Then Kerry walked up to the head of the bed and I went to the foot and both of us stood there like bookends, waiting for Dad to wake up.
Minutes passed in slow motion.
A nurse walked by the door and the silence grabbed hold of the shuffle of her feet and swallowed the sound.
I glanced out the window at the gray heavy sky ready to snow, then back at Kerry at the head of the bed, looking down at Dad, not wanting to tell him.
Reaching into the bed, I took hold of the sheet near Dad’s feet, and squeezed it. I closed my eyes. All I could think of was the day before Ma went into the hospital for her final operation. She didn’t think she was going to make it through the surgery. About 3 o’clock in the afternoon I made a pitcher of fresh carrot juice at Kerry’s house and carried it down the dirt road to give to Ma. Without knocking, I pushed open the back door. A wedge of light rushed in the doorway ahead of me and fell across the floor of the TV room. I followed the sunlight to the middle of the room, and there they were, my mother and father sitting in their pajamas on the floor, leaning up against the black vinyl couch with their arms around each other. Just sitting on the floor like two little kids, holding each other. I’d never seen my parents even touch each other before. I’d never heard them talk about feelings or say one personal thing to each other - ever. What stuck in my head was that evening over dinner when I complained about my job at Hudson’s Department store, saying I couldn’t stand it anymore, selling clothes was too boring. Dad slammed his silverware down and said, “We don’t bring our emotions home from work with us.”
And there Dad was, forty years later, on the floor in his pajamas at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, his arms around my mother. I wanted to crawl across the carpet and bury my head in their laps. I wanted to cry and cry, tell them how much I loved them, how much I’d always love them. I wanted to know what they said to each other before I barged into the room. All the feelings they never shared, never said to each other, is that what they talked about? Were they scared and calming each other down? Did they talk about a life after this? Did they think together about where they were going? What goes on in a human soul in these moments? My mother and father who spent every waking hour together for fifty-three years, what finally struggled and plunged out of their souls knowing that tomorrow, they might never see each other again?
