Swirl · 29 April 2001

Last night there were complications. My father turned the wrong way in the middle of a cough and caused a rupture. This rupture involved internal sutures and a recent hernia operation and a good deal of pain and I have to admit I kind of tuned out when I heard the word bile, and he had to go to the hospital.

(He’ll be fine. It was minor, as complications go, an overnight. Thanks for asking.)

My father was admitted to the same ward of the same wing of the same hospital in which, eight years ago, I lay recovering from an appendectomy with little Demerol angels caressing my hair. This is the ward in which the word bile is used a great deal. Bile is big in this ward. In this ward, they know their bile.

I remember walking a slow hunched baby-walk to the end of the hall and back twice a day, bare-assed, pushing the rolling drip, cursing the surgeon for making me do this when all I wanted was to loll with angels caressing my hair. And this morning I was reminded of the singularly overpowering olfactory combination of cleaning solutions and shit.

I had time to remember these things this morning, while negotiating the labyrinthine halls and tunnels connecting the wings and wards of Vancouver’s largest general hospital (Vancouver General Hospital), finding out just what the hell it takes to get one’s father’s valuables and car keys out of whatever lockbox into which they went the day before, and no I don’t know who the Patient Accounts clerk signed him in, and no, I’m not all that bothered that you’ve never ever had this problem opening that particular combination lock, and no, I don’t mind waiting for your security guy to get off break, and yes, it’s reasonable that things are different on Saturdays, because it’s only that my dad is waiting in a place I equate with hell.

On the way home we ate chicken pot pie at the Bread Garden in West Van.

—It’s a magazine, a computer magazine?
—No… more like a notebook.
—But it’s promotion for your company, right? To develop new business?
—Not really, no.
—So what does it do?
—Actually, I have no idea.

My street is a riot of cherry blossoms right now; you really ought to see it. As I turned onto the sidewalk this evening the wind shook loose all the trees at once, and I was surrounded, immolated in an exaltation of pink blossoms, like that 70s game show in which people grabbed at swirling money.

*   *   *

  1. Wow. Thanks for that, Aram. It's astonishing, that inversion that happens, for some earlier than others I suppose, of the authority and immortality of a parent (you start off with it, and carry it forward because once it was all you knew). I'm lucky: it wasn't until I was 20 or so that a breast cancer scare (my mother, only a scare) shook up that definition. What I've never seen done effectively in the movies is a portrayal of what it's like to walk among people after something like losing a loved one (or, falling in love, or unlocking the code to some great dilemma). You walk along, and it seems like everyone's experience must be as intense, and the noise of it all is overwhelming.
    — Dean Allen    Apr 30, 07:00 PM    #
  2. When my father died, I found it difficult to walk among people at all. I felt like everyone who saw me knew - like I glowed pink. During the days around the funeral I took to wearing sunglasses and keeping my eyes down at my feet. I still don't know if it was a case of feeling like a victim or simple self-absorption.
    — melissa    Apr 30, 07:38 PM    #

← Sprouts (Brussels) | Home | Sleek →