losing him

visit

Step by step, I make my way through this all too familiar house. The smell of home cooked meals and hard candies lingers. The aroma is nostalgic. I breath in knowing I only have a few more visits left before I leave the state.

We congregate in the living room as he sleeps in a room not to far off. I hear him groan and shuffle to his feet as my face fills with worry and joy of getting to see him. Watching him make his way only a few steps to his recliner I jump up to offer a hand, which he kindly declines. As he slowly lowers himself to sit he reaches in his front left shirt pocket.

He always wears pearl snap shirts. And his legs have never seen the light of day because they have been cloaked in jeans.

He pulls out his inhaler, out of breath. The cancer has started in his lungs, at the size of a tennis ball. As he puts the inhaler away I take in his every detail. In that moment time freezes. His pale hands shake in a resting position. Which is abstract to me, for as long as anyone's known him he's been a working man. His face lacks it's usual ambition. I would describe it as sullen, a word that I have never tied to him.

I'm accustomed to seeing his white eyebrows plummet into his receded, nearly nonexistent hairline as he smiles his goofy smile. The lines and wrinkles in his face are proof that this melancholy man was once playful and bubbly. He's scared as well as everyone else in the room is. There is shouting, our failed attempts to make conversation with this hard of hearing man.

Discussion of his newly deceased son causes his frown lines to become more prominent.

As we leave I avoid his recent marks from surgery and hug him loosely, though he pulls me in tighter. I fear he is too weak but his hugs prove me wrong. We pull out of the driveway as I pray for his health and well being. I would call it a day well spent.