The Pearl 2020

58
I looked up at my mom and nodded. We had just recently given up on
sleeping in my bedroom. My Aunt Joanie planned to sleep in the living room
to be nearby in case Dad needed anything. Everyone had decided that my
mom and I should get a good night’s sleep in my room. It was a nice plan,
except we didn’t sleep. We tossed and turned next to each other; we could
feel each other’s restlessness, but we didn’t say anything. Finally, my mom
turned to me and in the darkness asked, “Should we just go out there?”
When the decision was made, we moved quickly. Joanie sat awake on
the loveseat next to my father feeding him ice chips. We informed her of our
decision, she was completely understanding, and we took over looking after
him. I pulled a dining room chair to the other side of my dad’s recliner and
Joanie went to sleep on her cot on the floor.
We took turns as the night stretched on feeding Dad ice chips, taking
long breaks to just look at him. After a long patch of silence my mom spoke,
“You know, we should write about this.”
“You think?” I asked not looking up.
“Yeah, I mean who can say they’ve experienced this?”
“No one who I know.”
“Exactly,” she said, “I mean I had no idea what it would be like. I
thought there’d be more help.”
“I know, I can’t believe how much they expect us to do.”
I said ‘us,’ but I knew truthfully the work was falling onto my mom
and aunts. It had been they that listened intently as the hospice nurse, who
only visited once a day, demonstrated how to administer liquid morphine under
my father’s tongue. My mom used to spend a few hours at the beginning
of each week sorting my dad’s countless medicines into their morning and
nightly doses, but he was no longer taking anti-rejection meds or any of the
other pills that kept him alive. Only morphine.
When Dad crunched on the last ice chips in our cup, we decided it was
time to attempt sleep once again. I stretched out on the couch while my
mother took the loveseat by Dad’s side. My mother’s hand draped over the
arm of the loveseat and rested on the recliner. We fit in a few hours of sleep
before my mom’s phone chimed; a reminder that Dad needed more morphine.