Two days ago
Calling Oscar a dick and an asshole stuck to me for some reason. I couldn’t erase the hurt look on his face. Despite multiple instances of me trying to forget it, blow it off, tell myself it was no big deal, I couldn’t shake the guilt.
Guilt was new for me.
When Dad crumbled and landed in the hospice, I had lots of time to wrestle with this new feeling, and I had no idea what to do with it.
Oscar was still sitting in the empty stands over there. I squinted to see who was running around the track. Just some mom, nobody I knew. I headed back into the hospice. Waiting for my brother to return wasn’t something I’d do. We did our own thing.
I took my seat next to Dad’s bed and immediately started counting his breaths. For three minutes in a row I only counted four breaths per minute. Only four. I was outside for barely five minutes, and he was down a breath. The nurse, I had to tell her. She was still sitting just outside the door at the mobile nurse’s cart. “Excuse me?” I said.
She looked up, her expression kind. “Yes?”
“My dad’s breaths are down to four a minute.”
She stood and motioned me back into his room. After checking him out, she said, “It’s a step closer. But I’d say he’s still a day, maybe a day and a half away from passing. I’m sure you’re not fond of our saying this, but it’s true—he’ll go when he’s ready.”
“Could it be sooner though?” My stomach knotted as the question left my mouth.
She nodded as she answered me. “Maybe. Again, I’m sorry for my wishy-washy answers. This place and our patients don’t follow a regular time frame, which can be difficult for the families.”
She asked if I needed anything, and when I told her no, she left me be. One of Dad’s loud and startling breaths made my body jump. I wanted to go get Oscar, just in case. I grabbed my backpack and told the nurse I was going to bring my brother back inside. As soon as my feet hit the blacktop, I beelined it for the car.
My mission did not involve Oscar yet.
Once in the car, I fumbled around in the inside zipper pocket of my backpack. When I’d been cleaning up the scattered beer cans in Dad’s bedroom, I’d found this small, hand-carved wooden box. It wasn’t hidden; it was just underneath his side of the bed. I’d known what it was before I’d opened it: his stash of weed. There wasn’t much, maybe enough to pack his Rasta-colored glass bowl—which was also in the box—two or three times.
I stared at the box on my lap and then scanned the hospice parking lot. Not a soul. Before “probation brain” got hold of me, I packed the bowl and took a hit. I smoked, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Mostly because it was Dad’s pot.
When Dad landed in the hospice and the doctor explained that he wouldn’t be coming home, that he would die in that room, in that bed, I made a plan to smoke a hit when he had a day left. Today was that day. Now was the time.
I figured, Dad was a rebel. Always was. And he’d die one. The toke-up was in his honor, to let him know that I understood him and that I’d never forget how he’d lived his life—with freedom, with a fierceness. Like every human being, I’m sure he had regrets, but he didn’t let them box him up. He powered onward.
Me taking a hit was powering onward.
I closed my eyes, and instead of going ahead in time, I went back, back to his last morning awake. I’d gone in to say good-bye to him before I left for school and found him sitting up in bed, staring out the window. “I’m heading out, Dad. Don’t forget you have your liver doctor appointment when we get home. Four thirty. Shower up, okay? You need one.”
He saluted me. “All right, Dad.”
I shoved his foot and laughed.
“Have a good day at school, Vance.”
I saluted him back.
The fact that the last time we talked wasn’t awful or full of anger was so great. Maybe the greatest thing of all.
Oscar crossed the parking lot. He was about to pass me when I slid my window down.
He scowled. “I thought you weren’t allowed to smoke weed anymore.”
“Get in,” I said. Discussing my motivation for smoking wasn’t his business.
Oscar glared at me.
“It’s serious. Get in,” I said.
“Is it Dad?”
“I’m not telling you shit until you get in.” I slid my window closed.
He huffed, walked around the front of the car, and got in.
I gripped the steering wheel. “His breathing is down to four breaths a minute.”
“How do you know?”
I exhaled. “How the hell do you think I know? I was just up there.”
“Did she say how much time he has left?”
“A day, maybe less.” I couldn’t look at him when I said it. I didn’t want to see the news register on his face. My gaze was straight ahead. A red sports car drove by.
“I’m going back up,” Oscar said. He jogged to the front door and disappeared inside the building.
As I put the wooden box away, zipping it inside the pocket, the last thing I’d said in my dad’s ear up there went through my head: You gotta wake up, man. We leave for Jamaica in a few months. Seriously. If Oscar hadn’t been listening to his music and he’d heard me say it, no doubt he would’ve thought I was a clueless idiot asking Dad to wake up.
I wasn’t an idiot.
I knew he wasn’t waking up. But I didn’t know if he was afraid, if he knew that he was dying. I thought if I talked to him as if he were just sleeping, as if he could wake up, then maybe he wouldn’t be afraid. The logic was shaky, yes, but when your dad was about to die, crazy shit started making sense.