Scrapbook - Waiter Rant (original) (raw)

I knew my father was dying but, since the hospice people said he’d probably last until the end of the week, I decided to go to the gym. Besides, I had a funny feeling I wouldn’t be able to get much exercise in soon. But as soon as I got on the treadmill, my cell phone rang. It was the hospice nurse.

“Mr. Dublanica?” she said. “You’d better come here right now. He hasn’t got much longer.”

Leaping of the treadmill before I’d even worked up a light sweat, I ran to my car and made the thirty minute drive to the nursing home in twenty. Treading across the long linoleum hallway as I made my way to my father’s room, my mind felt like a piece of film on long exposure, recording everything the struck my eyes – the flickering of a faulty florescent light, an old woman in a wheelchair plaintively calling for a help, a nurse smiling as she texted someone, and the late morning light as it streamed through the windows. Then I entered my father’s room and saw my mother lying with her head on his chest crying. The hospice nurse greeted me.

“His oxygen levels are undetectable,” she said. “It’ll be soon.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Did someone call your brother?”

“No one called Mark?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Jesus.”

Pulling out my phone, I called my brother and told him the end was near. It was a brief conversation. “Drive carefully,” I said. “I don’t want you to get into an accident.” Then I went over to my father’s bedside and placed my hand on his head. He didn’t seem to be in distress but more like a watch slowly winding down as his breathing grew shallower and shallower. Looking at my own watch, I sighed.

“I don’t think your brother’s going to make it,” the hospice nurse whispered.

“Probably not.”

Moving next to my mother, I put my hand on her shoulder. “I’m so very sorry,” I said. They’d been married fifty-seven years and, as memories flipped through my mind like the pages of a scrapbook, I affixed on an image of my parents taken during their honeymoon in Montreal – looking impossibly young and beaming with optimism. Then, of all things, I remembered a can of ginger beer they’d brought back from that trip and left in our refrigerator like a piece of wedding cake for years. When I was small, it was an object of curiosity and I always wondered why they never drank it but, by the time I was in my late teens, the can had become an ugly thing – rust having torn it open and the liquid inside long since evaporated. Then one day the can gone. I guess my dad finally threw it out.

Resuming my place at the head of the bed, I rested my hand on my father’s forehead and looked at his face. His chest has stopped moving and now the only sign of life was the tremulous quiver of the skin between his nose and upper lip. I thought about praying but, for some reason, it seemed futile and, as the weight of what was happening bore down on me, I knew the only thing I could do was watch. “This is going to leave a mark.” I thought to myself.

You never know when an image is going to be frozen into your mind forever but, when it happens, deep down inside, you know it. I remember with absolute clarity realizing I’d never forget how the moonlight played over the naked skin of a long ago lover as she walked towards me with abandon. Same with green stereopticon brightness of the outfield at that last ballgame with my dad, my wife in her wedding dress, Natalie popping out of her mother with a splash, taking her first steps, and watching the life go out of my dogs’ eyes The moment they happened, I knew I’d remember them to my dying day. Many of those and other eradicable images my mind snapped over the years are a joy, but quite a few of them are burdens and, the funny thing is, you have no way to know which image will become which. Very often. as life layers itself upon you, the happy ones sometimes become sicklied over with sorrow while the sad ones reveal a wisdom you never knew was there. There’s no telling – but I knew what I was seeing now would hurt for a long, long time.

A few minutes later, I heard a commotion and, when I turned my head, I saw my brother rushing down the hall. When his stricken face came into focus, I felt that shutter click in my head. Another picture taken. Another image posted in that scrapbook forever. Then, as my brother knelt by my dad’s bedside, I stood with my hand on his shoulder and, within a minute, our father breathed his last breath Feeling faintly ridiculous in my gym clothes during such a solemn moment, I looked at my watch and noted the time.

The hospice nurse had left to give us privacy, so I went in the nurse’s station to get her. “I’m pretty sure he’s passed,” I said. Looking at my father from her seat she said, “Oh yeah. He’s gone.” I guess after seeing so many people die, she knew death when she saw it. But she went through the motions, anyway, listening to my father’s chest before she called it. Then she told me, “He waited for your brother.” That’s when a part of my brain shut off. Suddenly eerily calm, a to do list began scrolling through my head and I excused myself from the room. There were details to attend to, people to call, texts to be sent, and a body to be picked up.

When I returned to the room my brother, now joined by his wife, were comforting my mother. A trolley with coffee and cookies meant to soothe us had been wheeled into the room and, shrugging, I helped myself. Standing over my father’s dead body sipping coffee while incoming texts of condolence busily pinged my phone, my mind took another picture of the inanity of it all. Then, after about a hour, I got into my car and drove to the funeral home to sign paperwork – but decided to make a pitstop at my go to restaurant first. No sense passing put from low blood sugar.

“How are you today?” my favorite waitress chirped as she set a glass of water in front of me.

“My dad died two hours ago,” I said. The look on her face was yet another image I’ll never forget.

Now that six months have gone by, I replay that morning in my head over and over again. If you asked me what I had for breakfast this morning, I might not be able to tell you but, if you asked me anything about that fateful day, I could describe it in granular detail. I remember the eye shadow a pretty blonde nurse wore, the sound of my mother crying, the antiseptic smells, the taste of those cookies, the dull sheen of that linoleum floor, and the feeling of the patty melt I ordered from that waitress sitting in my stomach like a greasy hockey puck. Someone told me that my photographic recall was guilt and perhaps they’re right. I’ve often wondered if it would’ve been easier to get the news via a phone call at 3:00 AM instead of watching my father die. But I was there with him as he waited for my brother, which tells me some small part of my father was still hanging on. I think Dad wanted me there too.

Perhaps, in a few months, years, or decades, those images I unwillingly scrapbooked that day will patina with age and take on meanings I cannot fathom now. Maybe I’ll look upon them wistfully, realizing I was actually in the right place at the right time. But one thing is for certain, like all those other moments captured in mental celluloid, what I saw that day left a mark.