The journey goes past healing to placeslike this, where Demerol and morphineseparate the last of our consciousnessfrom a body shrinking away to pain.I nod to the man who sits on his bedinhaling oxygen from the thin tubeunder his nose, as if it were some vice;he seems a corner-boy with cigarette,spitting because it's manly not becausehe must. I know his brother, the tenorat the Basilica; when he visits,I wonder how health and sickness can maketwo versions of a single Irish face.Further down, I discover Jim Wade,a parcel of bones; I had supposeddespite the ship-wreck of his tumoured lungsthat he was well enough to live a year;here among some books and canvases,he shows me a paragraph of his on nightand sleep that kindly Boyd Chubbs has inkedin a strange and loving calligraphy.By the weekend, he is in his coffin.
At the door of her bedroom, I see heras she was in my childhood, on the armof a last boyfriend before she lost allhope of marriage, or as in photographsfrom the 40s when there were always Yanksto dance with at the Base, but never oneto set against a mother's will that sheshould stay at home and give up on men.Ninety pounds of her barely dent the bed,as she stirs from palliative twilightto greet me with a mumbled affection.My father's choice was not to tell her,but I'm sure she knows by now that somethingas bad as cancer is killing her.
The nurses are professionally kind;I could not do the things they make routine,the labours that accomplish less and less,washing limbs and folding them when it's time.They adjust the drip beside her bed,and record the increments of morphineon a chart, as well as tranquillizers .-'It's for the anxiety.' But she rarelywakes, and so they are medicating dreams,one pill to take away the fear of death.
When she does wake and words come back to her,she asks about the little dog she made obesewith chocolate treats, mentions the motherwho became her only spouse and widowed herthree years before, or she asks for 'Richard,'meaning my father, who gives her answers,understands things better than anyone.But tonight she startles me by asking,'Rick, what is going to happen to me?'
I cannot face her pain and tell a truthor play the counsellor and make her sayof what she is afraid, and so I lie,'You will be okay, you will be okay.'
Soon she does not wake, though perhaps she hearsthe priest's ritual, and knows in her drownedconsciousness that breath is nothing now,takes the last little swallows of air, and goes.
