"Do Not Go Gentle"

One scoop of the beans, then another. I savor the way they glisten, being lifted from the deep foil bag, falling into the filter. One scoop for every two cups, I learned that somewhere and it seems to work. Three. Four. This morning I linger over the process, relish the experience.

I roll the edges into themselves, pinch the paper-covered wires around the sides of the bag and put it back in the refrigerator. Somewhere I heard fresh coffee beans shouldn't be refrigerated. But we all have our little rituals and they are stronger than the things we hear.

At first I thought dad was being too dramatic. Running mom ragged to take care of him, ragged with a worry that can only come after so many years of being together, the worry, the knowing.

I was angry for that at first. Mom is four years older and doesn't need to be waiting on dad hand and foot. He can do it. He could eat, he just chose not to, and he was worrying her to death.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself, you're okay."

Really, he wasn't. We didn't know it was cancer. You don't expect those things. Those are the things the other people go through.

But I could not be angry. I became the one responsible for keeping everything in perspective.

There were the pills, and there was the schedule for the pills, and the real fact if mom didn't take care of them they wouldn't be taken. That had been the routine longer than the cancer.

Dad's cancer had become mom's new hobby.

I took dad to chemo the first few times. He couldn't drive anymore, or wouldn't. I did because somebody had to. I told mom to rest while he was away.

What amazed me about chemo was the routine it had become for so many people. A whole room with their bags of medicine, pumping into their arms or a valve set permanently beneath the collarbone. Nonchalant, they read their books, and Better Homes and Gardens, and sipped their coffee.

I tried not to stare at the crocheted hats with colors and styles you would never see in their magazines. But they didn't concern themselves with fashion anymore; it was only about the cancer.

Dad was never one to read. He would talk. I would try to read, but he would sit on the edge of his seat, ready to spring up for the next conversation. The routine hadn't gotten to him.

I wonder now if he sat like that because he wanted to spring up and run away. "This isn't happening to you, Mr. Heath. It was all a mistake. You may go."

It must have been frustrating for him, with me being so ready to settle in and read.

But that was early on. He fought it more back then. Later he just looked impatient and tired struggling to get in the car and fasten his seatbelt.

"It's the shits getting old," he said.

I wanted to be impatient too. Do it faster, dad. Then it will get finished and I can go home to forget this until next time.

I wondered if dad would make it to Christmas. It wasn't about living another day as much as getting through the next landmark.

But by Christmas things looked better. We had learned to justify everything better by then. "Prostrate cancer isn't much different than diabetes, it's just something you treat."

Even if dad was 78. Never mind the bone cancer; we hardly ever thought about that.

By the New Year there had been variations, the chemo stopped for awhile and a pump that dispensed antibiotics took its place, then it left and the chemo returned.

Around the end of February I arrived to pick up dad. Mom had been on the phone.

"Teresa's in the hospital," she said.

I didn't say anything. My sister Teresa was a soft topic and I hadn't really exchanged more than a few words with her for years. It wasn't really my choice, but I understood why she stayed away.

"She has had pneumonia and she had a hard time breathing. Cindy took her in, I guess. Nadine just called."

Cindy was her friend, Nadine was my aunt who raised Teresa.

"I didn't even know she was sick, she never calls," she said.

I don't remember what I said. Not much, I'm sure. It was time to start the routine.

Dad was using the walker again, an off and on thing depending on how bad his legs hurt from the bone cancer. He would walk with it out to the truck, shuffling along in the same red flannel shirt and brown casual slacks he always wore. I would put it in back while dad struggled to get in the seat. By the time I would circle around and get in the driver's side, dad would still be trying to get his seatbelt hooked. If it struck me how fragile he had become, I would help him. Sometimes he would get it. Otherwise there was little variety in the ritual.

I don't remember which doctor we saw that day, or which treatment it was, but we had finished and called mom on dad's cell phone when we started back.

"She said she has something to talk to you about," he told me.

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

"Did she say what it's about?"

"No."

And we didn't give it another thought until I got dad home and Tammy's car was in the driveway. My other sister.

We did our old routine in reverse, getting dad back in the house.

Mom was in her chair. Tammy was at the dining room table nearby. They had been crying.

I didn't say anything, what would I have said?

Tammy got up and came over to me. She put her arms around me and said, "Terry, we just lost our sister."

I put my hands on her back to comfort her, but no tears.

I looked at mom. She wasn't crying now. She knew that I wouldn't be, that I never did. She just watched.

I looked at dad. He was looking at the T.V..

My mother was 82 years old but had always looked ten years younger. That day it struck me how fragile she looked. Like a child wanting someone to make things better, but knowing nobody will, nobody can, and you just have to keep going. She looked so small. Until lately I would never have thought of her that way.

She raised me, really her grandson, when the girls and I were put up for adoption by the State. She didn't want to, but it was like her. Nadine took the girls. Mom and dad took me, the youngest and least attached.

So many things had happened by then. My foster sister went to prison five or six years ago for trying to murder her husband when nobody knew she was on meth. Teresa had been sent there too, for awhile. Then mom lost her daughter, our mother, a couple years later to diabetes and cancer, and I think losing a reason to live. Dad had survived congestive heart failure eight years earlier.

Now she just looked at me, and I couldn't make it better.

Dad started talking about what the doctor had said. He had another appointment scheduled, I think. I don't know what else; I couldn't believe he thought it should be about him right then. Not at that moment.

He hadn't acknowledged what I had heard. Did he hear? He must have. I just stood there.

But that had been the routine. It was like scooping beans from the bag; and no point in changing it now.

I didn't say anything at my sister's funeral. It would have felt wrong. I hadn't said anything to her for so long. I hadn't said anything to her the day she died. There were a few who said too much.

We all have our own way to deal with things.

Somebody told my mom she is strong.

"I have to be," she said.

I've sometimes wondered what might have passed through Teresa's mind that morning, before she slipped into a coma, then darkness, then was gone. Did it feel like any other day feels in the morning? She had been up early, difficulty breathing. She knew she had been sick, but did she ever think that day might be her last?

I sat with my father the warm May afternoon when he died. I watched his mouth move to draw in another breath, but his body wouldn't respond.

It just happens, I guess. We go to pull another scoop from the bag but nothing is there. There is no reason to worry about it until that time comes. We just continue our little rituals and when that time finally comes we'll know.