Recently I came across a bit of trivia, a snippet of knowledge. An interesting fact. And so I thought, "I'll tell Dad." Next time I see him.
But it isn't possible.
He died in March, abandoned by a heart past its expiration date. His end did not come suddenly. He just slowly faded away.
One day, a phone call. Dad was "feeling poorly," as one of my aunts would say, and he was headed to the hospital.
I was worried. A man in his 80s with a history of heart problems, I told myself on the way to the hospital. My sister said he hadn't eaten in days.
Pulling me out into the antiseptic hallway, his doctor told me that a heart attack, unnoticed even by him, had done serious damage. Far too weak for surgery, his heart was most likely damaged beyond repair.
The doctor was clean-cut and brisk. I studied his face as he spoke; he looked freshly shaven, alert, scrubbed and competent. I hated that competence, his earnest surety, because he seemed certain that Dad was going to die.
Dad smiled at me, snorted at my concerns. He was stolid, dismissive, always the country-boy Spartan. Now, as I sat at his bedside, he was relaxed and resigned.
He lay, I sat, and we talked. He was effusive, vehement about loving me, his family. I took this with false clinical neutrality, nodding knowingly. Surely all this talk of finality had nothing to do with me.
As the day progressed he slept longer and longer. I studied him. So familiar, yet enigmatic.
I finally had enough of flickering fluorescent lights and the gruff mutterings of his roommate. I drove home and slept fitfully, wired. I constantly fidgeted myself awake, full of dread. Expectant as the night dragged on.
The phone rang. A late-night call doesn't bode well. It was his doctor. He told me we had decisions to make. Dad wasn't coherent and his blood pressure was low. Things weren't critical, at the moment, but things were difficult.
Stay put, he told me, there could be another call. He used an acronym. I knew what it meant. Many wouldn't. It was trivia Dad and I would delight in knowing. DNR stands for Do Not Resuscitate.
The doctor wanted to know, if my dad's heart stopped, did I want him brought back. The doctor wanted to know if I, his youngest child, would make that decision, stooped alone in the dark, right now.
Dad had been in bad health before, but he always came back. As scared as I'd been, deep down I knew he would make it. He would pull through.
He would reach around, grab his collar and yank himself away from the precipice. Because he had those big strong hands.
But that was then. There would be no reprieve. I was surprised to be surprised. Parents are supposed to be immortal.
If we tumble from our tricycle or crash our cars or wreck our marriages, there they'll be. Even if you're 50 years old. Because at the very least the love was there, even if I couldn't use it, make it apply.
"Yes, DNR. Do not resuscitate," I mumbled.
"To be clear," the doctor said, his voice thin and formal, "you do not want extraordinary measures used to revive your father."
"DNR," I said, loudly. Then I whispered it. DNR, my new mantra. The doctor muttered and hung up. I staggered back to bed and lay stunned, reeling with guilt about my decision.
The next morning was dreary. My thoughts were dark too, dreading what I must say to my dad.
On TV, the weather doctors expected sleet, an 80 percent chance. I called my sisters and it was icy up north. I was going to be alone, at least for today.
I feared walking into his room, to see my father lying in his bed, ashen, incoherent, incomprehensible and insubstantial.
His nurse caught me as I got off of the elevator. "Your dad had a rough night. His BP was way low," he said. Another acronym. Blood pressure.
"Thought you should know," he said. I inclined my head. Thanks. I guess. "You guys decided on DNR," he murmured, hesitantly, looking both sleepy and canny. He gave me a piercing look.
I nodded. We were back to that damn acronym. "Oh, we moved your dad to another room," he added. I looked puzzled. He smiled wanly. "For privacy," he said.
Entering his larger room, I saw he had windows and a view of the sky. Nice, after yesterday's enclosed cinder-box cube.
He couldn't feel the sky, couldn't touch it, but he could see it. Dark and troubled as it was today, it was nature, the outdoors. He wouldn't complain about roiling clouds.
Being outside was Dad's reality. He always said he didn't want to live if he was where he couldn't get outdoors. He lay, eyes closed. A mechanical phalanx of machines hovered, lights blinking, purring liquidly.
