Sometimes Pa was very lucid and we'd talk or we'd cry together but as the days went by I'm not sure he always knew I was there for my short daily visit. I had a baby at home to take care of, to nurse, and an intensive care unit was not somewhere I felt comfortable lingering with him the handful of times I'd brought him along. I couldn't ever stay long and just hold my father's hand.
Food no longer interested him and he only stared at his crosswords with pencil in hand. These were two things we had shared a passion for, food and puzzles, but overnight they became just mine and so I couldn't bring these daily comforts to him as gifts.
In his other hand, his phone. And sometimes he'd say he had to call so and so and there would be such an urgency in it. He had to call his friend Ray, who he had known since they were boys, and he had to call my husband, Jason. But I could not make these calls for him, I could not say to them what he wanted to say because I did not know what the message was.
And he had to call me.
Which he did several times a day from the hospital, but rarely did he say more than "hello?". I don't think he had anything he had to say to me because we had always been so good at saying things to one another all along, the good and the bad; I think when you talk to someone five, six, seven times a day for years it had just become habit to hit speed dial 3, "Supergirl". My child would be crying or another call would be ringing or a pot on the stove would be boiling, or my heart would be breaking and I could not sit on the phone and listen to his breathing, his repeated hellos.
I just couldn't.
A walk one evening with my son and Mom - the one night she had left her husband's side to come home and do the things a person needs to do to remain human - revealed a swarm of monarch butterflies, migrating, stopped to rest in the trees before moving on again. He would have so loved to see that, he would have called it a gift to witness it, a miracle. I tried to photograph them for him, remembering what he'd asked of me before I had moved back: to send him a photo a day, that it didn't matter what it was a photograph of, he just loved seeing what I saw as I saw it. But I couldn't get the images right. And I certainly couldn't bottle a thousand butterflies for him so he could see it as I had seen it.
I was driving his beloved car, driving to visit him, and I came across his MP3 player in the glovebox. I stopped and bought him a pair of headphones, more than I could afford really, but, while I was raised not to buy things I couldn't afford, I was also raised to treat purchases as investments. I wish I could say that as I stood in line to pay for those headphones I was justifying the purchase by saying to myself "Only the best for my Pa" but what I was really saying was "He's going to die very soon and then I guess I will use them and use them for a long time."
I'm not sure he really understood what I was asking him when I showed him the headphones but with eyes near closed he had nodded. I felt afraid in that moment because while Pa loved his music, there was always a time and place for it as he was someone who required a lot of quiet, someone easily overstimulated by all the senses, and the last thing I wanted was for him to become agitated. I looked to my mother and she nodded. I hit play, I'd chosen Bach, and Pa's eyes shot open. It startled me, his eyes opening like that, and I thought I'd done wrong, but as I reached to remove the noise, he smiled and his eyes got wet and he said "Oh. Oh, that's so lovely..."
He grabbed my hand and squeezed gently. Pa was never one to gather you up and hug you in his arms; Pa would hug you with his hand, a squeeze to the arm or the knee as you sat beside him, or your hand in his great big hand. And it was the most comforting and reassuring thing I've ever known.
It was as I had told myself in line that day. Pa died very soon after, less than a week later. I don't know how many more times he used these headphones that sit before me, that I now use and will use for a long time. But it wouldn't matter if no one ever used them again after that day. I brought my dearest friend something lovely, for a moment, and in doing so I unknowingly brought myself something lovely because I will use this day, that moment, the smile and that squeeze of his hand for the rest of my life.
That is one hell of an investment.
