I Bear Witness

I’m flanked by dogs: two little ones on either end of the couch, while I sit in the middle by the window. I’m watching the rain. Chloe, our Shiloh Shepherd lays by the kitchen door. They always nap after breakfast.
This is a typically quiet time. Jim sleeps late because he works late. Even though I go to bed as late as him, I can’t sleep in. Someone has to feed the hungry dogs, and since I’m not working, that “someone” is me. It’s a good thing I like quiet time because I get a lot of it. Jim gets up at 10:00 am (or so) and leaves for work by 1:30 pm. I’m alone for the rest of the day and night.

I have a lot of homework today.

Mom says she can’t bear to visit Dad today. “His skin looks waxy,” she explained. She says he was better yesterday than the day before. It’s guilt she feels, although she won’t say those exact words. His mornings were always fine. He spent every morning outside watering plants, enjoying the breeze, pulling weeds or sweeping eucalyptus leaves off the front walk. The afternoons were bad most of the time. He saw things, grew angry, wanted to know what Mom had done with his wife.

Because his afternoons were so bad, he’s lost his mornings outdoors. Now he lays in a bed wasted on drugs, barely awake. Mom knows she didn’t have a choice but imagine! I can’t.

The kind hospice workers give him a personality that doesn’t belong to him. “He was a little fussy last afternoon,” the nurse explains to me. “Fussy” isn’t a word for dad. She doesn’t know him but now he’s something akin to a plant that she will take care of until the plant dies. “I didn’t water him yesterday,” I imagine her to say. “I’ll dust his leaves tomorrow.”

Mom says she’s going to take her Prozac and hide in her house today.

“I can’t see him like that,” she says.