Nowadays

His arms and shoulders are already stiff when we start to dress him. The hands with bluish nails lie heavy on his chest and refuse to cooperate in finding their way through the ironed cuffs. Without thinking about it, I look to see a reaction to our awkward touches in his face, but there is none. The puffy cheeks are still; just below the thin line of colorless eyelashes, nothingness swims around in milky pupils.

Few things that day played out as I had imagined them. Still, I had thought of almost every step in advance. Like scenes from a movie, I saw myself reacting with such despair that it blurred time and removed physical needs. The only thing missing would be the melancholy tones playing in the background. Nothing could penetrate my bubble of grief. I was naïve, or perhaps simply fortunately unknowing. It was the last Monday of March that year. I can't remember if Mom woke me up or if I was up already. Anyhow, she called early. After I'd hung up with her, I called my brother to tell him it was time. His response to my message was a second's hesitation: "Is she sure?" He excused his question but left it hanging. I told him there was no doubt, and he said he'd be there as soon as he could. 
                                                                         

Within ten minutes I was riding my bike through town. I had pictured that very moment many times already. I would get on my bike and ride faster than ever. I wouldn't feel the headwind. I would fly through the air with a broken heart and tears flowing down my cheeks, incapable of any other thoughts and feelings than pitch black pain. But I had been wrong. The wind was too strong even for my strenuous peddling, and I was not halfway to the house when I gave up, got off my bike, and started to walk. My mind brooded over my brother's question, wondering if he would be upset if I was wrong and with shame wishing I wasn't. My thoughts embarrassed me.

             
Once the cuff is open, the first hand and arm are easy. More difficult is the other one. In order to put the shirt on, we need to get the back of the shirt around his back and the other sleeve over to his right arm. My mom and brother roll him over on his side while my sister and I stretch the shirt over his back. When we lay him down again, the right sleeve is next to his arm.
             

In my memory, I didn't hesitate to go in. For certain, my mom met me once I did. Her eyes were shiny and empty, her face swollen. The house was quiet; I was the fist one to come.

Our cat greeted me from the black arm chair in the living room. She had quickly marked her territory there when she realized no one used it anymore. For a week, she hadn't slept anywhere else. The last time He sat there was the day my sister's boyfriend helped my brother carry down the beds from upstairs. Silently, he had watched them. Silently, they had carried down the mattresses and bed frames. No words could change the reality, or even make it easier to accept. We had tried too many times already.

The hardest part is to get the second arm in the sleeve once the first one is done. The arm is locked in a peaceful position with the hand cupped on his chest, cupped over a peaceful heart. It doesn't fall down even when we tilt him on his side. We have to force the stiff limbs to get the shirt on, and I think of mannequins whose rigid bodies always seem so unwilling to take on the human characteristics we ask of them.

To put the beds in the living room was The Best Solution. My mom had found him sitting halfway up the stairs one night. His legs would only carry him a couple of steps before he had to stop and rest. Getting up the stairs took him almost an hour. He had not told her it had gotten that bad, even though she constantly asked him how he was. But there was no way of denying it. Moving the beds down was the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end. Mom stopped working; my siblings and I were always within reach. How do you wait for something you don't want to come?

We stretch the two front parts of the shirt over his still chest and button it up. Pictures go through my head. Pictures of a short man climbing up on a steel bed in a large, bare room, too weak to be uncomfortable in his nakedness in front of either his daughter or the nurses and doctors; pictures of blue pen marks on pale skin, making even a brighter contrast in the light of the powerful lamp- the magic lamp that turned out to be powerless; pictures of needles, tubes, and compassionate faces in white coats. We button up the shirt but leave the top button open. Just as he would have done. For a brief second our faces light up. We meet in the recognition of his will. 

We spend all day in the living room with him, and with each other. The time which I earlier that morning expected to stand still doesn't. We learn that grief doesn't take away hunger, so we eat. I am surprised to find that pasta tastes the same as it does any other day. We learn that loss doesn't take away life, so we find things to smile about. While we discover ways to balance the spectrum of emotions, he rests peacefully on his bed, finally dressed and freed from tubes for the first time in weeks. It is the strangest day of my life. My father is dead.