I sat by his bedside the day my father died.
The cancer that had riddled his body and soul
Now had complete control.
He fought kicking and screaming
The night the men in white came to take him
On his final journey
Like a great wildebeest
Struggling to get up on its front legs after being taken
Down by young lions. The way so many had said he
Probably would since he fought his way tooth & nail
Throughout his life from the very beginning.
That night I sat on a chair at the foot of his bed
Staring out the huge ceiling to floor window
Of the medical centre
At the many worlds hidden beneath thousands of straight
Stationary lights in-between fluid winding rows of
Transient lights and thought how the light of This window
Is just one of many thousands. At that moment it seemed
More like just one tiny speck in the vast star fields
Worlds above this city of light.
My father had spent most of his life just a short
Six-mile drive from here, under the scattered lights of His
Hometown.
He turned to me and asked,
“That’s a big city. Where are we?"
Dementia had claimed his mind ten or more years earlier. It
Slowly wound its way around his brain like a cocky Snake
?Handler being choked by a boa constrictor unawares.
It seemed like it all caught up to his body.
But it was good to see much of the bitterness
And bad blood between us dissipated over the past decade.
On that night compassion ruled the day.
I could not say it then
But it has been many years
Where it seems compassion has forged with objectivity.
In a lucid moment he looked around the hospital room
Bewildered as if he were a little boy who just woke up
From a bad dream and asked,
“How did this ever happen?"
If only I could have told him.
Sometimes the truth cannot be spoken or heard.
All I could do then was sit by his bed
Lean in close to his ear
And sing softly his favourite hymns.
By morning his lifeless
Dilapidated body lay in the fetal position.
His once ravenous mouth now forever frozen
Looked like a knothole in a twisted cedar tree.
All I can do now is hang my head and think
Of how weak and frail we humans truly are.
Like compassion forged with objectivity,
Weakness and frailty forges with fleeting moments of Strength.
We forge heroes out of these moments to tower above
The pedestals the former is made of
To somehow minimize the pain of this often denied truth.
--Daniel Irwin Tucker
My wife & I put our life on hold & travelled to the U.S. to help my mother take care of my dying father. She wanted to keep him in the comfort of his own home. We were there for five months.