father/daughter

He was asleep by the time I got there yesterday, in the recliner with his fleece throw. My mom had packed a snack--a half-sandwich, a Hershey's almond treasure, and apple slices. The hiss of the dialysis machine masked my approach, though he is a sound sleeper and always has been. Not much danger of me waking him up.

Garbed in my Easter-yellow sterile gown, I pulled up a chair and watched him sleep. It took me back to the times I visited my grandma after the cancer had stripped the excess weight from her. The dialysis treatments have done the same thing for my dad, and as he slept, I noticed how much he looks like his mom, my grandma. The shape of his nose, the fine network of wrinkles, the age-spotted hands. He had a terrible, mottled bruise at the entry point for the tube that circulates his blood and cleanses it.

The nurse came by and said, "Look at that. Here you are to visit him, and he's sleeping." "That's okay," I said--"I'm in no hurry". I sat and read my Vogue Knitting magazine, and just as I finished, he opened his eyes. "You're here!" he said.

I've never made time to go sit with him during a four-hour dialysis treatment, but it was a spur-of-the-moment decision made the day before. It was motivated by wanting to spend some time alone with him (knowing that my mom doesn't go with him) and to spur him on with his memoirs. He'll be 80 in June, and told me once he didn't expect to live this long!

We did some work on his memoirs, but mostly we just hung out and talked. It reminded me of how it was with my teenage stepson--the conversations can't be scripted, they just happen when you spend time together. The questions in the memoir book are really poor--he had answered a number of them, but they're worded so that a person can get away with yes or no. It was the space, the pauses between the questions where the stories came out.

There are times when I let myself realize that my dad won't be around forever... Watching the recirculating blood yesterday reminds me that these treatments are keeping him alive, and that the moments we have together are precious.

Sometimes I miss him already.