Dying

 On the fourth day of sitting with my dad in his little room at an Alzheimer’s facility, I finally realize he is going to die. He lay under a sheet with only a t-shirt and an adult diaper on. His eyes are open but they do not appear to see. His mouth gapes and I put tiny spongefuls of water on his lips and tongue. Sometimes he will clamp his mouth onto the sponge and suck at the water. Other times he’ll look around with blue-gray eyes, wide and unblinking. He winces when I touch him and his face goes ugly with grimace until I learn to just put my hand so close to his arm as to feel his coldness, but not touch him. 

 

If you cover your throat with your tongue and then try to breathe, the sucking sound of air trying to get through is how my dad sounds when he breathes. Then his body will go rigid and he’ll seem to try to sit up, his arms reaching forward, his feet lifting off the bed and he will make a desperate crying sound as he breathes out. After, he will collapse back into place, with arms at his sides, ribs exposed, bones thinly covered by his paling skin of paper.   

 

Sometimes he will gargle and bubble out bits of air so that I think it is the last bits of air he has. He won’t try to breathe anymore as he moves his head side to side with gaping eyes and lips pulled back to expose old teeth and white gums. And I will think I’m watching the last of him leave only to hear the sucking of air through a covered throat and his hands’ clench and his arms rise, and I listen to life winning another breath.