Mackenzie is missing her gong gong a lot this week. She’d been talking about him non-stop every night. Ever since the funeral, his spirit has manifested itself into a sort of trickster and commander of the weather for her. For us it makes sense. Who are we to say it’s not the truth anyway?
The day he was admitted to the hospital there was a single, lonely cloud that passed by our window, dropping little snowflakes all along its path. Heaven shows us immense beauty even when everything else falls apart around us.
The day before he passed, the doctor finally granted emergency visitation to more than one of us at a time because, as their website says, there’s no capacity limits when “death is imminent.” I recall speed-walking through a maze of twisting corridors and noticing how incredibly bright white the fluorescent lights are, and finally landing in front of ICU Room 440 where a nurse thanked me for the cookies. I uttered back a strained “you’re welcome,” the whole time looking past her into the double sliding glass doors where the image of Anna with her head on my dad’s chest is now seared into my memory. He was hooked up to a dozen different drips on one side, and a ventilator on the other. It was like a pipeline of white plastic pipes all connecting to medication I can’t pronounce. The sun filtered into the room and lit the tubes with a fuzzy glow, casting light shadows on my dad’s swollen, comatose body.
The next morning when we got “the call,” the grey skies dropped mini snowflakes that seemed to float forever as we raced our way through the city to get to the hospital in uptown. Lilly occasionally ran red lights. When the doctor came into the room and told us that there was “absolutely zero chance” he’d come out of this and that the humane thing to do is let him go, those snowflakes seemed to be suspended in air. We were trapped in a real life snow globe. Our tears swirled in that dizzying room, along with the falling snow flakes.
“He put up a heck of a fight. He hung in there for so long when others haven’t.” Of course. We would never leave without making sure he’d see us one last time. His determination was the stuff of legends.
When we made the decision to stop the ventilator, I kept staring between him and the window. His hand is so cold. The snow is so beautiful. Can someone stop that fucking beeping because it’s ruining everything. The nurse in the room with us was quietly walking around us, gingerly pressing buttons to stop the drugs one by one, and staying as close to the wall as possible while monitoring my dying dad. The three of us that made it in person surrounded him holding his hand, rubbing his leg, monitoring her, the phone with Pete and Michelle on FaceTime, and the screen that had all those vital numbers that were slowly moving out of range. We couldn’t stop staring at that screen. Finally she shut it off, and we were left with silence and grief. Five minutes later, the doctor comes back in and tells us he was free.
After we left the hospital, I took a walk in the nearby cemetery and was amazed at the serenity of these falling flakes that are now a lot larger. It was the most beautiful snowfall. I sat under a tree and just cried until a fluff of snow fell onto my head, telling me it was time to go home.
At the funeral, the chair my cousin sat on suddenly broke out of nowhere. As he got up off the floor, he said it must be my dad playing a trick on him. Heading to lunch after the service, I slipped on a small mound of snow. During his rebirth ceremony a huge gust of wind came out of nowhere and knocked down the incense holder as Pete tried to add the incense. (There’s a photo of that somewhere.) That solidified his afterlife powers for Mackenzie who now uses it to explain regular mishaps at school. “Gong gong tricked me today! He knocked over my book with the wind! I think he did that to make me laugh!” I’m sure that’s it, Mac. I’m sure that’s it.