The Last Hour

There are perhaps more interesting stories I could share about you. Including the stories you told about your childhood. Such as the time you and some of your brothers, plus a friend, jumped from a moving train.

But the thing is, that story only has vague details considering it a second-hand story from the past. Not much to tell.

While I wouldn’t say your death shadows all the other stories and memories, however, it created a clear-cut divide.

Actually, perhaps your diagnosis and the two years leading up to your death is more of the chasm between the two norms. That two years period is a blur of vaguely remembered moments. Mostly multiple visits and changes to your medication. Being told the diagnosis was both unexpected and explanatory of what could have been a symptom. It must have taken a year to have it figured out, mostly due I guess because people here have to make multiple appointments at separate times.

You were constantly throwing up following a basic dental procedure. Initially told it was a temporary system of anesthesia.

I still have random memories of those retching sounds. I still remember those long hours in the waiting room with the remaining family, including most of your siblings. Certainly, this was nothing new for mom. Since you and her went to many during the years of taking my brother to multiple doctors as well. Albeit she was waiting for you this time.

Fast forward past those two years of living our lives ‌the same except the multiple appointments you guys had to go to; for chemo. Switching up your meds whenever one option didn’t provide the right type of result. Your options dwindling down - I recall now there was supposed to be an experimental treatment. But it required a certain count of platelets?

A week before your death and we have gotten ‘used’ to the awful sound of retching. We tried to hide the fact it disturbed us since it was worse for you to have to deal with that. But it was different that day when you came down and your voice had a worried tone.

“I need to go to the hospital. I’m coughing up blood.”

It was good we were both there and my older sister already had her license. She took you over, but not before you had to throw up violently, what looked like blood into the sink. That sound occasionally comes up from the back of my mind too. I never tell anyone, though. That and dreams of you somehow being alive, but not yourself.

He would be in the hospital for a few days to a week and mom once again gave graver news that it had spread. I remember lots of family once again being in the hospital.

There is a bit of a lighter anecdote where he had the hiccups for a while and the nurse was visiting‌. They finally stopped and almost instantly, I hiccupped. The nurse jokingly turned his head at me. Our dog, Lucky, got to visit him in the hospital.

I don’t remember the exact timeline at that point. But my uncle who has lived in Florida all my life and before then had come up for the first time in years. He had met me before, my mom says, when I was a baby. Perhaps he had done it with his other nieces and nephews. This was the first I would meet him and would have recollections.

His death brought a lot of family together.

He came home and they ‌fit a hospital bed in the front room, one of the smaller rooms of our two-story, drafty house. One day I came home from school and saw a line of cars in front of our house and figured something happened. They let in me and everyone sat quietly around him. Even our dog, who was always hyper, especially with company, stayed curled up in a recliner chair.

The hospice nurse mopped up his sweat and this foam stuff that came from his mouth. He breathed heavily and strained. Told he could still hear us, we said our goodbyes. IN the meantime, we either waited quietly or whispered to each other. My mother cried by his side and told him she loved him. It became a stretched out hour before he would pass. This would be in the Spring, perhaps weeks after calendar spring and it was still the gloom of winter holding on. Moments before he would pass, beams of light came through the windows. He brought spring and passed.

It has been over ten years now since his passing and funeral. I still think of him from time to time. I still even have two petals of a rose taken off from the flower arrangement on top of his casket.