High Flight

My grandfather was dying; that was all that I knew for sure. At 13, I was too old for soft and sugary nuances, but too young to fully comprehend the implications of death. I knew that I had been spending a lot of afternoons at the hospital, but when my aunt Patty flew in from Florida and my uncle Roy flew in from Atlanta on a Thursday evening, I decided that death must be near. After all, it had been years since I had seen either of them, and my mom hadn’t even washed the guest room sheets yet. On the night of their arrival, while I pretended to be asleep, I heard the front door click as my aunt Rachel entered the house. I crept from my room to the top of the staircase and listened. I heard my mother whisper words like “respirator” and “options” and “quality of life.” And then, as I detected the sound of a chair being pushed in, I scampered back into my room silently, hoping to avoid being spotted.

The next morning, Patty, Roy, Mom, and I crowded together into Roy’s rental car and made our way to the hospital. Once the siblings arrived, they met with Rachel and Nezzie (my grandmother). I, however, was ushered into the playroom with my cousins Cooper and Logan. They were playing with wooden train sets. Soon after I was shoved there, I watched longingly as my family disappeared into his hospital room.

I didn’t know how long this visit was going to take, so I tried to find something to do to pass the time. Building blocks didn’t interest me, nor did the thought of putting my fingers on markers and crayons that had most likely been in a toddler’s mouth. I looked down the hall once more and noticed that my grandfather’s door was cracked just wide enough that I could enter without being seen. I looked at Cooper and Logan; they were currently fighting over a plastic caboose. And then, like most 13-year-olds are so good at doing, I made myself invisible.

Immediately after I entered the room, I hid behind the wardrobe. My family was gathered around Nezzie, who was sitting in one of those uncomfortable plastic chairs. She had been sleeping there for about a week now, and despite her attempts to make the room more like home, it remained markedly sterile. The tiled floors were waxed daily, as if to erase the fact that life came and went through the door every day. Various medical machines replaced what would and should have been potted plants, and everything, even down to drinking cups, had some kind of sanitary covering. I stared at myself in the mirror, frightened by how the fluorescent lighting could make even the freshest of faces appear dead.

I heard the creak of the door as Bopper’s (my grandfather) doctor walked in. In panic, I pressed my body against the wall. I had forgotten his name, but I appreciated the fact that he thought I was old enough to see him remove fluid from my grandfather’s lungs with a long, thin tube once. It reminded me of a pixie stick.

All of their backs turned, I poked out from behind the closet. The doctor’s hand rested lightly on Nezzie’s kneecap, and the others stood in silence clutching her shoulders. My mother bent down to console her while Rachel tended to Patty, the youngest of the four. After a few moments, Roy tilted his head to the doctor. “So,” Roy began, “how long do people typically last after you…you know.”

“Depends on the person,” the doctor shrugged. “In Harry’s case though, I would say no longer than 10 minutes.”

Roy looked up to the ceiling and took a deep breath. “OK, then,” he said. “I think we’re ready.”

The doctor nodded, and then walked over to Bopper’s side, pressed a few buttons, and then removed a plug from the wall socket. “I’ll leave you alone now,” he said. “Inez,” he called to my grandmother, “you’re doing the right thing.” And then he left, leaving the cord hanging there limp as a windsock in the dog days of summer. I didn’t know what that cord belonged to, but I did know that I had no desire to be in that room anymore. To my horror, I heard a faint click of the door closing and the sound of the machine powering off impersonally and ever so anticlimactically. And there I was, stuck in a room with a dying man. Terrified, self-conscious, and confused, I pressed my body further into the wall and held my breath.

Five minutes elapsed, and Bopper’s breathing remained unchanged. Even from where I stood, I could see that his eyes were still as brown as the mulch that we would sometimes get stuck in our shoes at the park. When I was younger, I always thought he was some kind of magician because whenever we went for a walk, all of the birds flocked to him. Cardinals would rest on his shoulders, and blue jays would eat from his hands. I remember one day a dove even landed on his head. I never understood what it was about my grandfather that drew the birds to him; after all, he was a 6’3” military retiree whose ample belly protruded well over his pencil-thin legs. There was nothing delicate about him. When I asked Bopper why the birds treated him the way that they did, he said that it was because they knew that he had a pair of wings once, too. I said it was because they liked the smell of Aqua Velva and gin and tonics. He laughed when I told him that, and whenever anyone stopped to admire the birds on his belly, he would always rave to them about his 9-year-old granddaughter’s theory.

