When The End Gathers Its Things and Visits Someone We Love

Well, it’s been a while.

I’m sitting in a mediocre hotel room just outside Frederick, Maryland, the kind that has a mini-fridge with small dents in it, the kind that has a microwave with the timer stuck at 35 seconds. The kind with striped carpet and a good-sized television and lampshades that look like pyramids.

We’re at the beginning of our fourth of five weeks running concessions at fairs. The Departed is on the TV, muted. Through the curtain I can see the parking lot, a dumpster, cars on the highway. I had dinner at a restaurant by myself tonight, something I actually enjoy quite a bit at my age. At my age. 47, nearly 48. How is that even possible?

This evening has been a moment of peace in what has been perhaps the most hectic, chaotic time of our lives. A day or two before we opened our stand at the Maryland State Fair, three weeks or so ago, Maile received word: her dad was nearing the end. If she hurried to Tennessee, she might still have time to say goodbye.

It was the kids first day of school, so she stayed to get them on the bus, then drove south. She spent a week there with her siblings, her mom, sitting at her dad’s bedside as his body slowly shut down, as the strong dad she grew up with, the truck mechanic with oil on his hands, became a quiet, passive body for them to take care of, to roll on his side from time to time. Clean. Sing to.

And then he was gone.

How can even contemplate death, when a person is here one moment and gone the next?

While Maile was there, I was running a soft pretzel stand at the Maryland State Fair, arranging for kids to get to and from their first few days of school. We have a son in football. Another in soccer. A 16-year-old daughter driving on her permit. Moved two kids into college. My parents were a huge help.

Oh, and the bookstore.

One day at a time, we keep telling each other, in the midst of the chaos. Just worry about today.

---

I wrote this after we sat down with all the kids and told them Maile’s dad would not recover from this bout of cancer, just before she drove to Tennessee:

We come together to the front room
of the house, all eight of us,
and tell the children the end
is gathering its things and
preparing to visit
someone we love.

We sit on two couches, facing
one another, and we say he does
not have long, his body is tiring.
Their mother tells them what to expect,
that she will probably cry
more often now, but not to worry, she’s sad
but she will be okay.

I glance over at them,
our precious children who have not had many
people leave them for whatever
is next. They try so hard
to bear it, to hold up under the weight
of this impossibly heavy thing. Their lips tremble,
eyelids red.

Tears are warm, soft things that sting
the corners of my eyes and remind me of swimming
in the sea.

And then we start sharing memories,
of how impressed he was by one child’s
dandelion picking,
or how he loved their art. How he praised
their gardening
skills when they helped him, or how much they loved
his cooking. The smells of his kitchen.

I, myself, mostly remember how he held
each of them when they were babies,
first born, how he held them in one arm,
their bodies resting on his forearm,
their bottoms in the crook of his elbow, their little
heads in the palm of his hand. He swayed
them up and down and up and down and up
like tiny boats lost at sea.

He taught me how to hold them that way.
He taught me how
to hold my children.

We cry again and gather on a single
couch. We hold each other like a small
band of wanderers, adrift at sea, not sure
what lies on the other side of the dark. Unable
to bear the thought that one day each of us will sail
that passage.

Tonight, though, we are together. That’s the trick. Together,
we take shelter in the harbor.

---

Peace arrives unexpectedly in the midst of chaos.

Last night, my last evening before I left for Frederick, our youngest was having trouble sleeping. She’s created a little den behind her bunk bed, draping blankets and filling the space with stuffies so that it’s nearly a cave. The box fan bats at the hanging blankets, and they drift like curtains over open windows.

I crawled back into the cave and asked if she was okay. She nodded. Do you need me to sing a song? She nodded again. I asked her what song?

“Great is thy faithfulness,” she said.

So I sang it to her, quietly, in the dark room, barely feeling it, maybe barely believing it? Barely above the sound of the box fan.

“Great is Thy faithfulness,” O God my Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

“Great is Thy faithfulness!” “Great is Thy faithfulness!”
  Morning by morning new mercies I see;
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
    “Great is Thy faithfulness,” Lord, unto me!