While My Father Dies
Christopher Schmidt
“He’s going to a better place,” they lie whenever I see them. But I get it; it’s easier isn’t it? They have kids, families, mortgages, schedules. We all do. But how will I even step toward the door after that barrage of kisses he’s given? How do I say, “I’ve seen you enough today?” I shuffle to my car, where I sit paralyzed, like a poet or painter, who is rapt by all the wretchedness of life— its odors and dampness. In the morning my father rests in bed like Ahkenaten: 145 pounds and counting, down another 10 this week. Will more flesh resign from its duties and melt into his sheets with his sweat and pee? Then what? And what do I hope for: more time for him to skeletonize, to forget what day it is, to have more strangers scurry off with his modesty? Does it matter? Where does my hope fit in anyway? He hopes to go home in a few weeks; his protruding pelvis and sunken chest apparently are not sufficiently off-putting to him. And, wow, he almost stood yesterday! Is this when we, his sons, gallop in with heroic cries of “rage, rage against the dying of the light”? Or, should my brothers and I plan for the day we fold his arms across his chest, and dress him for his tomb? On that day, in-laws and neighbors will speak 98 Etchings
