This poetic narrative was written by Patricia Cannon, RN
That night we didn’t know it was your last bath. You savored the warm water that I splashed on your pale back. Looking down at the silver-grey hair clogging the drain, you murmured, “It just can’t be helped.”
Yet I clung to what I could control: The fridge, full of untouched food. The carpet, vacuumed twice a day. The pre-filled syringes of liquid morphine, lined up like plastic soldiers on the brown table top.
“If you wake up and see me smashed against the window,” you joked,
“You’ll know that I tried to take flight.”
A week later, your voice left. Your dentures remained on the bathroom sink. Exhausted, we lay on beds lined side by side in your apartment. But we couldn’t travel together much longer, unlike the days when you walked with me to elementary school, my hand inside yours like an unopened present.
You rattled the rail of the hospital bed unable to lift my head, I said “I love you and I am still here.” The pinpoint pupils of your green eyes pierced me through the metal bars until your head finally settled on your pillow. Later, I laid a bed sheet crisp and white like fresh fallen snow over your chest, now emptied of all breaths, and I wrapped my hand around your hand like a glove for the last time.
Patricia Cannon has been a Registered Nurse at UCSF since 2001. She has worked in cardiac critical care, neuro intensive care, hemeoncology, school nursing, and currently, in research. Her passion is her faith, photography, and the written word in all its forms. Flight: A Letter to My Stepfather was originally published by Coverstory Books by Ian Gouge.