Barrett Dorko
11-06-2008, 07:34 PM
It’s been a quiet week in Cuyahoga Falls…
I suppose he wasn’t feeling well enough to dress normally, so his hospital gown billowed around him making it difficult to see what his body was actually like, on the surface anyway. The son and daughter, middle aged and probably expected elsewhere on this afternoon, had chosen to spend it with their father, trying their best to fill him with the will to move more, to respond forcefully when asked, even to waken. “Come on Dad, look up here. That’s it, again. Good, good. Dad? Open your eyes. Let’s stand together. Here we go.”
Aside from this trio and another therapist the only others in the clinic were my patient and myself. She was supine with her eyes closed; trying to sense what I needed her to notice about her brain’s response to the auto accident. She was still, contemplative and patient. I could see that the lessons taught her at earlier visits had been absorbed, and I knew she’d need them today.
Meanwhile, the group of four had moved a bit closer to the small, quiet island I had tried to create for my care. Now at the overhead pulley, his hands limp in the stirrups, the father’s every effort was met with a reciprocal exhortation by first the son and then the daughter. You could tell that they were struggling to find new ways to say the same thing over and over again and the simple repetitive movement of the pulley wasn’t helping. Whether he was lifting or pulling was invisible to me and soon the movement disappeared entirely. The therapist wasn’t really playing a role in this though he may have been silently counting – and I mean he was counting the minutes.
When my mother fell for the last time I had grown accustomed to her decline. What I could see of her intellect and quietude had vanished long before then. But my father, well that was a different story. When I was looking about for a way to become a man, the one taller and stronger, wiser and calmer, the one who made my life possible simply drove in the drive each night. Long before I knew what was important in life I assumed that he did. No matter how imperfect as he was or how differently our minds worked his physicality was always at the forefront, and it was something to behold. With a chest and hands larger than mine have ever grown he’d dominate a room upon entering. When he finally melted away to normal size I wasn’t prepared, and I never got there. When he eventually grew small I literally could not see it. For me he was always the lithe high hurdler, cross country star and burly truck driver. His voice could carry for miles.
I watched the siblings struggle against their father’s diminishing capacity for movement silently, remembering my own role in that drama. I didn’t behave as they did. I didn’t fight it. I never cheered on in hopes of inspiring him and, somehow, I think he appreciated my silent presence. He just wanted a witness, and this is what I became.
It is what I remain.
I suppose he wasn’t feeling well enough to dress normally, so his hospital gown billowed around him making it difficult to see what his body was actually like, on the surface anyway. The son and daughter, middle aged and probably expected elsewhere on this afternoon, had chosen to spend it with their father, trying their best to fill him with the will to move more, to respond forcefully when asked, even to waken. “Come on Dad, look up here. That’s it, again. Good, good. Dad? Open your eyes. Let’s stand together. Here we go.”
Aside from this trio and another therapist the only others in the clinic were my patient and myself. She was supine with her eyes closed; trying to sense what I needed her to notice about her brain’s response to the auto accident. She was still, contemplative and patient. I could see that the lessons taught her at earlier visits had been absorbed, and I knew she’d need them today.
Meanwhile, the group of four had moved a bit closer to the small, quiet island I had tried to create for my care. Now at the overhead pulley, his hands limp in the stirrups, the father’s every effort was met with a reciprocal exhortation by first the son and then the daughter. You could tell that they were struggling to find new ways to say the same thing over and over again and the simple repetitive movement of the pulley wasn’t helping. Whether he was lifting or pulling was invisible to me and soon the movement disappeared entirely. The therapist wasn’t really playing a role in this though he may have been silently counting – and I mean he was counting the minutes.
When my mother fell for the last time I had grown accustomed to her decline. What I could see of her intellect and quietude had vanished long before then. But my father, well that was a different story. When I was looking about for a way to become a man, the one taller and stronger, wiser and calmer, the one who made my life possible simply drove in the drive each night. Long before I knew what was important in life I assumed that he did. No matter how imperfect as he was or how differently our minds worked his physicality was always at the forefront, and it was something to behold. With a chest and hands larger than mine have ever grown he’d dominate a room upon entering. When he finally melted away to normal size I wasn’t prepared, and I never got there. When he eventually grew small I literally could not see it. For me he was always the lithe high hurdler, cross country star and burly truck driver. His voice could carry for miles.
I watched the siblings struggle against their father’s diminishing capacity for movement silently, remembering my own role in that drama. I didn’t behave as they did. I didn’t fight it. I never cheered on in hopes of inspiring him and, somehow, I think he appreciated my silent presence. He just wanted a witness, and this is what I became.
It is what I remain.