Part I - Our Event

Following Unction and Funeral Laundry.

Per istam sanctam Unctiónem et suam piisimam misericórdiam, indúlgeat tibi Dóminus quidquid per
visum,
audtiotum,
odorátum,
gustum et locutiónem,
tactum,
gressum deliquisti

- The sacrement of Extreme Unction

Tell the story backwards, since now there's nothing left but time.

The phone rang very early, lifting me out of a thin sleep. It barely rang. I can explain that – electronic ringers sometimes appear to ‘blip,’ as if they have only caught the tail impulse of the first chime of an incoming call. This woke me up, and my rational brain split the difference between what had happened and what was likely to happen.

I had been waking up to imaginary late-night & early-morning phonecalls for almost 3 months; the awareness of why the phone would ring so late or early was unmistakable either as part of the dream, or as the thing to lift me out of any such dreams.

I instantly made a very good case for this awakening to have been yet another one of those bursts of unwelcome adrenalin.

It reads like cliché or poetic license to say that time stood still, and that expression doesn’t quite apply in this case; time was not suspended, it was drawn out and counted in reverse, waiting to be waited-out.

You hear phones ring every day – you know the length of time between rings and come to expect it. So after I woke up to something that may or may not have been a telephone’s ring, the part of my brain which regulates familiar things knew how long it would be before the next ring occured.

If it occured. If the interval went into overtime, then the first ring had been yet another nightmare.

All I had to do was patiently wait for the phone to not-ring. And my father would not be dead, for another day.

I’d gone to bed the night before expecting that ring, prepared and resigned to it – so every last-moment thought compressed itself into those few seconds, waiting for the next step. There was no prayer, which was on the surface, at least, unusual- every breath for months had ended in Amen. But I had resigned myself away from prayer for conspicuous miracles such as recovery, into a barely muttered litany of requests for relief from his pain or simply his passing in a state of grace at peace with whatever thoughts remained.

Those small blessings – any of them – would qualify as miraculous.

If the phone didn’t ring that second time, that too would qualify.

Ecce enim veritátem dilexísti;
incérta et occúlta sapiéntiæ tuæ manifestásti mihi

Thou desirest truth in the inward parts
and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom

I knew that I at least had a chance with the phone.

That hanging time was probably the most ‘real’ moments of my life up to that point simply because there was nothing else worth consideration at that instant. If the phone doesn’t ring, he’s still alive and he’s going to be gone in days or weeks but not today, so I will wake up and I’ll felt what it’s like beside the death and I will be better prepared when it comes and there will be more time even if only hours more knowing he’s living and that is enough the fact of it the mercy of it the reality of simply living a little longer is enough distilled into resulting from all prayer for miracles into this one brief more. It would be enough.

I cheated – was cheated - out of fear or hope, as my familiar brain lept milliseconds ahead of schedule and told me rather impassively that my wait was over, that the pause was officially longer than usual between rings and therefore no second ring would be forthcoming. Carry on.

Something internal soothed me.

Something else ignored it and simply muttered ‘keep waiting.’

A very slow, quiet, battle between a vague sense of unconscious recognition and the duration between ring tones.

If I could just wait it out, it would be safe.

The rest was, literally, clockwork. I hung between what I thought was enough time and what I suspected was enough time, the truest experience of no-man’s land that I’ve ever felt.

The ending won’t surprise you. The phone rang. I let it draw every decibel of its duty before picking up the phone. And heard my sister telling me that my father had not passed away gently in his sleep; he had coughed and convulsed around 4am, continuing to do so for just under an hour, spoken-to and touched and held by my mother and sister until his breathing fell shallow and ceased.

It had been too quick for me to come to the house, or simply they weren’t going to leave his side to pick up the phone to call me. They were close and listend and knew every last breath as he slipped away.

If you believe that it’s melodramatic to say ‘at least he wasn’t screaming,’ visit a hospital ward with a few patients whose pain medication no longer takes the edge off. Look at how bad it can get. Then consider the benefit (if that is the term) of your body simply shutting down rather than clenching firmly against losing what little vitality is left.

I put down the phone and simply said "He's gone. He's dead," to Abby. We dressed and went to the house to wait with his body until he was taken for cremation.