The Vigil

Barbara Pearson Arau

Always a gentleman, Papa waited until the whole family had assembled before he actively began to die. Everyone thought he would last until well after his birthday, but on the night before, an hour or two after my sister had arrived with her family, he started to leave us, in spirit at least.

        Earlier in the day, I had visited him. Thin, fragile, skin oddly loose on the large frame, he sat in his wheelchair in the living room and laughed and talked with much of his old vigor. A massive stroke seven years before had paralyzed most of his right side. He had laboriously taught himself to walk again (swinging his leg out jauntily from his hip), to tie his shoes, to shower, to shave, to dress. He could talk, after a fashion, but only we could understand him and then only some of the time.

        Leaving my father that afternoon, I told him we’d all be back the next day for his birthday dinner. He would be seventy-four and the family was gathering to celebrate. He nodded and held his arms out to me as always. This time, as I moved to straighten up, he held on tighter and whispered clearly, “Goodbye, Barbara, tell the children.”

        When we arrived late the next morning, my brother met us at the door with a crumpled face. “Mother said he started to fade last night after the others got here when he had just gone to bed,” he said. “He kissed them and kissed Mother, too. Then he turned his head away and hasn’t said a word or recognized any of us since.”      

        My brother looked shaken, undone. Papa’s condition had been hardest

for him to bear, of all of us. He was the only son, and my mother, my sister

and I represented a female phalanx he couldn’t understand. We kissed and

cried more easily, we had been privy from the first to the most undignified aspects of Papa’s invalidism, we had performed what must have seemed to

my brother the most sordid tasks. We took Papa in our stride. To my brother

we coped; in reality we dissembled.

        I patted him vaguely and went into Papa’s room.

        He was lying partially propped up by pillows, staring out the window toward the golden acacia tree. I nodded to Harry, the nurse, sat down on the bed and looked at my father. I was shocked by his stillness.

        “Happy Birthday, Papa,” I said.

        No reaction, not even a blinking of the eyes. His color was grayish, his forehead hot and dry to my touch. His face held no expression that I could

read. I sat looking at him, wondering where he was, what he saw beyond the acacia tree. I took his hand and thought I felt some pressure on mine.

        “Papa?”

        I turned to Harry, who shook his head.

        “Harry, I think he knows I’m here. He squeezed my hand.”

        “No, he don’t. They do that sometimes, just a reflex. He probably won’t last the night.”      

        Harry was rocking in my mother’s old chair and looked bone weary, not having slept for hours, waiting for my father to die.

        “Harry,” I argued, “he does know I’m here. He just pressed my hand

again. Papa, it’s me, Barbara. Harry, didn’t you see his hand move?”

        Not missing a beat in his rocking, Harry said kindly, “I know you want

him to recognize you, honey. I know it isn’t easy to watch and not be able to

do anything, but take my word for it, I’ve seen plenty of cases like this.”

        He was right, I guessed. I slumped down and tried to will myself into

some kind of acceptance of my father’s imminent death. Certainly he looked

calm and wherever he was wandering, whatever he was seeing, must be

serene enough to be acceptable to him. Yet calmness and serenity were

hardly attributes of my living father.

        Staring at the frail husk of a man propped up on the bed, I had a

sudden vision of a big, active laughing man on a boat, a singular man who

could lash out with quick fury at a dog, a friend, a daughter, then beguile them the next minute with extraordinary sweetness.

        I wanted to wail, to keen, to pound the bed in denial. I wanted him to

help me handle his dying.

        So many times in our younger days we had turned to him for help, my sister, my brother, and I. 

        Papa, I’m in trouble, we cried, I’m scared, I’m hurt, I’m alone. And Papa fixed and advised and comforted and tried to teach us to be strong. I thought he had, until now. Maybe he had prepared us for life, but he forgot to prepare us for death.

        “Barbara.”

        Harry had left; my brother was standing there.

        “He just lies there,” I mourned. “He must know he’s dying, he just

doesn’t care. He’s given up, he isn’t Papa anymore.”

        “Come on, I’ll sit with him awhile. Go get something to eat.”

        Cool and crisp, he sounded like my father. There, standing in a shadow, he even looked a little like him. Had I missed some subtle handing down of steadiness, some father-to-son bestowal of strength?

        “He’s still Papa,” said my brother, taking my seat. “Now go out of here

for a bit.”

        All the rest of the day, we took turns sitting with my father—my sister,

my brother, my mother, and I. That night we gave my mother a sleeping pill

and put her and the children to bed, then we quietly moved in and out of that room, unable to leave for long.

        Around midnight I was bathing my father’s forehead when he suddenly tensed, gripped my hand hard and whispered loudly, “No!”

        Then he seemed to collapse all over and so did I. I had been made rigid to the point of tight, aching jaws and stiffened spine by his unexpected fierceness. Shaking, I patted his limp hand and called softly, “Papa,

Papa,”

        Again the swift rising, the sharp, furious, “No!” the eyes staring through me to an unknown adversary. Eyes shining with the yellow rage of a male cat when some night creature steps within its territory under cover of dark. And “No!” again. Whispered not in fright, not in confusion, but in real anger.

        Anger at what? At the humiliation of what he had become? At the realization that he was dying? At the night creature who dared to challenge

him?

        This was the man I remembered. But his return was no comfort. During the long vigil, I had almost grown used to the idea of his simply drifting off. Let go, Papa, I willed. Go back to that place you were before, beyond the acacia tree.

        How his fury frightened me. As he clenched my hand and spat out that fierce “No!” again and again, I began to tremble, to take short breaths.

        My brother came in and stood listening. He put his hands, so like Papa’s hands, on my shoulders and I began to relax. As the angry sounds went on around us, my brother quoted Dylan Thomas:

        “And you, my father, there on the sad height,

        Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.

        Do not go gentle into that good night,

        Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

        We stayed there for another hour or so, my brother and I, watching my father, holding onto his hands, listening to the one-sided battle being slowly lost.

And then we went and called the others.

Barbara Pearson Arau is a former editor and copywriter who has been published in many national magazines and newspapers. She has also published a mystery novel, Someone’s in the Kitchen with Dinah, and is currently working on a sequel, set in Sarasota.