Before the Room Empties

Death and I have ongoing conversations. It’s been quite chatty lately, while I’ve been practicing my active listening skills, ever since my father’s visit to the emergency room last year. My therapist calls it anticipatory grief, but to me it feels like an unwanted guest-- intrusive and hard to ignore.

Six months ago, my father decided to poke around the pearly gates. He’s always been thorough like that on most ideas before committing to them. I had come home for my annual visit, officially to see my parents but, if I’m honest, mostly for the beach. Over dinner at one of their wine-and-dine spots, Dad announced he was having trouble going to the bathroom. Nothing says bonding like urinary tips over a big oaky Cabernet.

Back home after dinner, Dad would usually pour a nightcap and retreat to his office which consists of his desk, a couch, and an expensive but uncomfortable Eames lounger. Although his nighttime routine is usually hosted by the Golf Channel and his iPad, on this particular night, he disappeared off into the bedroom instead. Ten minutes later he rushed into his office looking pale.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

“I have a problem,” he said. That was Dad’s way of saying "We need to go to the ER. What an inconvenience." The man could be dying, but God forbid he miss Scottie Scheffler’s swing breakdown.

I wasn’t the kind of kid who spent a lot of time in hospitals. No broken bones. The only time hospitals entered my life was when someone older was dying. My grandmother’s fall and broken hip, which was the family’s secret way of saying “the beginning of the end”. My grandfather’s slow decline, marked by the locket he once gave me and that I held up to remind him who I was the day before he passed. I didn’t fully grasp death then, I just knew the hospital smell lingered on my clothes and if I took a hot shower when I arrived back home, the big, bad D word would disappear with it.

In the ER waiting room, my mother scrolled Instagram beside me, occasionally murmuring at dog videos while I stared ahead, thinking, I’m too young for this. Too young to be the adult in the room. An NBA game flickered on a small nineties’ television that hung in the corner of the room. The announcers’ voices carried just enough to make out the score, but not enough to compete with the hospital intercom, with its five-beep alerts. I shivered and pulled my crappy sweater tighter around me, grateful I’d brought it since hospitals always felt like the arctic. It would have to be washed anyway after absorbing the smell of sickness and anxiety.

When the nurse finally appeared to summon my mother, I stayed behind. I wanted to respect my father’s privacy. No one needs their daughter in the room during a bladder crisis, but I also was aware that I’d reached the age where privacy and logic start to blend. Was I hiding from the truth? I wondered if I should know exactly what was going on. Over time, I became my parents unofficial project manager- lists, vendors…decisions. My idea of slowly stepping in to help would keep my fears of the unknown at bay. Even if it meant learning the details that made me squirmy.

I looked up at the clock again. It was past midnight now. I was impatient, swimming in thoughts of despair. Eventually, I decided to wander back toward triage, if anything, to at least move my body. Maybe I could offer him something useful, like an empathetic water bottle. As I approached the double doors, I puffed out my chest flashing my poorly printed visitor’s badge to security like a VIP pass. The doors slid open slowly, revealing a row of bays with curtains that looked more like dorm room showers than medical “rooms”. Dad was in the first one. It was the feet that gave it away. Pale, exposed, sticking out from the blanket like punctuation marks. His toenails were dirty and uneven, his heels cracked and dry. The sight made me shudder, not because of the feet, but because of what they suggested. What his future deathbed may look like.

“How you doing, Dad?” I asked with an upbeat tone. I’m not one to get overly excited about much, but when death is on the table, I default to Tracy Flick (watch: Election). “Oh, I’m just decrepit,” he weakly said, attempting to make a joke. I could tell Dad didn’t like this hospital or the staff. It wasn’t rated well, but considering the hour and the problem, it was the best option.

Decades earlier, when my dad was about my age now, he took a leap of faith with a business loan and some friends and opened a hospital management company. What started as a two “room” office expanded over time into a conference room, cubicles, and eventually two floors in one of Atlanta’s prominent office buildings. Prime real estate in the nineties.

One of my favorite things in the summer was going to work with Dad. We’d park his white ’92 Porsche 911 in his designated spot in the garage perfect for a boss. The elevator doors opened onto the fourteenth floor, where marble floors met dark wood trim and walls the color of pool table green. The kind of place you’d see in The Firm or Wall Street. What power seemed to look like during that decade.

I’d run around visiting everyone, especially the front-desk ladies who always had snacks waiting for me. I even had my own “office,” a spare room consisting of a legal pad, a phone (multiple lines!), and a box of crayons. I was booked solid with fake phone calls and imaginary meetings. By the time lunch rolled around, I was famished.

Lunch at the “club” on the twenty-fifth floor was the highlight of my day. I couldn’t resist ordering hot dogs and potato chips: two treats I relished in knowing I couldn’t have them at home due to my mother’s ever-changing diet regimens. Afterward, we’d ride the elevator back down, Dad would tie up a few loose ends, and by 2 p.m. we’d head back home.

I didn’t realize that on the days I wasn’t there, he was negotiating multi-million-dollar hospital acquisitions across the country. It wasn’t until he semi-retired at fifty, after battling prostate cancer, that I understood what it had taken out of him. His drive for his work gave him rewards and he was ready to enjoy the hell out of them. It turned out that drive, that was instilled in me, was just another name for the anxiety that plagues me to this day. Chase the deadlines like he chased the deals so you don’t have to think about what (or who) you might lose. This system felt safe to me.

I don’t remember much about his prostate diagnosis, but I do remember naively announcing it to my entire Bible study class in fifth grade as a prayer request. Dad had to travel to a cancer treatment center once a month for almost a year. Before each trip, Mom handed me an old shoebox to decorate for him. I painted them with glitter. We’d fill them with little treats like fuzzy socks, Chapstick, and handwritten cards. He’d pack it in his suitcase and open it the first night he arrived. I didn’t grasp the gravity of the situation. Cancer.

