Headached Writing

Black and white dusty faces smile at him as he lay beneath waffle-patterned blankets; there is no breeze for his moustache, still growing from loosely wrinkled skin, to waver in. I wonder if he is cold. I wonder his eyes move beneath thin crinkled eyelids as he dreams in his all-encompassing sleep. He experiences a silence that doesn’t exist as I imagine people come in and out, checking pulses, seeing if he’s awake for a meal, bed pans, phone calls, what ever else he needs. They’re not feeding him through a tube or continuing his medication.

I’m sending him thoughts but I’m not sure he’s receiving them. When I close my eyes and really concentrate, I can feel his unshaven face against my cheeks and lips as I kissed him goodbye, hugging him as he sat in his chair, his dark wooden rocker lined with powder-blue cushions. I can feel his left hand weakly pressing into my back. His voice sounded like morning cold voice, pressed through a thick screen of fading and cracking. I wonder if he’s scared. I wonder if he knew it was coming, if he felt prepared as he sat in his chair for nine months thinking about death, staring mindlessly at his silver T.V. blaring through the walls and not getting past his ninety-year-three ear hairs.

I wonder if he hears music in his head, playing from nineteen forty-four, or laughter from my mom and her sister. I wonder if he thinks about an afterlife with his first wife and his second daughter or if he thinks about the life he’s to leave with his second wife and his first daughter. “Kelsi’s so beautiful,” she told me that was one of the last things he said to her. That one made me lose it even more. A hot coughing-cry, breathless with extremity, moved through German phone lines and came out an American receiver.

She said it’ll be fine. She said they’re going up there to make the arrangements for everything so that it’s all set for when it happens. That’s how people always say it. She was so calm and I was so distraught and now we both have headaches.

That they can’t be here to be silent with me and that I can’t be there to be life for them while they are so consumed with death pains me maybe more than this inevitable truth. That I can’t bring them laughter and that I can’t pull my arms around her tiny waist while I rock her back and forth, tell her it’s okay, I’ll love you forever, that kind of thing.
So this is hard, in Berlin, death pending in the state of Oregon. The hands of program members drawing circles on my back, let it be. Love and care and tears and comfort will be right there.

Love should be able to be anagrammed from family.