The Duffer's Dead

I went to yoga, finished up with some abs, stopped in at the supermarket to bring some milk to work for my coffee. Had in my bag the copy of US News that had come for him. Yesterday he had taken an interest in looking at the National Review, so I felt hopeful that he might get back to being able to do some reading. I also had a letter announcing his doctor at Sloan-Kettering was leaving, so there'd be no need to wish he could still see him. About this time he had gone down to physical therapy, was practicing using his walker, when he gurgled, went limp, and was rushed back up to his bed. The doctor, who was already in the building, came to see him, but it was too late. Probably even if we hadn't had a DNR, it would have been too late, it happened so fast.

The other day when he was wishing to go home, where he could have his electric blanket, I asked him what he could do there that he couldn't do in the nursing home. Rest, he said. But then he admitted that the problem wasn't the noise, but that he was afraid. He would lie there and not be able to sleep because he was afraid that if he went to sleep he wouldn't wake up. "I don't think that's going to happen," I told him, in honesty. He seemed like he was improving, and the cancer wasn't likely to strike again very soon. Well, he did not die in his sleep, he was apparently up and quite active, having earlier used his tray table as a walker to wander out into the hall at 6 a.m. May his rest be peaceful.

The Duffer's Dreams

He's been having strange dreams, though the trick is figuring out that they are dreams. He began by commenting how much luckier the people who work in the nursing home are than the residents, because they can move around. Some of them, even on prosthetic legs. We have not seen that. He went on that yesterday, just outside, they had a race, and you couldn't even see their feet touch the ground. When we first stopped in he asked if we knew there was a Dr. Weitzman, who was higher than the doctor he had first seen. But he didn't wake me up. He came to see me but didn't bother to wake me up. He was the head of the corporation... oh, wait, I'm getting confused. Later, he brought him up again. I felt really good, good all over. And he was just there, visiting me in the night, and I kept looking for him, but he hasn't come back. "The only Weitzman I can think of, Dad, was one of the founders of Israeli." A father... an angel... But, even when the duffer could barely remember his name, he could state that he was an atheist. It's like what gay people say: they come out of a coma, don't know their name, but know that they're gay. Today, he mentioned how when he grew up, everyone just shrugged off religion as nonsense, and he saw no reason to ever think differently. There's a book I'd like to read, he said, that is against religion. The Hitchens one? No, not that, another. I know there's another, I can't remember what it's called. "Just want to make sure you're not making any mistakes?" I ask. (Now I see it is the God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.) I ain't getting it for him. Maybe I'll print out that dialogue between Hitchens and Douglas Wilson that was in Christianity Today.

Conversations with the geezer atheist

Conversations with geezer atheist grow stranger and possibly more interesting since the cancer has gone to his brain and everything is a mystery, a riddle. What is the word that has a U in it, and possibly a C? Had to do with the lungs. Finally I realize, "tuberculosis": Yes, people died in the movies from this in the fifties. But it wasn't from the disease; it was from the shadow. He must have been thinking of that disease, because of the way he hacks violently while eating. Today I tell him I spoke to his sister and he asks if she is all right with him these days. You've been on good terms with her for years now, I remind him. He shakes his head, dubious. How is her relationship with her father? He's your father too. He's been dead for years. He nods. Does that mean you no longer have a relationship? Well, you no longer speak to him, or see him. And you stop praying to his God? Not necessarily. But your father didn't believe in God. We don't know why he wanted them to play Ave Maria at his funeral. He did? For the music, or for spite, or for some reason we cannot fathom. The thing that bothered me about my father…(long pause, loses track, comes back) he was ashamed of being a Jew. I comment on how this fits in with his admiration for Nietzsche who scorned Judaism and Christianity because it was so Jewish. They were the religion of slaves, in his view. I still don't know what you think about God. I believe in God. You know that. There are long silences as we sit at the table where people have been brought to await their dinner trays. Finally, he says, So if they clean part of it, then only the rest are slaves. And that is the part that God takes care of? That's an interesting idea, but I'm not sure what you mean.