I thought maybe my shoeboxes could be part of the cure. Hope comes in weird packages when you’re ten.
After a year and a half, he went into remission. Ten years later, the doctor stopped worrying about recurrence. And now, standing by him in that terribly lit hospital make-shift bay, I realized cancer was circling overhead again. Dad has never been a man of patience, which is why it wasn’t surprising when, after a few hours, he whined he’d rather take his chances at home than endure a catheter for a few days. Despite other advice, we checked out around three fifteen in the morning and drove home through the empty streets.

I started to notice the small signs of decline around my parents’ house. The guest bathroom that used to be stocked with Molton Brown hand soap from Saks now had an almost empty bottle of Dove from Walgreens. Inside the kitchen cabinets looked like a game of Tetris. One shelf holding plates, the one above filled with pan mittens. My mother saying, “I just don’t remember where I put things like I used to.” My mother. The same woman who once held dinner parties with perfectly folded napkins and centerpieces that could rival Martha Stewart, now couldn’t seem to find the cheese grater. These things made me wonder about the decline of not just their physical capabilities, but their mental as well. Dad was adamant about their current house being the last place. “I’ll just die here,” he’d say with a tone of annoyance any time I’d bring up the future. I wondered if my constant thought about death had anything to do with his ongoing comments about morbidity or if time was running away from me.

The week after the late-night hospital visit, things continued to unravel as my father went back to the ER. Between pharmacy runs and food pick up, every morning I woke up feeling like a UFC fighter not knowing when to tap out and instead being in a stalemate. By Friday, I knew the nurse’s names by heart (their upcoming vacation plans), easy parking access, as well as the “in-room” dining menu the hospital offered. Nothing says room service like a long white gown that opens in the front and a gold-yellowish bell you push for service. Doctors started addressing me first to give me the rundown of the latest update on the diagnosis as if I was the responsible party in making sure his medications and feeding schedule stayed on course. I was in the driver’s seat again, but this time, I wondered if I was more in control.

***

I climbed into bed last night exhausted with hope of getting some sleep, but it never came. As my husband’s deep exhales made a rhythmic grunt I clock counted in my head. Time was moving away from me again. I thought about the events from the day and analyzed what I could be doing more of to make the entire situation better. I scolded myself for not hugging my husband tighter before we climbed into bed. Am I sure I said “I love you” to my dad when I left the office earlier? As I laid thinking, with my hands clutching the covers up around my neck, I felt tears stream down my temples and into my hair. How will I cope when they die? An only child, it’s just me who’s left. I recalled my grandfather’s funeral on a cold, gray winter day in January when I was twelve. I fought tears and the lump in my throat throughout the service because I wanted to be strong for my dad. I was proud at how well I was doing until the walk to the cemetery. As we followed the casket, I lost control of my strength and burst into tears wailing into my cousin’s chest. It was the first time I ever experienced saying goodbye to someone I loved. Someone who loved me. I wondered about my dad’s future funeral. Will I be strong enough to speak? Will I be strong enough to hold my mother’s hand? I tried to imagine what life would be like without the people who shaped mine. Like the feeling when the lights go out and you’re searching in the dark for a flashlight. By this time my pillowcases were sopping as I quietly sobbed into a pillow. I reached my hand out to find my husband’s back to touch for comfort as I felt his body breathe.

***

I wake up in the morning feeling like my insides had been rearranged in my sleep, as if grief had come in the night and done some light redecorating. My eyes are puffy, my throat scratched. I walk into the kitchen to the familiar chaos: my mom’s diet pills strewn across the counter, enough that could stock an entire Vitamin Shoppe, the French door blinds swinging open still unfixed, the almost-empty bottle of Dove soap standing proudly like it has always belonged there. Everything in disarray if you look closely enough.

My mom is puttering around in her pajamas still, listening to an evangelical podcast on volume one hundred when she sees me. Immediately launching into a request for help on ordering a product on Amazon (another magical vitamin?) as if it is just another day and we weren’t caught in grief’s chokehold. For the first time in my life I wonder if my parents are ever afraid. If they are, they aren’t the type of people to voice it, at least not to me. But am I either?

I shuffle over to my dad’s office, where I know I’d find him sitting at his desk, looking at some electronic device, with the golf channel in the background. “How are you feeling today, Dad?”, I force my upbeat sales voice on him. “I’m not dead yet!” he replies as the corners of his mouth curved up into a smile. I thought about cracking a joke back, but instead I smile and quietly say “That’s good”. We hold that smile with each other knowing that it’s easier to pretend than to think of the inevitable.

Tonight, after my parents go to bed, I walk into his office room and sink down into Dad’s Eames chair. I figure it deserves some attention. I rest my hand on the armrest and imagine one day sitting without him. Maybe I would be flipping through the channels and see Scottie Scheffler win another Master’s. Maybe I’d be reading one of his old John Grisham books. Or maybe I’d just be sitting. Thinking. Reminiscing. The room is quiet, except for the hum of the wine cooler fridge in the corner. I look around at the wooden desk with the corners chipped, the dim lamps, the blood pressure machine. I realize grief isn’t like jumping out of a plane and skydiving to the ground. It is a room.

Some rooms are empty. Some rooms are like storage units with things you never look at again. Some hold the idea and memory of the people you love. Maybe anticipatory grief is really the act of visiting different rooms to prepare us for survival. I lean back, close my eyes and sink into the chair for more support as it let out a slight creak. Almost as if to say he’s still here. I’m still here. For now, the room is full.