are rare. Horrible obstacles, misunderstandings. Pauses and hiccups in the everyday lives of others, preventing me from doing the best I can. The best that was never enough and never could be. The never of best. The landscape flew, blurry and sad. My tears made an undersea world of everything at all. I screamed in the car, my own voice reverberating against the dispassionate metal that enclosed me. Obscenities interrupted by prayers, passionate pleas to a sky I was not entirely certain of. There had been a similar time, so many years ago, when He had made all things right. Accompanied us on such a flight, my daddy clutching me wrapped in a blanket soaked with my sweat and his tears. Racing to the hospital, just ahead of the reaper. A time when He had listened. Had given us back to one another. I pleaded, sounding my horn, seeing the markers of home. I raced in to find my beautiful father in his pajamas, still holding the phone. We raced past my mother, no time to say goodbye. She stood, ineffectual, silent with fear and confusion. The best I can. The best I can. We drove into the harsh light of a white afternoon. Crisp, I suppose. I don't recall. Only the best I can. The one thing to hold. I scolded him for not calling me sooner. He didn't want to interrupt my training, of course. "It doesn't matter," I pronounced. "It doesn't matter. You are the only thing that matters. Nothing else matters." And what I spoke was so true that it startled us both. An abrupt intrusion into what we had done for decades. The truth sat between us in the stale air inside the car. He had a pan on his lap, just in case, for the nausea. He was so strangely calm. The dignity of the man still in pajamas, a white pan on his lap. The one we always used. The one I had used as a child. The one with the black spots showing through where small chips of enamel had peeled away. The one that had seen us through various minor illnesses. A part of the family, really. What was I thinking? Ridiculous memories out of synch, thoughts running together like some childish watercolor. Finger paints. The best I can. I drove through Griffith Park. Bicycles and golfers and children playing as though nothing were happening. The best I can. We arrived at the emergency room there in Hollywood. Hollywood had been my daddy's favorite place. The time of his life. Those five years when we lived in that duplex with the morning glories and black, black bees. When I had been more equipped to do the best I can. At five. At six. When the sun was forgiving, pale and warm. In the yard. In the wading pool. Safe in my bed. The best I can. A tall guard told me I could not park where I was parking, there near the emergency room. I yelled at him. So unlike me. The best I can. The best I can. I rushed in to get a wheelchair, to call the hospital staff. The best I can. My humble father, surprised at this new lioness that was his baby girl, was willing to wait. Attempted to calm me. The best I can. Finally, after comets and eons and lifebloods and sparks in the air seemed to pass, I found the chair and wheeled him inside. Leaving my car where one should never, never park. The best I can. My father calmly advised me to go and park in the lot. He would wait. Everything was fine. The best I can. I drove across the street to the patient's lot. The pan sat ridiculously on the passenger seat. Staring with it's black eyes and white, white face. The best I can. I ran back across to the emergency room. He was there in the chair in the hall with the many, many people stupidly smiling and talking and behaving as though the world were not about to end. The best I can. And they brought him into a room, behind a cloth curtain. And he waited and we spoke softly about nothing. And a doctor arrived who my daddy recognized. And my daddy told him that he just didn't feel quite right. And blood was drawn. The best I can. And I reminded the doctor that my daddy tended to minimize. The best I can. And the doctor left. And I asked my daddy to please indulge me. I told him that I really believed he would be alright, but could he please indulge me. He said he wanted to know, really wanted to know. And I knew that he really wanted to know. The best I can. And so I told him about Jesus, about not wanting ever to live in a heaven that didn't contain my daddy. That I wanted him in my forever. And he listened and he asked what he needed to do. And we prayed. And he said, "Is that it?". And it was. The best I could do. And some crazy lady from the next bed began to shriek with delight. And she started talking about Ephesians I. And my daddy and I looked at one another. And we celebrated with this total stranger who sounded kinda crazy, truth be told. And they took her out after telling her that it was just congestive heart failure again. And we were alone. And his breathing was labored. And I remember my daddy telling me, "I don't think I'm gonna make it." And he told me that he had had a good life. And I watched this humble and dignified and brave and incredible man. The best I could. And the doctor returned and it was not good. Congestive heart failure, but not like the crazy lady. Congestive heart failure. Too late. The best I could. And at one point, they were so short staffed that they gave me the cup to hold over his nose, the bulb to squeeze those puffs of air for which he grasped. I held his life like a sparrow panting in my hand. The best I could. Or so I thought. And then suddenly my daddy looked as though the sky had opened, not empty after all but lush with movement. "I see angels," he simply said. My daddy had never been a religious sort, although he lived with an intrinsic morality that shone through his irreverent humor and disdain for "religious fanatics". Not knowing what to say, foolishly I asked, "What do they look like?". And he did not answer, but the look in his glassy eyes was the answer. Once again, he raised himself so slightly and calmly said, "I see angels." Their presence was tangible, their embrace unmistakable. Surrendering, I slumped into the chair by his bed, my forehead sticking to his limp right arm. Through tears, I could make out the sapphire class ring he treasured. The best I could. His arm was cold and wet. The best I could. I watched the horrible screen jutting up and down as his body ceased to function. The best I could. I whispered, "I love you, my daddy ... I love you, my daddy ... I love you, my daddy." And he was gone. I did the best I could.
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