In His Final Hours

by Matthew Landers

Joanna didn’t think it would be possible but she slept for the entire night, a little uncomfortably, in the only chair in the hospice room. She had draped a blanket over herself for warmth and fallen asleep a few hours after sunset. If she had given it serious thought, she would have brought a jacket or worn a sweater but it didn’t matter now, especially not with the midmorning sunlight coming through the window.

She eased herself up in the chair, listening for any sound, any movement, as she dropped her feet into black flats on the floor.

Joanna watched the room and the bed. Very little had changed since she had arrived last night. She remembered to bring her schoolwork with her; though, whenever she opened her copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy, she never managed to read the pages she looked at. She closed the book often, trying and failing to follow St. Bernard in Paradiso, and eventually relinquishing any possibility of completing the assigned work.

Joanna reached for the book on the floor and put it on the chair as she stood up and stepped toward the bed with its railings. 

She thought she heard her name dry and weak from her grandfather. What had once been a tall, sturdy man, a truck driver after the war, who moved slowly but with purpose, now lay confined to a bed not his own and a body once his, unable to get up. His swagger, or limp, she didn’t know which, was gone.  The CCC hardened body reduced from its lanky yet toned frame to a thin and withered shell. Only months before, he was still eating eggs and bacon and drinking hot coffee for breakfast, as he had done for as many years as Joanna knew, with a pill box labeled for everyday of the week right there on the kitchen table.

“Grandpa?” she asked.

His cracked lips moved slowly and almost helplessly.

The kitchen table, and the smaller card table next to it, loomed before her as Joanna brought a cup up to his mouth. Her grandfather struggled to swallow the water as he sipped, his throat bobbing up and down, as some of the water dribbled from his bottom lip down across his chin. During family visits as everyone sat down for lunch or dinner, she and her sisters had to sit at the card table, the “kiddie table” or the “kids table” as it was, when they were growing up. Since then, her sisters had moved further away, the card table was gone, and here she was, taller and older, tending to her grandfather just as he and her grandmother had tended to them.

Joanna put the cup back on the tray.

“Father John?” her grandfather asked.

“He came last night, remember? He was here for nearly an hour.” In the coming years, Joanna would learn her grandfather had never been Catholic, unlike her grandmother, but the priest had visited and prayed with her grandfather regardless. She had welcomed such a visit, having become familiar with prayer through the campus ministry programs at the university and, for a moment, she had believed his condition could change. Now, she began to ask herself what good came of those prayers?

“Should…Father Henry…”

“No, he’s long gone.”  Though, Joanna wasn’t exactly sure if he was dead or not and she only had a vague sense of who he was and what he meant to her grandfather.

“Where?” Her grandfather wheezed. 

Joanna pulled back. Her grandfather followed her with his eyes as she leaned in again slowly.

“Margaret,” his voice cracked, his dry throat choking the words.

Joanna picked up her grandfather’s hand with its deep wrinkles and prominent veins like purple spider webs. “Do you want me to call the nurse?”

He raised his other hand up and tried to turn his head but he didn’t say anything. Joanna drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Do you remember?” Joanna paused, “when you used to take us to the toy store? Do you want to hear about that?”

Her grandfather didn’t answer. His mouth opened like a fish breaching a pond’s surface and the chaotic ocean of his eyes rolled around his pupils under the ceiling light.

Joanna continued, “and we could pick out one toy? Or when you used to take us to the movies? Like that time we went to see Indiana Jone and the Last Crusade?” She smiled slightly as she worked her jaw against tears. “I started to cover my eyes at the end.” She wanted to laugh about the incident now, after all these years, at how young and scared she had been in the darkened theater but tears started to get in the way.

“What about when the Cardinals won the World Series? Do you remember that? Do you remember any of it?”

It may have only been a matter of reminding him of the most recognizable parts of his life through a word, a phrase, or even an image. Yet she never carried any pictures of her grandfather or any of her grandparents with her; any pictures she did have stayed in dusted over photo albums in a closet back home.  His faint recollections, the answers to the questions she asked, and many others, of family and friends, work and the war, and distant places, existed deep in his memory somehow and perhaps he did understand but just couldn’t express his familiarity. 

