Vigil of the Valiant Void

I can’t sleep.

I lay, staring up at the ceiling because when I close my eyes, I’m there – the vibration of the fluorescent lights, the whooshing of the ventilator, the echo of the EKG machine all crescendoing to a roar around me until I hear the struggling sound of gasping.

My eyes snap open. I had let myself close them after days of unrest. I should sleep. I need to sleep. 

I need to focus. My husband lays next to me, sound asleep, lost in his wistful dreams, but I stay tethered to the Earthly plane.

I shut my eyes again. I count my breaths; one, two, three... Beep. Beep. Beep.

My eyes shoot open again. 

I take a breath – I can’t shake off the sounds. I turn onto my side and stare at the curtain of windows; they shuffle softly from the air conditioner too unable to sleep. 

My eyes close once more - one, two, three... four, five... gasp, gasp.

I squeeze my eyes shut – no, no, no, no - not wanting to go back that moment or that room; reliving it wouldn’t do any good since I’d already been there and felt everything it held within its walls. 

So instead, I force my mind further back - to my first day of school; to that moment stepping off of the banana yellow bus and racing towards my father’s proud face.

I inhale the crisp air of the day, as if I was still a wide-eyed, innocent four-year-old instead of the jaded thirty-two-year-old that I am now. My feet pound against the pavement with the same urgency as when I ran towards his outstretched arms. A smile creeps onto my face as though I still feel the warmth of his embrace. But then, his image floods my mind and I hear it – gasp, gurgle, gasp. The sound makes me cringe and curl up into a ball, wrapping my knees close to me.

I need to sleep. 

An undercurrent of resentment and heartache lingers in the air like a pall, choking out any chance of peace or understanding. Dad had been gone for only two days, yet the family he'd spent his life building was already crumbling apart.

My Aunt had launched a tirade at my mother, Dad's widow: how could she not include her and her family in the obituary? Didn't they deserve more recognition than that? The bitterness and entitlement behind her words were sharp enough to cut through the grief. I had to step in, for my father's sake. This woman who'd treated him so badly with such callousness over the years thought she'd earned a greater claim to his legacy than us? It was too much.

My sister had appeased her whim, listing every niece and nephew my Aunt demanded.

But it wasn't right! He may have been her brother for sixty years, but he had been our father for forty – bonds built on love and shared memories, not just genetics. We were his legacy!

That's why I can't sleep; the sheer audacity of minimizing our roles in his life against hers stings like a slap in the face.

No. It wasn't just that.

It is the guilt. Guilt for not being there by his side his last night at the hospital. He’d been awake enough to tell us all to go home. To rest and leave him at the hospital that night. I should have stayed. I shouldn’t have listened. I keep imagining how that night was for him. Did he lay awake? Did he cry, alone and scared in a hospital of nurses that only knew him by his chart? Did he feel pain? Did he…

Tears sting my eyes. No, no I can’t think like that. He’d told us to go home because he needed a night alone. Alone, not seeing our despondent eyes or hear the worry in our voices.

He needed us to leave to live his life behind his eyes or as he stared up at the ceiling. He needed his time.

But still, I can’t shake the feeling that I should have stayed.

Is it guilt? No. Maybe? I'm not sure.

I turn over again, facing my husband's back. He stirs but doesn't wake up. I envy his peaceful slumber. I envy his freedom from the haunting memories and the gnawing regret.

He’s seen more death than I have. He’s a veteran and has seen blood spilled. He’s been in the trenches, his life on the line, his brothers falling at his sides. He’s watched bombs explode and he’s seen a fallen brother take a bullet in the head. He’s learned how to process this. He’s learned how to focus and he’s trying to teach me.

But I can’t sleep.

I think back to the day Dad had told us all to go home. He’d already decided that he wanted the tube out. My brother had asked me to speak to Dad. He wanted me to make sure that Dad understood that without the tube he’d die. So, when everyone left the room, I sat with our Dad. I took his hand, I asked him, and he nodded. He knew what he’d decided to do. He knew what it meant.

I think back to a month before, when he lay in the bed my husband and I rest in now. Where he lay on the side where I lay now and smiled and said he’d beat this. I’d taken his hand and looked him in the eyes. I told him that it was okay. I told him I already knew. He’d squeezed his eyes shut because he knew what I meant.

