A weight lifted (Patreon)

My father died, and a weight lifted just the way he said it would. 

Lying in his hospital bed, rolling crushed ice around in a plastic cup. "A weight will lift," he said. His face was serious. His face was always serious when he teased me. "A weight will lift, my darling daughter. A leaf will fall. Fresh white snow will blanket this whole sleepy town."

I have it all on my phone. The sound of ice. The sleepy town. Instead of him, I have ice. I have darling daughter. 

'Darling daughter.' Teasing me, but meaning it, too.

"Sunday, you are my daughter," he says on the recording. I can still feel his hand in mine. "You are my darling daughter, and it breaks my heart that the day has finally come for you to learn this hard and simple truth." 

I recorded him. I recorded him for weeks. The cancer was everywhere, the doctors said. But on the bed, in that flimsy hospital gown, it was still my father. It was still his laugh. Still his eyes. 

Sometimes.

So many parts of him were missing now. Whole organs were gone. Every new thing I learned, every new procedure they performed. "I can't get the taste of death out of my mouth," he told my mother, when he thought I was asleep. "This is not my body. This is a horror." 

And it was a horror. A horror who held my hand. A horror who teased me for being afraid. 

"The hard and simple truth, my darling daughter, is this. We, each and every one of us, must lie down in the winter of our lives," He cleared his throat on the recording. The sound of crushed ice again. "to make way for the baby skunks and the excitable little porcupines that are born in the spring." 

His wonderful teasing deadpan voice.

It was still him, and I was so confused. I was scared to lose him, but I was confused too, about how it could still be him. His stupid jokes were still his stupid jokes, even after the doctors took so much out of him. Even after he shrank and shrank and shrank. They were still his jokes. It was still him. The blood on his pillow.

And if this could still be him, if this couldn't stop him, then maybe nothing could. 

It made me want to believe in ghosts. Fear and confusion made me want to believe in ghosts. Desperation and so many other things that I thought were love. 

I thought if I could record his jokes. If I could catch the weird way his mind worked, maybe he didn't have to die. If he didn't need his whole body, then maybe he didn't need any of it at all.

I am telling this story all wrong. My father is dead now. He was dying then, and he's dead now. A weight lifted, just like he said it would. 

He didn't have to suffer anymore. No pain. He didn't have to look out at us and pretend that it was his body anymore. He didn't have to wait while they autopsied him alive. No more cold needles and callous nurses. No taste. All gone. 

No laughs either though. No jokes. No hugs or kisses. No steak. No Jimmy Stewart. But that's not - I don't know what was inside him then. I was so selfish. A weight lifted. We didn't have to watch his suffering anymore.

A weight lifted.

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