Joanna reached for the chair and brought it to the side of the bed and sat down. She leaned on the bed and held his hand again and started to cry.

As she held onto his hand, she understood this gesture to be futile at best. There was nothing she could do except hope her grandfather would rise up from the hospice bed, shed his ailment and return to his recliner in the main room of the house. One of the few memories that stayed with her never to be forgotten - her grandfather asleep and snoring in the recliner only to awaken with “huh?” before he turned on his hearing aid.

Joanna placed her other hand on his forehead and then the top of his swept, gray hair.

Her grandfather, very slowly, tilted his head to the side, until they could see each other directly. Joanna noticed his eyes had not lost their sense of direction but she could see that it wasn’t her eyes or any part of her face he was looking at; his maelstrom eyes seemed to focus on her red hair. Joanna reached up to the back of her head and found the ponytail not quite as intact as before last night. She pulled on the small, elastic ring holding the ponytail in place until the curly red strands loosened and fell to her shoulders.

Her grandfather’s eyes widened and appeared to be brighter. Were they brighter? Or a trick of the light and shadows? Or her own desperate attempt to see him well again? As he reached toward her face, she caught his hand between her own hands, holding it firmly without hurting, and the quivering lips of his mouth appeared to stretch into the beginning of a smile.

She didn’t know precisely whether the curls or the color caused the expression on his face to change so easily but she willingly believed her hair might be the difference between being complete strangers and having any sense of acquaintance. She liked her hair and she liked how her hair was a defining feature of the women in her family. Her grandmother’s hair had slight waves to it, her mother had curls, too, and her sisters as well. She was proud of its unique red color, too. She smiled, straightening up in the chair, and didn’t say anything. She let go of his hand and pushed upon her curls to give the hair more life and body. He continued to gaze at her curly, red hair. 

They stayed that way looking at each other for a few moments.

Her phone rang and she began to move away.

“Don’t…Margaret…” her grandfather reached out with trembling arms. He seized Joanna’s arm just above the wrist loosely but made no attempt to pull or push her away. Joanna looked back at him briefly and placed a hand on his momentarily. As she moved to answer the phone, still ringing in her hand, he let go of her arm and released her to the room.

She pressed the phone to her ear.

“He’s been mentioning Gram,” Joanna looked at the wall and the television in the corner then looked over at her grandfather. “He goes back and forth.” She listened, turned away from her grandfather and then said softly, “the nurse said there’s nothing they can do. He’s clearly gotten worse. I’ve been making him as comfortable as I can.”

Joanna knew those words didn’t mean much; they were almost as useless as the hope she clung to that somehow her grandfather’s condition would change. She wondered if he felt any comfort laying in the bed with such a failing body and an even more dwindling, waning mind. Joanna had been told he might not recognize familiar faces – that he would have what were considered “good days” and “bad days.” Though, Joanna did not think any day would be good for him.

Joanna returned to the side of the bed. She saw the tear at the corner of his eye.

“Please…” her grandfather said, “when can we…”

Unsure of what he wanted, Joanna told him, “we have to wait. Edward and Bridget will be here soon.”

“Edward…Bridget…” her grandfather said the names of grandchildren and in-laws as if he were saying them for the first time.

“I’ll stay right here until they come, okay?” 

It still wasn’t enough. 

“Where would you…” her grandfather continued, “did you get…you look…”

Joanna placed a hand over her grandfather’s hand on the bed and squeezed very gently. “Just relax.” She turned in the chair, “do you want me to put on the tv? I think the Cardinals might be playing. Or do you want some jazz music?”

She felt his fingers start to curl around her hand despite their slight trembling. “I know you’re scared but it’ll be all right.”

“Scared…”

Joanna took a deep breath and wiped away some tears, the words almost catching, “I know.”

