Running on empty

I stood at my father’s hospital bed. They said he had a blockage in his carotid artery. If the blockage made it to his brain, he would die instantly. I went home as soon as I could manage. I watched over him, like a sentry guarding his morphine sleep. I wondered what "blockage" meant. Did the blood calcify and build up on the lining of his vein? Had it become like a hard stone that came loose? Or had his blood congealed, like Jell-o?

I watched my dad breathing through the tubes in his nose and I heard the machine beeping by his bedside. I found myself looking over at the pulsing line almost as much as I monitored his resting eyes. It reminded me of that children’s book, Harold and his Purple Crayon. I thought about how my father’s brilliant life, all of the accomplishments, hopes, dreams, anger, fear and anxiety had been condensed to that glowing line.

My father did not die that week, but he eventually died. When he did, I finally understood when people in church said, “It was good. He’s no longer suffering. It was really for the best.” All of those things had felt like trite phrases that we whispered when we tried to manage our grief, when we couldn't bear to give the sadness a life of its own. Suddenly, they felt true.