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“Because you’ve been taking care of him for three years, Zack. He knew you needed a break.”
“He was right. I did.”
“Well, did you have fun?”
“I had a great time. If all goes well and flights are on time, I should be home around three.”
“We will see you then. Have a safe trip.”
I hung up with Beverly, so thankful for having such a great live-in nurse, and went to stand in line at security. While I stood there, I wondered what would happen with my father now. He had started the progression downhill with Parkinson’s about two years ago, and recently, it had started moving faster.
Both Beverly and my father had urged me to take a break and get some me-time. For the last three years, I had worked and focused on my father and the house that I had grown up in. It was just the two of us now; well, my sister was around, but she was high-level drama, and I didn’t let her in the house because it stressed my father.
I wondered as I made it through security if the reason they wanted me to take a break was that I was about to go through the hardest thing I had ever endured, the loss of my father.
Part of me wished that I had told Rainey about my family and the loss of my mother two years ago. Or how my brother had passed when he was twenty-nine in a car accident, and how my sister had ruined her life with drugs and alcohol, but I just hadn’t wanted to destroy what we had. For that week, I wanted just to be me and her to be her.
On the flight home, I thought back on my week, and as I landed, I tucked the memories into safekeeping so that I could revisit them someday. Maybe after my life calmed down some, I could see if she’d be open to meet me for lunch, and I could tell her then why I hadn’t asked to see her again. Or maybe by then she would have moved on and found someone else.
It was always great to leave on vacation, but that feeling that you got when you stepped into your door, that feeling of being home, being safe, being back that usually descended over me, didn’t this time. Instead, as I stepped in, I smelled the antiseptic odor in the air. I heard the oxygen pump on upstairs, and also the television in his room.
I set down my things and hustled up the stairs. When I stepped inside, I came up short. My father looked like he had aged another ten years in the week I was gone. He also looked like he had lost another five pounds, and on him, that was a lot of weight.
Beverly sat on the opposite side of the bed. Her eyes held understanding. Suddenly, guilt washed over me. Here I was happy and enjoying life this last week, and my father was stepping closer and closer to his grave. By the look of him, he might not even last the month.