“Please…don’t leave…” her grandfather gasped, “don’t want to be alone…Margaret…”  

Joanna lowered her head then turned away with tears covering her eyes. No matter what she said or what she did, none of it seemed to make a difference for her grandfather. Nothing had seemed to work. What could she do anyway? His failing heart had led him to this bed, his mind suffering as well, and the doctors had done everything they could. And the pills from the kitchen? What good did they provide? She didn’t know how long he had been taking them but they did little to prevent him from being hospice bound and connected to machines, where the pulse of each one beeped and ticked like a clock. Her grandfather’s death was only a matter of time as a slow, painful progression to the inevitable end, no longer expected to be a quiet exit from life, a slip out through the doorway, receiving deserved praise for a life well lived and no lingering questions.

She had seen death, been in its presence, as close as possible without an immediate family member or herself succumbing to it. While she was familiar with its finality and she had listened to all the words about death when attending church, she resisted accepting it now as it loomed heavily over her grandfather. She shook her head, it should never have been this way. His tortuous decline and the eventuality of his death. Her body tensed then trembled within at her helplessness.

She sighed heavily.

She had tried to reach him in the only way she knew - to be there for him as he had been there for her. When she had car trouble, he was ready with jumper cables, when she needed help perfecting gumbo, he was happy to oblige, and when they wanted to talk baseball, he knew the best places to go for lunch downtown like Schmidt’s Deli. Her efforts to reach him were still not enough. Now, she didn’t know what he wanted and it almost seemed like he didn’t recognize her.

He lay there with barely moving eyes and a mouth struggling to form words.

Then, she heard her grandmother’s name again, “Margaret…” just barely for a second time.

Joanna had started to think about her grandmother, who she remembered and when she did remember her, as she did now, the grandmother appeared briefly, short and welcoming, with mostly white hair, without a harsh word for anyone. She thought about how they appeared in photographs – standing in front of their home that Joanna had visited, in the backyard of another home, and on the driveway in front of an automobile. Some photographs showed them standing in snow, and another picture of her grandfather in trousers and a button up shirt next to the much shorter Margaret wearing a loose-fitting dress. Joanna remembered how happy her grandparents looked in each one. 

Joanna turned to her grandfather.

Now, he was searching for that happiness – the same happiness when he and Margaret were together, inseparable, and taking care of each other like always. He had been searching for it this whole time, with each fractured word and shard of thought, not really begging or demanding; her grandfather was not the insistent type. How, then, would her grandfather know if he found the happiness eluding him in his final hours? Would he even know if it was happiness or something else masquerading as happiness?

Joanna considered his quiet face again.

Margaret.

He thought Joanna looked like Margaret.

Joanna never knew her grandmother had red hair. Maybe she liked to wear it long, too. She might have resembled her grandmother with her hair, but she had very little resemblance in her face and the fitted shirt and blue jeans she had been wearing since yesterday. Identifying Margaret through herself might create a new connection for her and her grandfather, albeit fleeting and cursory, based entirely on a false sense of reality. And it might not.           

Joanna rose up from the chair and walked around the room from one side to the other, her arms folded tightly around herself. She turned back around to view the bed and her grandfather.

His passing needed to be peaceful and now she hoped her visit would include that measure of peace. The cost was the only question. The peace brought by Margaret, the love of his life but stranger to herself – without anything she had every accomplished, knew, built upon, and created for herself? Or the peace that comes from her – Joanna tried and true – the granddaughter since she had walked through the doorway and into the room, and long before that, so he would not be alone should his life end here and now?

Joanna clenched her jaw and gnawed on her lower lip.

She watched her grandfather from across the room. A moment passed. She took a few steps in his direction and stopped halfway. 

There was no indication he knew her. He knew where she was in the room but that was it. He gave her the same look he had given her from the time she arrived last night to the moment he looked at her now.             

Joanna thought about him and she thought about her grandmother.

Her grandfather looked to be asking for something or someone.

She hurried to the side of the bed.

“I’m here,” she surprised herself at how quickly the words came out of her mouth. “I’m here.” 

Joanna wiped the tears from her cheeks and took a deep breath, “It’s me.”         

*Previously published in Assignment Literary Magazine

BIO: Matthew Landers is a writer from San Antonio, Texas and he has lived in Texas for most of his life. His fiction and poetry has appeared in the Pecan Grove Review and The Trinity Review. When he is not writing, he enjoys reading, classic television shows, playing with his cat, baseball games, and eating out.