Natural Course

The first words that popped into my head when I saw my father for the first time in a year and a half is,

My father looks like a baby chick.

And the words popped into my head whole, like I wrote them, like I was writing them, like I was writing about it on the spot, like I was a reporter for National Geographic. (Page 45: After a 20 year study, at this point, the MS sufferer begins to resemble a baby chick.)

My eyes skimmed over his form, skinny to the point of horrifying emaciation. He had been thin for a while already, but there was nothing to him now at all. His white skin was stretched over his bones, his fingers shaped into claws, His face was frozen into a waxy mask, his eyes half closed. The only thing that stood out in sharp relief, beak-like, was his nose.

I took a shaky intake of breath and smiled, grazed his cold cheekbone with my hot lips. I felt my blood pumping in my ears, in my chest, making me hot all over, and I felt big, too big, with my working muscles and sinews and nerves and bones covered in a layer of fat under my skin.

My mother squeezed my hand when she saw my face. "Baby," she said to my father, "D is here. From Israel."

"Tell him I'm happy to see him."

"You tell him you're happy to see him."

"I'm happy to see you." The girls clung to my skirt. I shifted Turtle on my hips, opened my mouth again, and let it hang that way for a minute. Did he see me? His eyes did not flicker, his face did not thaw. I let the babble that had been building up in the back of my throat spill out. "I miss you. We miss you. We think about you all the time. This is Turtle. He's really big, right? Like for his age? Everyone say he is. Turtle! Say hello! See, he's smiling, he's happy to see you."

My father makes an effort; his teeth are clasped together and I realize he's trying to make me feel better. He's trying to smile back.

I smile too, and suddenly, tears are spilling down my cheeks.

Abba!

The National Geographic reporter inside of me paused. Like a baby chick,she whispered. Because of the nose like a beak and his skinny cold body and his open mouth. Like he's waiting for feathers to grow.

Abba!

"I know," my mother said.

Abba!

"I know."

Happy Father's Day

My father came home from the hospital last night. Or yesterday? Um. Time difference. Makes me feel all sci-fi-like, and as if I did that whole going back in time thing and accidentally killed someone's great-great-grandpa and now the whole planet is under the dark dictatorship of the giant cheeesy mushroom people.

Mmmm, cheesy mushrooms.

Anyway. He's home, at least for now, and his infection is cleared up, and he's back to himself, which means basically that he can smile if he tries, but that's about it. Multiple Sclerosis makes the giant cheesy mushroom people look like kindly old blue-haired cashiers.

The cause of death for many M.S. sufferers, statisticially, is euthanasia. The physical agony, the slow degeneration of a once vibrant person, the pride-robbing dependance-- And someone in my family said recently, when this newest wrinkle developed, "maybe he should just stay home, and let the infection take its course." My mother repeated the comment to me without rancor and added dryly, "pretty cold-blooded, huh?"

Um, yeah.

I know that there is a huge world-wide debate about euthanasia, the side for citing dignity for the ill person.

I don't think that that is what it is at all. It's about productivity. We don't consider people useful, viable, contributing members of society if they are not, well, contributing and viable. And useful. My father does not seem to be any of those things anymore.

I heard a wonderful tape by a wonderful Rabbi (Rabbi Frand, maybe? I don't remember the names of my best friends--really embarrassing story just happened with that, I'll post about it when the blush fades--so the names of the Rabbis are definitely pick-a-rabbi style) who said that it is not "quality of life" that makes someone alive. Rather it is "sanctity of life."

Life is sacred and precious in and of itself. That is why we have children, even in a world that knows darkness and pain and will one day be ruled by the cheesy mushroom people as soon as I figure out what to fuel my time machine with. My father's life is sacred and unique and has worth simply because he is alive.

That is how my mother has the strength to do what she does. That is why my father is still alive so many years after the doctors gave him 6 months. I remember when Christopher Reeves (with whom my father bears a striking resemblance to) died of complications of a bedsore. Those kind of things are taken care of right away on my mother's watch. Because she cares and loves him. Because she has the sacred mission not only of having brought brought 10 souls into this world, but of preserving this one, this one whose body may seem to be growing sicker and sicker but whose essence shines with a light from the eternal.