A Night I’d Rather Forget

Living Out Loud volume 24: Total Recall (vivid memory)

I heard the screams and the ruckus of things being turned over or tossed around. I didn’t know what the commotion was and was afraid to run toward the calling of my name. I was afraid of the scene I was about to enter. Though it was not what I expected, it was equally as horrid.

With my stomach in my chest I ran in to find my mother tipping my father over the front steps and blood pouring from his mouth and nose. He was gasping for breath and choking on blood. Mama yelled for me to get a wet wash cloth to wipe his face while she held him over to keep him from choking. I was frozen. The lump in my throat deemed me speechless, and the weights in my legs kept me motionless. Finally, she screamed that if I did not help her he was going to die. I grabbed a used pink wash rag from the bathroom counter and ran water over it. With shaking hands, I offered it to her, and she instructed me to wash his face and cool his forehead with it. I was petrified that if I touched him I would be the cause of his death.

We lived way out in the country without a phone. The nearest neighbor was my aunt and cousin who both lived about a mile away. My mother instructed me to run over to my cousin’s house and get him to come help her take him to the hospital which was an hour away. I couldn’t drive as I was only a few short months shy of fourteen, and it was pitch black outside. Not even enough moonlight to see my hands in front of me, but somehow I managed to find my bike. I jumped on it and headed across the yard…promptly right into a tree. With a knot on my head, I came back in and explained that I couldn’t see how to get there. (At least my mother says I ran head first into the tree, but I remember scraping the tree and fallin off and  hurting my leg.) My mother then told me she meant for me to drive, not remembering that I wasn’t capable. Mama told me that it was ok, for me to just sit there with him, wipe his face, and make sure he didn’t choke while she went for help.

Though the television in his bedroom was blaring as it always did, I could only hear the gurgling and sputtering that came from his throat and chest. I remember squatting beside his huge listless body, my tears mingling with the sweat across his cheeks and brow, and thinking about how dark and rusty the blood on the cloth was in comparison to the fleshy pink hue of the fabric. I remember the pools of blood settling in clumps around his neck and seeping into his white tee-shirt staining it as the fear of losing him etched my soul. Even in his dire sickness, he knew how helpless I felt. He told me not to worry that he wasn’t going to die but to push up on his back so he could loosen what was caught in his chest as he coughed and spattered blood across the paneled wall. It took every bit of strength of my seventy-five pound body to lift up his two hundred-forty pound frame, but I did it. He spewed chunks over the floor, and I thought he was throwing up his internal organs. I prayed that God would not allow him to die. I was bathed in his blood, but I did not want the blood of his death on my heart.

It seemed like an eternity before my mother returned with my cousin, Mac. He had pulled my mother’s car right up to the doorstep and lined the back with newspapers that were stacked on the floor beside my father’s bedside. My mother instructed me to get her a sheet and a stack of towels. Mac was a small man in comparison to my father, but he tenderly lifted him from beneath his arms and pulled him down the steps and into the backseat of the car.

What I don’t remember is how I got to my aunt’s house that night. I don’t remember if she came to pick me up or if they dropped me off on route to the hospital. I do remember sitting on my aunt’s brown sofa, her holding me while I sobbed. I remember my cousin, Cindy, comforting me, and my thinking she knew exactly what I felt as she had lost her own father just a year before.

My aunt got us up for school the next day. She assured me that my father was fine. I only half believed her because I knew that they had not come home from the hospital and she did not have a phone so she couldn’t have heard from them. Cindy applied make up to my swollen eyes in an attempt to hide evidence of a rough night. She knew that my heart could not take trying to explain the situation to anyone. She was my spokesperson and caretaker for the day. Cindy and I were the same age and very close. Her understanding and guidance through that made me love her even more. I spent most of my day wandering from class to class, lost in silent prayer and worry beyond anything I could control.

It turned out that my father had bleeding ulcers. He was advised to cut down on his smoking and drinking. My father replied, “Cut down hell…I quit smoking right now!” And he did, just like that. He had been a three pack a day smoker. Belaires, no less. Little did I know that night would be last of watching the familiar rise and fall of the soapstone ashtray on his chest while he lay in bed reading his paper after dinner. I was ever so thankful that it was not the last night of listening to the news crinkle across his chest as he breathed in the happenings of the world around him.

I am ever so thankful to still have my father in my world. He is now eighty years old. I went to visit him this past weekend. I once again witnessed the familiar rise and fall of the paper across his chest, and I smiled as I listened to the rustle of the turning pages. This is the image of my father at all ages of my life that I carry in my heart. It is an image I never want to let go of. It is an image of home, and a part of my very soul.

Though they recall that night, and laugh about how poor little Suzi was so scared and ran into a tree banging her head, I still can’t bring myself to speak of the night I almost lost my father. Writing this is the closest I have come to talking about it, and I never want to think of going home and not seeing that newspaper rise and fall on his chest or to not feel him snatch it back as I try to lift it from his sleeping hands.