Last words

Obfuscate-to bewilder,confuse or stupidly

Pecuniary-of or having to do with money

Perpetuity-lasting indefinitely

Monolithic-fig. Massively uniform

Enfant-child

Cronyism-appointing or hiring of persons to positions regardless of abilities because of friendships.

Malfeasance-official misconduct violation of public trust or duty

Fideism-philosophy that knowledge is dependent on a fundamental act of faith

Erudite-scholar learned

Obscurantist-a person who is opposed to progress and the spread of knowledge

My dads last words. Just a handful of them. His very last one was this:

Ephah- equivalent to a bushel

He used to just write out words in a notebook. He would write them down and then go back and write the meanings later. He always had a pencil. A mechanical one used for drafting.

He was a man of many words but really so few. He spoke very little of them. He thought them all. He wrote what spilled over.

Towards the end of the notebook his writing changed. It was sloppy and you can barely read it. His body was stopping. He was writing in print instead of cursive sometimes. Likely to show his severe desire to concentrate on the task.

Our last conversation on the phone was the night before he died. We talked about almost nothing. I told him I thought this was all too hard. That I didn’t know what to do all day long not working. He said. “Take care of yourself, your kids and keep writing, reading, and if you run out of books I have one on the laws of physics.” Then laughed. Then he had to go because a nurse came in to do his respiratory beatings he called them. Where they pat on his back to break up things stuck in his lungs. I said goodbye. Then he died.

Will I relive this every day? Do I want to torture myself? Am I afraid I will forget? Why do I want to remember such painful things? Are they that painful? It was comforting that I was able to chat the night before. To be able to say goodbye. I knew deep down it was coming. Not even deep down it was right in the surface. I made the phone call in case it was the last. That’s how I function, always. I am a run back and hug tighter, longer, better to the ones that matter one last time before they leave person. I hug and say things so I have that memory before I go. In case I don’t come back or they don’t. It’s the most horrible thing and also not.

At the end we all just sat there around him. My sisters, my mom and I. It was horrible for me. It was too weird sitting there around a dead person, especially that the dead person was dad. I kept thinking of his body inside shutting down. The actual process. The fact that his skin was getting yellow from the lack of liver function. His heart wasn’t oxygenating his blood anymore. What color does it turn again? Or does it change? His nose hair isn’t moving? His chest wasn’t moving? Of course it’s not, he’s dead. Why is one eye open? Can’t someone close it for him? He can’t close his eyes anymore, he died. My mom was holding on to his hand that looked like it was getting too hard and I pictured them having to break it to get her to let go and leave. The nurses were busy cleaning around us. They kept coming and going without saying “hey, he died, visiting hours are done, forever, goodbye.”They didn’t have to say it. I already did.

I had to go. I needed to get to my kids and hug them. Tell them. I had things to do. Places to be and one of them was not sitting here over my dead dads body. He was gone. I wanted to play pretend that this wasn’t true but it wasn’t something you can pretend isn’t true. They have things to do. People who need this room. He needs to go and be put away so we can go and be put back together. Why was I in such a hurry? Because it was too hard sitting here with my dead dad.

I started nesting. Gathering things and tidying up. I found his pencil. His notebook and read his last words. He was given his last rights and words. He was given permission to expire. Who was supposed to give us permission to leave? Where were those people? The ones to say. “He wrote his last words. Said them all and now he is done. Goodby.”

No one wants to say it. Maybe they could write it down. Just leave us a little note under the door.

What would you say? Goodbye. That’s it. That was my last word. It made sense. It was simple. I don’t have any thing else. It sums up the end of hello. The beginning of the end. The last word from me.

I don’t want to relive this everyday. I want to live every day. Not relive the ones before today. It’s not that they are too painful. Or too hard. They interfere with my day to live today. They single handedly catapult my into the future. I go back and forth. I look back and relive a moment that somehow makes me move past today to tomorrow or forever from now with no answers to the questions from my relive thought. I jump from back to forward and miss the here and now when I’m too anxious. It exhausts me. I can’t think of how to breath or even if I should. I can only take a deep breath by yawning and pretending to yawn because I’m not tired. I need the big open muscles and movement of a yawn to open the airways blocked by the leaping to and from to the past and future.

I can’t control the outcome of anything. I usually know this. Occasionally I just don’t. It makes some days difficult to get through because I’m in a different day and my body doesn’t know how to breath beyond the one I’m supposed to be in.

But I got through it. And today is today. I woke and wanted to replay my dads last moment with me. And I found it didn’t push me into the next day. Or even farther. I have my coffee, his notebook of words and today. I can breath today. I’m aware of the breathing and the thoughts trying to run ahead and behind. It’s like a race of words. They just go and go and go and then they go back. Then forward. I can’t stop them. But they are there. I can listen to them. Write them. They don’t become less they become more. They can consume me but not always. I can’t sort why some days I can and some days I can’t. What matters is that I realize some days I can and some days I can’t. Goodbye.