Last Wishes

Two sisters, a final shot at redemption.

Photo courtesy of the author. Collage by Katie Kosma

By now my sister and I are pros. We turn our father on his right side, careful not to detach the tube that is inserted into his abdomen on one end and a bag full of urine the color of rust at the other. We wipe him down quickly and remove the soiled diaper and pad. While I toss the dirty cloths into the trash can next to the bed, Anna rolls him onto his back. Her movements are brusque, her touch unforgiving, like her heart. Even now, decades later, the contempt she’s had for our dad since we were children cannot be contained and finds expression in her touch. It seeps out of her fingers like bad magic.

I press my lips together to restrain the words I want to shout. If you hate him so much, why did you come? I don’t need your help. Why does it always have to be about you? I feel cheated. Robbed of what these days with my father could have been. Robbed of the possibility of having the heart-to-hearts I always wanted to have with him, ones that neither of us had the courage to initiate. But her rage takes up all the room.

I wince as she yanks the diaper through his legs and fastens the two Velcro corners. When she’s done, I cover his body with a clean cotton sheet.

“Here you go, Dad. All taken care of,” I say, patting his hands.

My father looks at me with big round eyes, like he does not comprehend. I wonder if that’s the case or if he’s pretending not to. Too embarrassed by the fact that his two adult daughters are seeing him naked, and, worse, cleaning him from his frequent diarrhea accidents. Certainly, my sister’s comments about his penis the first time we cleaned him didn’t help. “Well, look at this,” she said while lifting his flaccid member and moving it around as if she were selecting a fruit or vegetable from a pile at the grocery store. “Pretty good size for an old man.” I mentally agreed though I didn’t say as much, partly because I was fighting the urge to vomit and partly out of respect.

Everything else about my dad looks his age, eighty-three. Flesh loose around the bones, a washboard of ribs, a neck that seems too small to support his head. His mostly gray hair is so thinned I can see his scalp. His once thick full lips are sucked into the toothless void of his mouth because the doctor told us to remove his dentures.

“How are you feeling, Dad?” I speak too loudly even though his hearing is fine. Maybe it’s because he seems so far away. More in the next world than this one. He looks at me again, a bewildered look, a look I saw in my grandfather’s eyes so many years ago. “Would you like some Ensure?” He nods ever so slightly.

My sister follows me to the kitchen and stares me down hard. “Why are you so nice to him?” She folds her arms on her chest. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

I don’t respond. I never do. Resentment and rancor have built up in her like the minerals that clog our pipes, hardening on the inside walls of her heart. There’s nothing I can say that will get through to her.

He was not a bad father. He just was not a good one.

My sister follows me to the kitchen and stares me down hard. “Why are you so nice to him?” She folds her arms on her chest. “He doesn’t deserve it.”

I have often wondered why I’ve never hated dad like Anna does. I used to think I was too young and didn’t understand the gravity of his actions. But now I think it was also an act of survival. Though I was only a child, I already understood the harsh arithmetic of emotional abandonment—having lost the love of one parent, I could not afford to lose the other’s as well.

As I walk back to the master bedroom, Anna is at my heels like a hound tracking my kindness. I feel her eyes, full of disapproval, piercing the back of my neck. An old tension grows in my belly and settles in my shoulders.

The bedroom is filled with beds. The queen-sized one where my mother died only three months ago. The adjustable medical bed to which my father has been confined for the past few weeks when his body failed him. The cancer is everywhere. His organs are shutting down.

I jab the small straw through the thin plastic film several times before it finally goes through. “Here, Dad.” I activate the mechanical lift that elevates the top half of the bed and place the straw in his mouth. His lips are so dry he has a hard time wrapping them around the thin plastic tube. Anna, who has stopped by the doorway, her arms still crossed on her chest, looks at me with intense dislike. The dislike she has felt toward me all these years for refusing to hate my father. I seem to always love the wrong men.

My dad’s sucks are slow and shallow. Not ravenous and urgent like my kids’ when they latched onto my nipples when they were babies. Each feeding was received as if it were their first (surprise) or their last (voracious). My father collapses back onto the pillow. I place the still nearly full Ensure on the nightstand and sit on the chair by the bed.

