After a rocky start to 2007, I'm catching up on posting. This is something I wrote just after my father-in-law died, January 27, 2007, when we were in Florida. Since then my friend lost her dog very suddenly and my Grandpa died. It is indeed a year of sweeping changes.
It is odd. I told a friend a week ago that there was something in the air and I could feel that massive changes were going to happen this year. Friday night my father-in-law had a heart attack and died. First heart attack, on cholesterol medication, went to bed, cried out and could not be revived. My mother-in-law is devastated and we are in Florida to try to sort out the pieces and see if we will now have another member of our household and if she will reside with us. I've been sitting in this deserted living room while everyone is still asleep, musing on a life left unfinished.
It is a very odd thing, this thing called death. His shoes are sitting beside his favorite chair. There is an empty coke glass on his coaster. His fingernail clippers are open. A package from a golf store lies on his desk, unopened - was it something he was looking forward to getting, when he ordered it a few days ago? He never will now and the pieces of his unfinished life clutter this suddenly quiet house. Everything in this house is arranged to his satisfaction. The chair, his chair, is the only one that faces the TV directly - and even though it does, none of us would ever think to sit there. Not even now.
We should get some time, it seems, to put things in order, to stop ordering stuff for our hobbies so that the people left behind don’t have to decide whether or not to open the package or send it back. It seems wrong, cruel somehow to clip your nails, drink the last of your coke before going into the bathroom to brush your teeth and gargle. Lay down in bed, just like any other night, thinking about the car appointment, or the billiards club meeting you are going to tomorrow. Then a crushing weight, and tomorrow never comes. An empty house and fading dreams and people who have gotten the shock that sometimes things change tremendously in just the space between a heartbeat and nothing.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
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