Sunday, Room 216

     Distorted, muted sounds of several TV's driftly loudly and out of synch, different channels, different programs, from down the hallway, outside your door.

     Voices call back and forth to each other, workers in opposite rooms, their words in bass tones, indistinguishable,  but their laughter staccato soprano, high-pitched, out of place in this mostly-silent resident hall.

     The day outside your window is bright but full of clouds, not sure whether to go on by, or gather. The pointy-tailed irridescent blue swallows and golden yellow finches busily go on about their springtime business, oblivious of this world on the other side of the glass, our world, my dad's and mine, where, in this room, it is you and I. 

     You were present when I was born, and it is only fitting that I be present at your leaving. 

     You are restless here, not able to stay, but not quite ready to go, caught, trapped by your body, between two worlds, this and the other.

     Your hoarse raspy breathing says 'asleep,' your half-open eyes say 'awake," but you neither see me nor respond to me when I look into you.  The eyes give the most telling sign that you are slowly going away from us. They are filmy, veiled, grey-blue, not alert anymore, almost done with us.

     Your fingers move, twitch, reach, grasp - at nothing mostly, but sometimes you catch the sheet or blanket or my hand. The warmth is there but the grip, the strength, is gone.

     Your lips move, but I can't read the words on them.  A prayer? Talking to someone who waits for you? No meaning, just movement?  I do not know.

     Your breathing, rattly, raspy, too loud for this room.  Everyone is kind. Too kind to bear, almost.  My occasional tears are not for the end that is now in sight, but because the leaving taking takes way too long.