When I was 16 or so, my dad started suffering from seizures and strokes. In the middle of the night I would hear commotion outside my room and immediately know it was my brother calling the ambulance while my mom smoothed down my father’s hair as if it was expensive silk.
But this is an essay about love, you’re thinking. I know that. Bear with me.
These seizures and strokes didn’t stop. They paused for a while. He got better and continued living like everything was normal but other things started going wrong: back pain, psoriasis, weight loss, vasculitis, cardiomyopathy. And then, after his heart nearly stopped, they finally gave him a pacemaker. Sometimes I was home and other times I was away at school. Instead of sticking around, staying home, postponing my studies, I would call mom for updates.
“Hey mom, how’s daddy today?”
“Horrible,” she would respond, 800 miles away in Jersey.
And that’s kinda how all our conversations went. He will never get better. He will never run outside. He will never tell stories with that loud voice I remember from my childhood.
“Can I talk to him?”
“Not right now. He’s in bed. He’s been in bed all day.” And I imagine him crumpled up in the sheets. I imagine his thinning body resembling the wrinkles on the bedspread. I imagine his eyes closed and I want to vomit.
After being placed on permanent disability, my father no longer works. With this free time, he and my mom decide to make a trip out to Chicago to visit my brother and me, to see old friends and to squeeze their first grandchild. Driving is hell but my dad does it anyway. All 17 hours. Because of all his autoimmune diseases and because of his blood vessel problems, sometimes his arms and legs go numb. Sitting still for long periods of time kills him but he makes it.
***
We are in a crowded bar filled with drunk people clanging glasses and lifting their chins to the ceiling in laughter. I am only here because I like to pretend things are normal. Karaoke Night was the kind of thing we did when my dad was healthy and my entire family still lived together. The bar is occupied with mostly older people and they take turns singing songs I don’t know. I sip a UV blue lemonade and talk to my boyfriend while trying my hardest to not punch the woman who keeps stepping on my heel. Brick House comes on and my mom’s face lights up like a birthday cake. It’s her favorite song. I have vivid memories of her cleaning the house with this song blasting from the radio, her vacuuming seeming to purr with the beat of the song. She runs over to the only open space in the tiny bar to dance.
“Go with her,” their friends encourage my dad. They are crowding around him and elbowing him in a friendly manner. But he is hunched over on a stool. He can’t drink, he is weak, his back hurts and he’s exhausted. My mom looks over her shoulder as if to say, You don’t have to follow. Stay there and relax. I know you’re not feeling well. She grabs a friend’s hand instead and they both start dancing the way moms dance. From where I sit, I look at them and remember when that used to be mom and dad. I remember the way dad used to take mom’s soft hand and spin her and sway his shoulders and snap his fingers while her red hair spread open like a wildfire and her cheeks lifted like umbrellas in the rain. I watch my mom dancing with her girlfriend and my stomach sinks because that should be my dad with her.
I look over at him, his head leaning against the wall, arms crossed in front of his thinning chest that hides a machine keeping his heart beating. He is watching her. He blinks a few times and, suddenly, it is like he comes to life. He hops off the stool, cringing in pain because his spine and back and head hurts, but he walks toward my mom. As he passes me he says, smiling, “I can’t let this happen.” His mustache reminds me of being a kid and how it tickled when he kissed my cheek.
He approaches my mom and he reaches a hand out for her and he takes her as if he is completely healthy. Their eyes meet and they smile and I know he is in pain. I know everything is aching but he spins my mom around like they are young again, like they are the only ones in the entire bar, like maybe they are at a ball dancing to something elegant rather than at a dive bar dancing to Brick House. And in this moment, I look around at everyone else to see if they are watching, if they are seeing the same thing I am seeing. But they’re all distracted — yelling and cheering. I feel like I should take a picture so that I can frame it and tell everyone that I now literally know what love looks like. This would make me the only person in the entire world to capture such a thing on camera. But before I can do anything my dad grabs his stomach as if it might fall out and limps out the front door for fresh air. My mom goes back to her seat. I study her mouth as it curves into a quiet smile and I know that no one in this entire bar understands what just happened. And it makes me smile, too. And I decide that this moment will now be my definition of love for the rest of my life.
Liz Grear is a MFA candidate at Columbia College Chicago where she is happily studying Fiction Writing. She has been published in Word Riot, The Storyweek Reader, Black Heart Magazine and the forthcoming Hair Trigger 35. She teaches, coaches cheerleading, writes, reads and loves. And everything she knows about love she learned from her mom and dad.