Ten minutes had passed now, and he still seemed the same. Patty looked to her oldest sister, Pam (my mother), and asked if she thought this meant that Harry was actually capable of breathing on his own, if maybe his doctor had been wrong. Mom said nothing, but I saw her forearm muscles contract as she squeezed Nezzie’s wrist. Roy’s eyes began to shift away from Bopper and to the window. Clouds were beginning to roll in.

Rachel laughed meekly at Patty’s suggestion and wiped a tear from her eyes. Mascara began to run down her cheeks, and soon she resembled a raccoon. “Oh, Patty,” she said, “I don’t think so. He’s a military man, he’s just being stubborn.” She put her hand on Bopper’s shoulder. “Aren’t you, Dad?”

He didn’t respond. My mom smiled and pulled Patty closer. In the distance, the light that filtered in through the window illuminated Roy’s face, and his glassy eyes began to reflect the increasingly grey skies. A single tear slipped down his cheek, but before anyone could notice, he wiped it away as if it were a gnat. But I, still pretending to be a wall, saw it. And then I vanished. Plaster replaced skin, paint replaced clothing.

Pam looked to Roy, who was standing slumped, emotionless, and grey. And in that precise moment, she felt that she was losing not one person, but two. She remembered the time when she and Roy were in high school, when Dad yelled at him to cut his hair and called him a “woman” for acting in plays instead of taking to sports. And then she thought back to the morning in Topeka when Dad came home from the hospital. His only other son, Harry Jr., had died after just two days of birth. Pam remembered that her father didn’t speak to anyone, and completely ignored Roy (who was 12 at the time) for days. Pam remembered seeing her brother’s eyes the way they were now only one other time in her life: that day. Sad, motionless, and removed, Roy knew he would never live up to someone who hadn’t even lived for two days. His biggest failure was that Roy was himself, not Harry. And there was nothing he could do about that.

Pam shifted her focus from her brother to her dad, whose eyes were now on the window as well. The view was your average city scene: cars moved slowly like ants, and dark-suited men and women resembled beads of mercury, starting together yet inevitably separating at random. The sky was metallic like the buildings, and a midmorning fog began to blanket downtown in an all-too familiar solemnity.

Her dad blinked his eyes, and Roy watched with curiosity as they slowly rotated up and down. Roy craned his neck to the window, and in that particular moment saw a hawk fly past it. He turned to his father to point the bird out, but when Roy motioned back to the window, the hawk had disappeared into the fog.

“Roy,” Pam finally asked, “why don’t you read Dad the poem you brought?”

His eyes met his older sister’s, and then his father’s. They were still searching the skies. Fourteen minutes had passed.

Reaching into his coat pocket, he felt around until his fingers found a familiar and wrinkled piece of paper. Fourteen lines. The title, bold and in all caps, intimidated him almost as much as his father did: HIGH FLIGHT. As an English major in college, this poem was as close as Roy would ever come to the planes Harry flew over Vietnam. This had to be perfect. He took a deep breath, looked at the paper, and then apprehensively to his father. Even though he was on his deathbed, Roy was still afraid of disappointing him again. He was afraid of letting down his father, the man he could never please; the man who, after his son’s nervous breakdown and dark descent into drug abuse, didn’t speak of his failures but instead offered him his childhood home until he got back on his feet; the man whose blood was streaming through him now.

A single, salty tear fell and hit the poem, and soon the black and ominous letters began to dissolve and bleed together. Roy closed the paper and placed it back into his pocket. He looked to his father and winced. Words on a page meant nothing now. The two older sisters grabbed their baby one, who was now crying and clutching her heart. Their mother began to stroke Harry’s silvery hair, her arthritic fingers twirling his tendrils just like they did when the two began to date over 50 years ago. Holding Patty with each hand, the sisters moved closer to their fading father, each extending a hand to touch a part of his body.

Roy cleared his throat and looked to the light. He then began to recite the poem from memory, stuttering slightly:

“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds - and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of - wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long delirious, burning blue,
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew -
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod,”
“The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God.”

