I Was There the Night He Died by Ray Robertson Page B

money he offered me to help pay Dad’s bills. I can hear him coming down the hall, so I duck back into the kitchen.
    Poor old bastard, I wouldn’t want him to know that I know, I wouldn’t want to embarrass him. Poor old bastard.
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    * * *
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    The person in charge of accounts overdue at Thames View isn’t in, but everyone in room #131 has had their supper. And had their dishes cleared away and been cleaned up for the evening and had their catheters and diapers removed, emptied, and replaced. I know it’s their job and they do it because they get paid to and not because this is how they’d choose to spend their weeknights if they won Lotto 6/49, but the caregivers at Thames View allow Dad and me both our dignity. I can’t claim to know much that goes on inside his head, but I know Dad prefers to be clean and comfortable and well fed, and he always is. As for me, even though there’s a tablespoon of guilt seasoned with a dash of shame in knowing that I couldn’t possibly do for him what the strangers who work here so capably can, that’s offset by the reassurance of knowing that, even if I’m not here— especially if I’m not here—Dad is clean and comfortable and well fed.
    Speaking of dignity:
    â€œDo you know who I am, Grandpa?”
    What sounds like a man who’s swallowed a chicken bone but who’s too feeble—or too afraid—to do more than attempt to wheeze it free of his blocked windpipe. Between Dad’s advanced Alzheimer’s and the daily cocktail of drugs he takes, his days of struggling to speak, of sputtering his way to frustration, rage, and tears, are over. Not so for the man with the bed closest to the door.
    â€œDo you know who I am, Grandpa?”
    The same man, making the same terrible sound, only slightly louder and with more urgency this time, panic taking hold now, the bone clearly impeding the oxygen intended for his rapidly emptying lungs.
    â€œHe doesn’t know, Donna.”
    â€œYes he does, don’t you, Grandpa? You know who I am. You know who I am, don’t you? I’m Lizzy’s daughter, Grandpa. I’m Donna.”
    The same man, the same sound, until, eventually, struggling free from somewhere, “Du, du, du … ”
    I can feel my own tongue and teeth involuntarily coming together to finish the man’s stutter for him.
    â€œThat’s it, that’s it—who am I?”
    â€œDu, du, du … ”
    I can feel sweat—real sweat—pushing through the pores on my forehead while I wait for the man to complete the word, embarrassed to anxiety for both of us: for him to have to try and say it; for me to have to hear him suffer.
    â€œYou’re almost there, Grandpa, you’re almost there.”
    â€œDu, du, du … ”
    I can feel a single drop of sweat slowly roll past my left eye and down my cheek. Obviously, for the remainder of eternity the man is doomed to never say what he wants to say, just as I’m condemned to everlastingly witness his two-syllable torture.
    â€œDu, du, du, duna.”
    â€œDonna!” Donna shouts, clapping her hands. “That’s right, I’m Donna!”
    I breathe, not aware I’d been holding my breath.
    â€œSee,” Donna says to her mother on the other side of her grandfather’s bed. “I told you he knew who I was.”
    His vindicated granddaughter’s identity finally established, Grandpa—actually, Mr. Goldsworthy, that’s what the white plastic nameplate affixed to the end of his bed says—can now return to the incessant lip wetting and tongue sucking he seems to enjoy best. I know I’m wrong—we’re all taught that until they reach Dad’s irreversible silent stage the Alzheimer’s patient needs to be encouraged, prodded even, back, if only temporarily, from the edge of endless night that every moment shadows his mind just a little bit more—but I