A Common Pornography: A Memoir

Aneurysm

Nearly fourteen years after I became a father, I got a message about my own dad. It was from a cousin or aunt, someone I’d never met. She was using that uncertain voice that people use when they’re not sure if their message is being recorded. “Kevin? It’s about your dad. He had a brain aneurysm and he’s in the hospital. They’re not sure if he’s going to last much longer. Your mom wanted me to call some people and tell them. If you want to see him, or say good-bye, you should probably come right away.”

I knew that this was a call I’d be getting soon. For his last four years he was in a wheelchair and everything about him was shutting down. I would call home and talk with Mom about various things and then she’d hand the phone to Dad. It was obvious that speaking had become harder for him. Slowly and with little volume, he would try hard just to get one sentence out, probably about a chore around the house he would never get to or something about church. The words barely made it above the pained breathing. His voice was an eerie death rattle coming through the phone line.

And now this came through the phone line. I played the message over a few times and then saved it.

I was at home in Portland, a four-hour drive away. I had no desire to go right away. I was about to go to work anyway.

I called Mom and talked to her. She said he was brain dead but still breathing. I asked if he was responding to anything, if he could hear her. The phone line was crackling and cutting out and she couldn’t understand what I was saying. I had been waiting for him to die, and had even fantasized about it, but I couldn’t help feeling anxious now that it was really happening.

“Can he hear you? Can you talk into his ear?” I asked.

“What’s that?”

“Can he understand words?”

“I’m sorry, Kevin. I can’t hear what you’re saying.”

“Could you tell him I love him,” I finally said. I was starting to cry.

“Maybe you should take some days off of work,” she said gently.

I knew I wasn’t going to drive up there until he died. I didn’t want to take the days off work and hang out in Kennewick on a deathwatch. The place made me depressed more than nostalgic. Mom and Dad had moved out of the big house we used to live in, the one we rebuilt after the fire. They bought a much smaller manufactured home out behind Columbia Center Mall in the mid-nineties and Mark was still there too, living with them. He was Dad’s caregiver the last few years, doing everything from getting him out of bed each day to driving him around. Sometimes Mark and Dad got into arguments and Mark would disappear somewhere for a few days. A few times, Dad himself would try to disappear, cruising in his electric wheelchair along the side of some busy road, going who knows where, until a police officer would stop him and call Mom to come pick him up. I had to laugh the first time I heard about one of these runaway attempts.

I decided to stay in Portland and wait it out, pretend business as usual. I wasn’t going anywhere until the heart stopped beating, until the funeral was set.