THE CROFTON CHRONICLE # 21
Baba responded slowly.“ Doctor said it needs surgery,” It. As if it was the illness that needed treatment instead of him.
“ How much do we have to pay out of pocket?”“ Doesn’ t matter.”“ It doesn’ t hurt at all. I’ ll survive.”
I tightened my jaw, fighting off a headache.“ Can you just shut your noisy flap for once before it shuts forever?”
“ You know, the doctors are exaggerating. Just want your money.”
“ Oh yea? The doctors that went through years of medical school and are regulated by the NHS?”
“ Yes. What other doctors would I be talking about?”
I looked at him blankly for a second, before laughing in that cold, sterile room.“ You’ re ridiculous. What, you’ re going to pray your screwed gutty works back into order?”
“ I don’ t believe in a man with a white coat in here, what makes you think I believe in a man with a white coat that’ s in the sky?”
I laughed again. I laughed and laughed until I cried, because I was too desperate to hide it anymore. I laughed because laughter was something faster than fear. It cut ahead of the thought that if I stopped laughing, I would have to admit how familiar this felt. How practiced I already was at loving someone who was halfway gone. I laughed because he was still here, still Baba, still stubborn and still himself in all the ways I thought had vanished. And cried because I knew, with the same awful certainty, that I was going to lose him again.
I sat with him for a long while in the hospital, letting the tip tap of footsteps and the tick tock of the clock drive us forward.
Sometimes on chilled evenings, I sit on the patio with Baba, tapping my foot mindlessly. I sit with a man who is only a man now, a stranger I ought to know better, my heart heavy with anticipation. We talk about small things, dinners and errands. Much of our conversation goes like this these days, reacquainting myself with a man who looks like my father.
The sun always dips eventually. It’ s only a star, like how I’ m only a man. But not before it lingers, dragging its warmth behind it, teaching you how to wait.
I wish I were better at being healed instead of merely changed. Better at turning grief into something finished. But perhaps there is little need for that; the light does return, every cycle, quiet and faithful.
I only have to be patient.
HOW TO MOURN THE LIVING