NONFICTION |
Moraga Street Steps, San Francisco - Photo by Mike Lambert
Empty Nest
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During his last year, I would find him in bed, sometimes reading with my youngest sister, Meg, then 36, beside him with her own book, or with my mother snuggled up as he slept. Our own bed-centered routine was doing crossword puzzles, a variation on the ritual we began when I was a girl. I would lie right up against him to see the puzzle he was working on, or he'd hand me one partially done and say, "see what you can do with this."
As a girl, in what I see now was an unconscious effort to spend more time with my dad each evening, I would kneel beside his chartreuse recliner, a galumphing interloper in my mother's beautifully decorated blue living room. (Dad had many interloping chairs over the years, each a creaky compromise between love and aesthetics between my parents.) |
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My crossword puzzle role in the early years, starting about age 8, was to catch any misspellings my dad made, or if he accidentally wrote an answer in the wrong set of squares. I remember proudly the first time I knew an answer Dad didn't know; the word "aerie" from the 1971 John Denver album. Nest.
If there were one thing I wish I had from my dad, it would be one of his worked-on crossword puzzles, the paper folded down and again to the width of a paperback, a slim, but firm sheaf to work the puzzle. I can picture the particular slant of his capital letters filling the squares with ballpoint ink—lighter in the squares where he wasn’t quite sure, others clear and confident, and still others filled in over first attempts, their dark outlines overlaying the first answers beneath. Those pages were ubiquitous throughout my life, on and around the chair, or the bed, or anywhere he had done a puzzle or two or three; my dad’s papers feathering our own nest. Then with no nonsense efficiency, my mother would follow, collecting the papers and tossing them out.
Who would have thought to keep them? Such fleeting, momentary, disposable items as old marked up newsprint? It would not have occurred to us that any one of them would later be a precious and singular memento.
Ambling numb and foggy in the days after my dad’s death in September, 2007, I scavenged for just one of his puzzles in the recycling bag in my parents’ home. Hunched in the cool, white utility room, my heart pounding hopefully, I dug through the paper bag that was the temporary stop before the big blue bin. But while my father likely did a crossword puzzle on that Monday when he later went to the hospital in too much pain, and may have attempted a crossword puzzle the next day while I sat with him at the hospital, and maybe even the next day before he slipped in and out of consciousness, any last crosswords at home would have been swiftly recycled. Old newspapers at my parents’ house never lasted more than a day or two. I can imagine my mother that week, even in the little time she spent back at home, busying herself with quotidian tasks. My mother making order, making order, because of the profoundly disordering thing that was befalling her; her urgent ordering, alone in the house.
In the hospital on Thursday of that last week, my mother asked me if my father looked orange, lying there in the hospital bed. “Is his color changing, or is the light?” she asked, both of us looking to the window and back to him sleeping. By then there would be no more crosswords.
My dad woke that September Friday with an alertness that gave us hope that he might last a few more weeks. It was an alertness apparently often associated with the last gasp before death, an alertness we later read about in the hospice brochure that came too late—hospice having been put on eternal hold due to my dad’s eternal optimism to kick the cancer. When I arrived at the hospital after dropping my kindergartner at school, I leaned in close and gave him a kiss.
If there were one thing I wish I had from my dad, it would be one of his worked-on crossword puzzles, the paper folded down and again to the width of a paperback, a slim, but firm sheaf to work the puzzle. I can picture the particular slant of his capital letters filling the squares with ballpoint ink—lighter in the squares where he wasn’t quite sure, others clear and confident, and still others filled in over first attempts, their dark outlines overlaying the first answers beneath. Those pages were ubiquitous throughout my life, on and around the chair, or the bed, or anywhere he had done a puzzle or two or three; my dad’s papers feathering our own nest. Then with no nonsense efficiency, my mother would follow, collecting the papers and tossing them out.
Who would have thought to keep them? Such fleeting, momentary, disposable items as old marked up newsprint? It would not have occurred to us that any one of them would later be a precious and singular memento.
Ambling numb and foggy in the days after my dad’s death in September, 2007, I scavenged for just one of his puzzles in the recycling bag in my parents’ home. Hunched in the cool, white utility room, my heart pounding hopefully, I dug through the paper bag that was the temporary stop before the big blue bin. But while my father likely did a crossword puzzle on that Monday when he later went to the hospital in too much pain, and may have attempted a crossword puzzle the next day while I sat with him at the hospital, and maybe even the next day before he slipped in and out of consciousness, any last crosswords at home would have been swiftly recycled. Old newspapers at my parents’ house never lasted more than a day or two. I can imagine my mother that week, even in the little time she spent back at home, busying herself with quotidian tasks. My mother making order, making order, because of the profoundly disordering thing that was befalling her; her urgent ordering, alone in the house.