I stood at the window. The clouds had lowered almost to the ground. Sleet slapping against the window sounded like rice spilled on linoleum.
"What's the weather doing, son?" Dad said hoarsely. Startled, I turned, and Dad smiled up at me. "How are you, beautiful boy?"
He always spoke that way, so sweetly. He never failed to tell me how much he loved me. Never ever.
Several years ago, when he'd said it for the 10th time in as many minutes, exasperated, I pointedly told him he didn't have to say it so often. He obliged, for a day or so. I couldn't understand his relentless tide of affection. Until one day, sitting on his front porch, talking about, of all things, Andrew Jackson. Suddenly his words caught in his throat.
He placed his hand against his lips and stared down. I started to speak, but he shook his head sharply.
"My parents never told me they loved me," he said. He had always spoken respectfully of his parents, but guardedly. Just as quickly as it had come, the moment passed. I was so, so sorry for him.
It was blindingly simple and obvious--he was determined not to do to me what was done to him.
From that day onward I absorbed his words, accepted them and enjoyed them. I vowed to make clear the depth of my love for him. So on that cold, miserable morning I told him I loved him. He nodded, smiling, and knew I meant it, that at last I understood.
I told him about my conversation with his doctor. About DNR. He knew what it meant.
"What do you want, Dad?" I asked. "Last night I told them DNR. Is that what you want?" He gave me a amused stern look. "Of course I don't want to be resuscitated!" he said. He smiled his handsome smile. "I'm going to be dead by the end of the day, son."
I flinched, but still he smiled. "I'm ready to go, son," he said. "I can't live like this, I won't. I can't even get around. I don't want to live if I can't be outside."
I nodded dumbly. "Well, the doctor said you'll be gone soon, Dad," I choked out. "Maybe not today, but soon."
Again, the smile. And clarity. "It'll be today, Johnny," he said.
The rest of that day, between ragged breaths, old stories poured out of him. He pretended I'd never heard them, and I pretended the same. Stories about the brother he'd loved desperately, gone too soon many years ago. About his large, difficult family. Happy, funny and sad, his stories rambled through pastures full of mulish cattle and careened dangerously downhill on ragged bicycles, up and down terraced orange groves in his proud and battered Mercury.
And always about work, indignant, prideful, helpless on-the-job stories. Swallowing his inadequacies and fear, having to tell someone, "I have to have this job."
I wept, as quietly as I could. He told me not to be afraid. The day crept on. He talked, then slept, talked some more. I listened, battered by his words and his ominous silences.
His breathing was very shallow and air shuddered in his chest, like an engine starved of fuel. The space between breaths became longer. I found myself hanging on each one, matching his exhalations with mine. Watching his face, I saw that beneath his closed lids his eyes rapidly moved around. Dreaming, maybe. Watching his face was like staring at a telephone about to ring.
The end came that day, just as he'd said. Close to 5 o'clock. Quitting time. A hard work day, over at last.
He shuddered, searching for a breath that wasn't there. His body moved from side to side, like someone living a vivid dream. His eyes closed slowly, reluctantly perhaps, but with certainty.
I jumped to my feet, toward the door. Going for help. I looked down the hallway. At the other end I saw people boarding elevators, going home, their day over. No one looked my way.
I was alone at the end of the hall, and the clouds framed in the window behind me had lightened a little.
Then I remembered those three letters. Remembered Dad wanting to let go of the burden his body had become. I hurried back to his side and seized his right hand. His movements were small now. Like tiny shivers, as if he was shaking off his goddamned broken body.
Peripherally, I saw a nurse enter the room. "He's going," I said.
She rushed to place her stethoscope on his chest. Then her hand went to his wrist. She looked up at me questioningly.
No movement now. My dad was dead.
I looked at him and tried to pretend he was sleeping, but my imagination failed me. So I released his huge warm hand and touched his face, gave it a slow caress.
I knew what he would say, if he could. I love you son, he'd say. I love you too, Dad.
John Sykes Jr. is chief photographer for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Editorial on 06/29/2014