The Quiet Surgery
A story from recent days:
I’m not being careful and my elbow hits the tin jar ever so slightly. Still, it’s strong enough to send it crashing to the ground. The landing is harsh to the ears and coins land every-which-a-way across my room. The house is empty, there will be no, “You okay in there?”
In my head, “I’m okay.”
I move slowly, tempted to leave the coins on the ground. It seems counter productive though; I was cleaning the counters, folding my laundry, straightening my whole bedroom when I knocked it over. The ground is dirty behind my dresser. Dust sticks to my fingers and leaves an uncomfortable impression. I hate cleaning my room. It’ll just be messy again in two or three, four-if-I’m-lucky days.
After the coins are collected I set the jar back where it belongs and am too bored to keep at the cleaning. I walk to the garage and look at the litter boxes. Two, not just one. Two. I promised Nina I’d clean them and even though everything within me wants to gag- wants to pay the neighbor kid five dollars to do it for me- I start scooping, stop the complaint department that currently resides in my mind and act like a real adult.
She’s been spending her time between here and Macon, making the drive even though she shouldn’t. I imagine classical music and Rush Limbaugh keep her going during the long stretches of interstate. 78 herself, no young lad, tired too. 54 years of marriage. 54 years of taking care of one another.
Earlier that morning I walked into the living room and refused to let myself rush out the door. Sit, McKenzie, sit. Sit and be and listen to anything and everything she has to say. You have to be somewhere in twenty minutes, but right now you have to be here. Listening and letting her be scared; scared of losing her best friend and scared for the first time of not knowing how to fix him.
“You know, there’s a good chance he won’t make it. They’ve got to stop his heart and then start it again. Might not start, ya know.” She tells me to pray for him too, add him to a list like they do at her church. The one with the wooden pews where I go watch her sing on special occasions.
“What should I pray for?” I ask
She looks at me confused.
I’m confused too. Why did I just ask that? Go with the flow, for once, just go with the flow.
“I’ll pray for him.” I say
Right then and there I start to pray and now she’s really confused. She never knows what to make of me, but she loves me and so it doesn’t matter.
I assume she looks at the books I’m reading and wonders why I own them. Snoops into my room and sees the fragmented notes I leave next to my bed. The postcards I get from California with stickers of tigers and lions on them. The way I never eat her fried chicken despite how often she asks. The turning off the water while I do the dishes. My desire for quiet mornings where silence is preferred over the chatter of the news. The irregular hours I keep. Strange child. Strange, strange child she must think.
Nina headed to Macon shortly after we sat and talked. I kissed her cheek and helped her carry a bag to the car. She held a Diet Coke can and bag full of yarn; held the hope that maybe this surgery would make things better.
Seems like he’s in the hospital once a month these days. All these close calls, all these, “We almost lost him this time.” Father’s Day would have been a bad day to lose him. That’s when you’re supposed to get ties and knives and wallets and lunch at your favorite Cuban restaurant; that’s not when you’re supposed to die.
It seems sad, all the machines he’s hooked up to. My heart feels the uncomfortable tension of wanting him to live but wanting him to thrive. Consume food, sleep, repeat. That’s not how we’re supposed to live and all of us know it.
Dad says, “He’s having open heart surgery in Macon ‘cause the knuckleheads in Orlando couldn’t figure out what was wrong.” I want to tell him that Pop is 79 and never been a kin to eating anything green. I want to say that maybe it’s okay to let the body do what it does, you know, breakdown. All of it seems heartless and morbid in my head. It is the truth though, I know it’s the truth.
Things are better now, between my Dad and I so I stay quiet. That’s the irony suppose. Of never being quiet as a child child- always yelling, stomping my feet, telling him exactly what I thought. I suppose I got it all out in my adolescent years, all my angst. Now I have room to breathe because I know I’m loved and don’t have to keep asking everyone if I am. Dad, you can have the last word.
The whole family is in Macon and I’m at the house walking around in my robe in the middle of the day and painting my fingernails in the early morning hours. I can leave unwashed cups on the counter and play music through the halls. It feels nice, really free, really nice.
Part of me feels bad, for not feeling enough, for not worrying enough, for not thinking about Pop enough. But worry is wasteful and so I just keep reminding myself of that.
A few months earlier Pop and I sit in the living room and watch the Master’s on the television in the living room. I don’t care much for golf or for television or for how dark the living room always feels, but I care for him and for getting to know him a little more. He sips on black coffee and eats pink grapefruit by the spoonful. During the commercials he tells me stories. I sit peacefully and let him break my assumption of his quietness. It isn’t that he’s quiet, it’s that no one ever talks about what he wants to talk about.
He tells me about the time he outran a cop in the backwoods of Georgia. Back in the 40’s when he knew his car was newer and faster than all the others. Sirens flashed in the rear view mirror and the cop waved his arm like a flailing fish. And just like that Pop kept driving, faster, faster, faster. Got too far ahead and the cop gave up. Glory fills his eyes and I smile.
Maybe if they heard these stories too, they’d know that he’s lived a good life. Maybe they’d stop insisting he be okay with all the machines and pills and close calls.