“What are you doing now? You don’t have to stay you know,” my sister says through clenched teeth. “He doesn’t even know you’re here. And he never really cared.”

I should tell her that I think she’s cruel. That she’s kept this man and our family hostage to her resentment her entire life. I should remind her that ever since that fateful summer, when she was seven and I was five, our father did everything he could to regain if not her love then at least her respect. Like when he moved our family from Sardinia to Florence so she could attend the school of her choice. A move that, instead of helping, set my life on a collision course. I should tell her that he’s dying, and she should let bygones be bygones. After all, his transgression was against my mother. I should tell her that even though he might not know I’m here pretending to read this book, I’m still here. Because when my younger sister died, I was not with her. Because when my mother died three months ago, my flight was delayed and I didn’t get back in time. And I’ll be damned if I miss my father’s passing. I will be here. I will be witness.

But I don’t say any of this. And I don’t say what I should have said all these years, that she has a right to her anger, because even though our father loved us fiercely and possessively, it was clear that he loved fatherhood even less than matrimony. My father lived like a man in a cage, his inward gaze always yearning for a different life, one that didn’t come with the restrictions and obligations of raising a family. A life that, perhaps, he didn’t have the courage—or the villainy—to pursue. But I still can’t push against the weight of her bitterness, and I hate myself for it. I mumble some stupid excuse and pretend to read.

“Girls,” my father’s voice rises like the faintest whisper from somewhere between the sheets. “Girls, come here. I need to tell you something.” He sounds suddenly more alert, more conscious of his surroundings. “Come here, both of you.”

“You don’t have to stay you know,” my sister says through clenched teeth. “He doesn’t even know you’re here. And he never really cared.”

Anna looks at me and then at dad and almost breaks into a run as she rushes to his side, as if she were trying to beat me to the punch, as we’ve done most of our lives. I put the book down and walk to the other side of the bed. I pretend to be calm. Unlike my sister, I hide my emotions. To do otherwise, I learned long ago, can be dangerous. I force my steps to be slow and measured, but my heart is racing.

“Yes, like this, one on each side,” our father says, patting our hands.

“What is it dad?” Anna leans toward him. She grabs his right hand, the one missing two fingers. A work injury in Florence. Another sacrifice on the altar to my sister’s consuming rage. I can’t believe the transformation that has taken place in the space of a few seconds. The hard lines that have imprisoned her face these forty years, melt. I see tenderness. Almost love. “Yes, dad. We’re here. Talk to us.” In her voice, a gentleness I’ve never heard before when addressing my father. And then I see it, the face of a young girl filled with hopeful expectation. I see the hurt she’s carried and nursed all these years. And I know what she’s wishing for because I’m wishing for the same thing.

I wish our father will finally acknowledge the affair he had way back when I was five and she was seven. A betrayal that persuaded my mom that to love was a mistake. And to love me a worse one since I refused to join her and my sister in their resentment toward my father. A betrayal that derailed our family. I’m wishing he will finally ask for forgiveness for yearning for a different life, one that didn’t include us. And maybe, just maybe, we can begin to heal.

“I…I.” Our father looks at each of us in turn.

“Yes, dad. What is it?” Anna leans closer. Close enough to feel his shallow breaths grazing her cheek. For the first time, I realize that my sister and I have always wanted the same thing. That our father would come clean. For the first time, I realize how desperately Anna needs him to say, I’m sorry, how desperately I also need to hear those words. I see her pain—and mine. In this moment that feels like an eternity, there is hope that we might let go of the past and find a way back to each other.

“I really would like one last cigarette,” our father says.

Anna stands up like someone pinched her. The twitch in her left eye, the only sign that she’s upset. She walks out of the room without saying a word, without looking at me.

As I watch her retreating figure, an unremitting sorrow fills the emptiness I carry inside. For the first time I realize that I, too, have been held captive by resentment. That moment was our last shot at redemption. For the first time, I feel sorry for her. For us.

---

This essay was guest-edited by Katie Kosma. Previously an editor with Sari at Longreads, she now edits for The Rumpus, The Assembly, and UNC-Chapel Hill.