In the hospital on Thursday of that last week, my mother asked me if my father looked orange, lying there in the hospital bed. “Is his color changing, or is the light?” she asked, both of us looking to the window and back to him sleeping. By then there would be no more crosswords.
My dad woke that September Friday with an alertness that gave us hope that he might last a few more weeks. It was an alertness apparently often associated with the last gasp before death, an alertness we later read about in the hospice brochure that came too late—hospice having been put on eternal hold due to my dad’s eternal optimism to kick the cancer. When I arrived at the hospital after dropping my kindergartner at school, I leaned in close and gave him a kiss.
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“I didn’t know it would happen this soon,” he said, weakly.
“No Dad, I didn’t either,” I said, as the tears fell.
He ate some of his breakfast that day, and asked to spend some minutes alone with my mom.
“He just hugged and kissed me,” she later told me.
He requested to see the priest and when he arrived, my father, ever polite and friendly, said, “Thank you for coming, Father.”
Dad was taken home that day to a hospital bed set up in the small office off my parents’ bedroom, a sunroom where Dad would pay bills and play solitaire on his computer at the desk overlooking the garden. Throughout my evening visit, Dad slept or was disoriented and agitated, but the hospice nurse there told us it wouldn’t happen that night.
“He isn’t ready,” she said.
In the adjacent bedroom my sixty-seven-year-old mother put on the lush burgundy nightgown that my father had given her, a simple and elegant full-length spaghetti-strapped gown. My father didn’t see my beautiful mother in her beautiful gown, her cheeks wet with tears. She sat beside him while he slept, holding his hand and stroking his face. When it was time for me to go home, Mom left me with him in the dimly lit room: me, my dying dad and the hospice nurse sitting silently in a chair by the door.
Very near to him I began to sing, trying hard to maintain the melody as my voice quavered. I awkwardly held his head off the pillow hoping he could hear me with his one good ear.
“Stars shining bright above you, Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you. Birds singing in the Sycamore trees, dream a little dream of me . . . Say nighty-night and kiss me, just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me. While I’m alone and blue as can be, dream a little dream of me . . . ”
By 8:15 the next morning he was gone; gone minutes after I arrived for what I thought would be a multi-day vigil. Gone in a flash, his energy lingering in the room; my mother’s hands tucked under his body still feeling his warmth several hours later.
Gone: a four letter word for heartache.
“No Dad, I didn’t either,” I said, as the tears fell.
He ate some of his breakfast that day, and asked to spend some minutes alone with my mom.
“He just hugged and kissed me,” she later told me.
He requested to see the priest and when he arrived, my father, ever polite and friendly, said, “Thank you for coming, Father.”
Dad was taken home that day to a hospital bed set up in the small office off my parents’ bedroom, a sunroom where Dad would pay bills and play solitaire on his computer at the desk overlooking the garden. Throughout my evening visit, Dad slept or was disoriented and agitated, but the hospice nurse there told us it wouldn’t happen that night.
“He isn’t ready,” she said.
In the adjacent bedroom my sixty-seven-year-old mother put on the lush burgundy nightgown that my father had given her, a simple and elegant full-length spaghetti-strapped gown. My father didn’t see my beautiful mother in her beautiful gown, her cheeks wet with tears. She sat beside him while he slept, holding his hand and stroking his face. When it was time for me to go home, Mom left me with him in the dimly lit room: me, my dying dad and the hospice nurse sitting silently in a chair by the door.
Very near to him I began to sing, trying hard to maintain the melody as my voice quavered. I awkwardly held his head off the pillow hoping he could hear me with his one good ear.
“Stars shining bright above you, Night breezes seem to whisper, I love you. Birds singing in the Sycamore trees, dream a little dream of me . . . Say nighty-night and kiss me, just hold me tight and tell me you’ll miss me. While I’m alone and blue as can be, dream a little dream of me . . . ”
By 8:15 the next morning he was gone; gone minutes after I arrived for what I thought would be a multi-day vigil. Gone in a flash, his energy lingering in the room; my mother’s hands tucked under his body still feeling his warmth several hours later.
Gone: a four letter word for heartache.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kathy Bruin is a writer, artist, and erstwhile activist. She has worked in publishing, event management, operations, and is currently the director for Osher Lifelong learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University. Kathy is the founder of About-Face, a media literacy campaign which educates about the way media impact female body image. Among other appearances for About-Face, she was “punked” on a Comedy Central program called Crossballs. Kathy also produces Bruin Snappy Cards and a meditative game called the Fox Box. She lives in San Francisco with her son, Miles, who is a senior in high school.
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Vistas & Byways Review is the semiannual journal of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by members of Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) at San Francisco State University.
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Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at San Francisco State University (OLLI at SF State) provides communal and material support to the Vistas & Byways volunteer staff.
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