We shared the same spiritual gift. Well, actually, his spiritual gift transferred to me the month before he’d told us his cancer had come back, but by the time he’d told us, I already knew.

That’s why I can’t sleep. It’s not the guilt of not being there, because I was there. It’s not remembering how my Aunt had behaved and how angry it’d made me. It’s not because my son held my Dad’s hand and prayed with him one last time the afternoon he died. It’s not that my son was the only grandchild who had seen Dad in person the whole time he’d been in the hospital.

It's knowing for so long that his death was inevitable.

He’d warned me of his spiritual gift my whole life. Had explained that it was a blessing and a curse to know that someone would die soon but not be able to do a thing about it. It was turmoil to be a witness to a person’s death and even more alienating to know there was nothing that would change the outcome.

It was a cold, vacant void that I didn’t fully understand until that November when I saw his grey skin. His dark eyes turned to coals. His smile thin and peeling as he spoke and said good night over a video call. So, when he finally told us that his cancer had returned in December, I told him that I already knew and the look on his face from understanding my meaning was enough to break me.

There was no escape from his fate. He knew it and I knew it. So, he and mom moved into their new house and he worked tirelessly to make it has perfect as he could for her because he knew he didn’t have long. Not if I saw him dead when his heart was still beating. He’d always said that once the face was shown, the person didn’t make it past a year. At most, he’d told me, they’d live maybe another six months at most, but not past that.

So when he told me in this room, in the bed I lay in now, that he’d beat his cancer, that he’d pull through, I couldn’t lie. I couldn’t be the one to fall into that fantasy, so I held his hand and said, “You don’t have to tell me that, Dad. I’m not them.”

Maybe that had been the wrong thing to say, but it was the truth. The day we’d left to go home to Georgia that May, he hugged me so tight and said, “The next time I see you will be the last time I see you.”

I clung to him and nodded. “I know, Dad.”

We drove home, my husband, son, and I. Two weeks later, my Dad was in the hospital again. We left Georgia, drove as fast as we could. My brother called from our Dad’s hospital room and told Dad, with me on the phone, that I was on my way. He cried. He knew what it meant for me to come back.

My mom met us at their house and I went to the hospital with her. She rested on the bench as I sat next to him as he slumbered. I listened to music, I read, and then he woke up and saw me there. He held my hand and smiled. I smiled back. He told me I needed to go to sleep, I told him I’d sleep when I needed to. I didn’t need to, yet.

My aunt, cousin, and great uncle came. Dad gathered all of his kids, my brother, my sister and her husband, and me and told us that after he transferred to the next hospital, that would be it. The room fell silent, tears were silent, but then he looked at me, his stoic daughter and shook his head. “It’s okay.”

I nodded. “I know.”

He shook his head again. “You don’t have to be strong all the time.”

My hands shook, the dam broke, and I cried.

It’s not the gasp of his struggle to breathe that keeps me up at night. It’s not guilt or the loss. I’d done what I could, and it was a loss I knew couldn’t be salvaged. It’s not the moment he had passed, surrounded by my mother, his cousin, my brother, my sister-in-law, and me. It’s not the moment I walked up to my brother that still had his hand clasped over our father’s and I’d told him he had to let him go, he had to let go of his hand. It wasn’t seeing the fortified depths of my brother’s gaze when he said that he’d try his best.

No, it’s something else entirely. It’s my father’s final words before he could no longer speak, before his words were replaced with silence and a Morse code of hand squeezes and winks. They unlocked a door inside me that won't stay shut - how can it when the burden is so heavy? My mind refuses to be released into slumber or immediate relief; instead, I am constantly reminded of what needs to be done, what needs to be shouldered, and who needs an ear to listen.

So, I lay there, dry-eyed and wide awake; listening to the intermittent rhythm of my husband’s breathing and the lulling hum of the ceiling fan.

This pain is mine because I know from experience that no one really knows what to say when I share my pain. No one really listens because they’re thinking about how to react, not how to comfort or be in the moment.

About what to do next or what to say.

So, I’ll be strong. I will sleep when my strength permits me. Until then, all I can do is endure and hope that the void doesn’t swallow me whole.