It was quite a scene. Everyone stood still as silence gathered around the bed where an old man lay swaddled in sheets like a baby being put to a final sleep with a pilot’s lullaby.

Roy looked longingly to his father for approval, but Harry’s chocolate colored eyes were still so very far away and unknowable. Nothing. Roy’s hand dropped to the bed, self-conscious of the blood that flowed through his own veins. He had failed.

Upon his mother’s request, Roy placed his hand on his father’s. Pursing his lips and expecting to flinch at the slightest touch, nothing happened. Harry’s hand felt warm and calloused like an old baseball mitt. Nineteen minutes had passed.

The family stood in silence for a few more minutes, breathing at different speeds and depths. And soon enough, the quiet drone of the AC unit was muted by the sound of one collective breath.

From the window, one could see that the morning fog had completely eclipsed downtown. Roy stared intently at his father’s hands—he had never felt more present than now. Examining the way his hand fit with his father’s, he realized how similar their thumbs were to one another: they both had wide nail beds and narrow bases, resembling tablespoons. All of a sudden, Harry drew a small, shallow breath through his mouth, paused, and rotated his eyes toward his son . . .

“What, Dad?” Rachel asked.

Harry blinked, and as his eyes separated for the final time, a small, silvery tear fell from them, leaving a salty trail from his cheeks to the thin corners of his lips. Roy squeezed his dad’s hand, and when he looked down at them he saw that the only thing that distinguished his own hand from Dad’s was time.

Pam gasped. “Well look at that,” she said, “Dad’s eyes are turning blue.”

The family grew closer. The circle grew tighter.

Inez whispered faintly into her husband’s ears. “Harry,” she called, “it’s Nezzie.” She kissed his forehead. “Go on now,” she cooed, “we’ll be fine.” She stroked his hair and leaned closer, wiping his tears with her cheek. “Come on, honey. Go on and find us a nice place.”

And then his belly fell flat for the final time as a shallow breath escaped over his mouth, easing over the wires and machines until it flew out through the window, soon becoming indiscernible among the clouds.

I exhaled and let go of the wall. I didn’t want to be invisible anymore. Wondering if Bopper was right about the cardinals and blue jays, I looked at my family, who was still surrounding his body. The mercurial clouds outside had begun to dissipate, and I knew that Bopper was out there somewhere with the hawks and aftershave-scented wind. I smiled and cleared my throat. In what seemed to be slow motion, everyone in the room turned around and looked at me with swollen and glistening eyes. My mother extended her hand to me. “Oh, sweetie,” she said, “come here.”

I grabbed my mother’s hand, and then Rachel’s. I looked to Roy. Tears rested delicately on the apples of his cheeks, exposed for all to see. He too raised his hand, but not to wipe them off. Instead, he grabbed Rachel’s hand. Patty slowly lifted her head from Nezzie’s side and grasped the rough hands of her brother. They reminded her of the old softball gloves she had in high school. Inez gently raised her head from her husband’s and placed her small left hand in her youngest daughter’s, her right in her eldest’s.

Together, we surrounded Bopper’s body. And then it came to me that I hadn’t said goodbye. Panicked, I breathed in as deeply as I could, knowing that scent was the most ephemeral of all of the senses. I didn’t want to forget him; I couldn’t, at least not yet. To my dismay, I didn’t smell him at all but rather that diseased musk of a hospital. I looked around the circle for direction, but there wasn’t any to be found. Just warm bodies and faces. But maybe that was all I really needed.

I finally exhaled, and couldn’t help but wonder if my breath was dancing with the final one of my grandfather somewhere in the air, its molecules coming and going like people do on the street. I didn’t see why it couldn’t be, and furthermore, I didn’t see why it shouldn’t.

I glanced to my grandmother, who I expected to be most affected by Bopper’s death. To my surprise, she was smiling, still stroking her husband’s cloud-colored hair and looking to the sky.

A few minutes passed, and I excused myself to the bathroom. After blowing my nose, I looked into the mirror. Framed by two wing-shaped brows, I saw a pair of bright brown eyes that were the exact same shade as my grandfather’s once were. “You know, Bopper,” I said, “you’re right. The birds love you because you have wings.”