The Magic in the Moment (Short Stories)

Daddy's Hands

            I lifted my father’s great, limp hand from the bed and studied the broad nails, the unkempt cuticles, the rounded knuckles, the calloused palm. His hands had seemed so powerful and safe when I was child, twisting the lid off the jelly when I couldn’t break the seal, catching me when my bike bobbled without training wheels, hugging me too tightly when we felt more than our words could say. He had been a giant at six foot four, but now he lay helpless and quiet, shriveled on my parent’s bed, death-rattles gurgling in his chest.

            I laid my head on his chest, his hand tucked against my face, and I counted his heartbeats…eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen… His fingertips were cool against my cheek, but his chest was warm as it labored and shook.

            My mother was tucked against my father, propped on one elbow as she smoothed his sweat-dampened hair with a cool washcloth. I smelled her salty tears as she cooed to him, and it reminded me of our last family vacation to Panama City only six months ago, the salt lingering in my skin even now. My father had worn that silly straw hat to keep the sun from his over-sensitized skin, and we’d called him Panama Jack. He’d been in remission then, and we’d stayed at the beach, breathing in the sandy, salty air until the sun had drowned in the rolling waves.

             It had been a vacation to celebrate his healing.

            Our pastor had come and gone, our family had said their goodbyes, and the Hospice nurse had told us to wait with him, that he wasn’t suffering.

            Two of my three brothers brought our instruments into the bedroom: my flute, David’s bass, and James’s cello. Crawling from the bed, I sat between the two of them on the floor and we played my father’s favorite hymns: Blessed Redeemer, Amazing Grace, and It Is Well. My mother sang softly and pressed kisses to my father’s forehead, to those hands that had played guitar and grilled steak and steered our boat and held us close.

            My brothers didn’t cry; they stared at the carpet. My mother hadn’t stopped crying since the nurse left. I had cried myself out and began to concentrate on my father’s breathing, counting the seconds between each inhalation and exhalation as the moments of silence lengthened.

            At 2:27 in the morning of January 2, 2013, my father held his breath.

            We held ours with him as long as we could, like children riding through a long tunnel, waiting for him to exhale.

            Our silent prayers saturated the cancer-infested air.

            We prayed for the percolating-coffee sound of the death-rattles.

We prayed for the seizures that had disrupted our daily lives.

            We prayed for hospital waiting rooms, chemotherapy, and radiation.

            We prayed for the MRIs, the pills and shots, the notebooks full of heart rates, respirations, food, and medication logs.

We prayed for family arguments and my father’s stubborn refusal to act sick or to act well.

We prayed for the personality changes wrought by the brain tumors.

               We prayed for healing services and promises of remission.

               We prayed for complicated, ruined holidays spent in death-drenched hospital rooms.

               We prayed for a relapse.

            When we were forced to release our breath, our anxiety, our hope, our desperately twisted prayers, my brothers called the coroner and our relatives, leaving my mother and I curled on either side of my father, our hands curled around his cooling fingertips, trying to infuse the blue nail-beds with our warmth, praying that his long fingers would curve through ours, praying that he would exhale so that my mother could continue living and my brothers and I wouldn’t be instantaneous adults, orphans with lost childhoods.

            I prayed that my daddy’s hands would dry my cheeks and tuck me into bed to soothe the sting of my unanswered prayers and my righteous anger at God.

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Dedicated to my best friend, Jennipher Oglesby, who lost her father last year.