All Life Ends in Death (Journal 20)

Write about the first time you truly understood that all life ends in death.

I was sixteen.  I left work at the Gorham House with a couple of friends.  We had plans to watch a movie that night.  I don't even remember what the movie was, only that I didn't really want to go, but felt that I should.  At some point in the middle of the movie, my friend Jason took a phone call.  Then, in a moment that changed my life forever, he came tearing back into the living room, screaming at the top of his lungs: “Steph, oh my God, your dad had a heart attack!  We've gotta go!”  I grabbed my stuff and ran to his car.  He sped all the way down route 25, and as we approached my house, the red lights of ambulances and fire engines pulsed like arteries.  We had to park at the end of the driveway, so I ran out of the car, not even pausing to shut the door, and raced up my driveway.  I pressed my face into the glass of our bay window.  There was my dad in his favorite teal t-shirt sprawled out on the living room floor, paramedics pushing and shoving at his chest.  They wouldn't let me in.  My sister was curled up in a ball on the front steps.  My mom was crying and trying to make phone calls.  After they loaded my dad onto a gurney, they carried him into the back of the ambulance, and raced with sirens blaring the 45 minutes to Maine Medical Center in Portland.  My dad worked there, had spent all day there, and was now headed back there.  My mom had friends come to pick up my sister.  She also took off in the ambulance, leaving me behind to pack some clothes and things for my dad.  After shoving clean clothes and my favorite photograph of us into a duffle bag, I hitched a long silent ride to Portland with Jason.  We parked and went in the ER entrance, but I was almost immediately directed to a small conference room instead of the germ-ridden waiting area.  I opened the door, took one look at my mom's face, and walked out again.  I had to catch my breath.  I knew he was gone and had no need for the things I had packed for him.  Over the next few days, I helped my mom pick out caskets, choose hymns for the memorial service, and was repeatedly told to be strong.  I was afraid my mom and my sister would eventually dissolve in all the tears they shed.  I was daddy's little girl, now without my daddy.  Where did that leave me?

It has taken me a long time to write this poem about the photograph I had packed to send with him to the hospital.  It's an old photograph; I was about 2 years-old, and my dad was holding me in the sunlight streaming through the window of my family's camp on Sebago.  We were both napping.

Daddy

If she knew then

what she knows now,

she would wake up

and tug his beard

turned fiery in the molten light

and ask him for a story

any story

and she would rest her head

on his chest

and listen to the thump-thump

of his heart

and be shaken by the deep timbre

of his voice and his chuckle

and try not to think about

how much she would miss

his voice, his smile,his warmth

and only try to burn this moment

into her memory

so that she could return to it

again and again

savoring each word and each breath

like so much Swiss chocolate