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The Loneliness of Loss

The Loneliness of Loss

– Nonfiction by Karen Moore –

Featured in issue 17 of Dreamers Magazine.

Homemade Insanity

The telephone shrills, unmuffled by the shadows in my curtained bedroom. Jangles again. Insistent. The alarm clock on my nightstand judges me with icy LCD eyes—9:30 a.m. and still in bed—reminding me I have no right to be affronted by this intrusion. I close heavy-lidded eyes in response, ignoring the accusation.

Vriiiiing. Answer me.

I snake a single arm from beneath body-warmed blankets. Muscle memory takes over as blind fingers grope to obey my brain’s fuzzy command to still the shrieking. Phone located, I roll on my back, cradling it between shoulder and cheek.

“Hello” I mumble, the last syllable cut off as, arms pointing and toes curling, I stretch sleep from my body.

“Mom.”

That one word. Instantly my body freezes mid-stretch. My heartbeat trips. It’s Adam; and at the sound of my name, the hairs on my arms stand, ready to defend. But against what?

“Mom, it’s Papa.”

Adam’s voice sounds collected, but there’s a shiver that I hear in the infinitesimal spaces—where the heartbeats life before and life after wait—between words.

I remember they are supposed to be at dad’s medical appointment.

“I’ve called an ambulance for him Mom. They should be here any minute.”

My heartbeat rattles my ribs at the word ambulance. My sluggish brain lags.

Ambulance?

“….and when he went to get up, he couldn’t”, Adam’s voice breaks into my thoughts. “He said he wasn’t feeling right. They told him to lay back down, but something’s wrong Mom. He told me to get him an ambulance.”

I hear these last words and my thoughts careen. If it was my father who told Adam to call an ambulance and not the medical personnel already in the office, then something is definitely wrong. My father is no fan of hospitals. I’ve heard his credo—“you go in, you don’t come out”—more than once. He wouldn’t call an ambulance unless he was….

I hear the sudden hum of background voices. Indistinguishable chatter that grows in volume, like a hive under threat.

“Adam. Adam”, I command down the phone line, hoping the sound of my voice will bring him back. Tell me what I can’t see.

The one voice I don’t hear is my father’s.

“Mom, I’m here”, but he breaks off to answer someone’s questions. I can hear nothing distinct. Just the muffled fuzz of male voices.

“I’m back”, Adam’s voice suddenly pops down the phone line. “They’re taking him now. I told them about his heart history, so they’re taking him to St. Mary’s.”

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding.

It catches again when Adam adds “Mom, get Grandma, and get there now. They won’t let me go in the ambulance. I’m following in my car. I’ll meet you there. It’s not good.”

***

“Mom, we need to go. It’s Dad.”

Sitting in the family room sipping coffee, she’s on her feet before the final word leaves my lips.

I wonder at the speed of her response.

How many years has she spent imagining, preparing for this call?

“I don’t know what’s wrong but he’s on his way to hospital. That was Adam”, I add as I sprint upstairs.

I tumble sleepy kids from bed; the niece and nephew who arrived only last night.

“Guys, we need to get up and get dressed right away. Papa needs us at the hospital and we’re leaving right now.”

The urgency in my voice has them instantly obeying.

“Downstairs in three minutes. We’ll have breakfast in the car.”

I streak down the stairs, through the now-empty family room. Through my bedroom. Into my bathroom. Slash toothpaste across my teeth. Swipe foundation across my face. Grab handfuls of curls and emerge in a choke of hairspray fumes. I drag jeans on, hopping toward the dresser as I tug the tight material up over my hips. Yank open a drawer. Uncooperative t-shirts, clinging together, sensing fear, refuse to separate from one another. I shake the stack, keeping the top one in my fist. The others tumble to the floor. The last scratching rip of a zipper. The snick of my watch clasp. I’m ready. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, wide-eyed with worry. The girl in the mirror stares back, unblinking.

Ready for what? she asks.

I don’t have an answer. I close the door on her. On the tousled sheets of my unmade bed. On the dresser and its gaping mouth spewing cotton and carelessness. On the bathroom littered with tubes and trembling. On the shadows that lie in wait for my return.

It will be late tonight before I re-enter this darkened bedroom. I’ll pause in the doorway. Survey the forgotten chaos I’d left behind. My eye will follow the frantic trail of clothes. I’ll smell the fear that still perfumes the jumbled disorder, and it will hit me like a gut punch. I will look around, expecting to see the girl I left behind. She won’t be here.

But that will be later. In the meantime, precious seconds tick by.

Shoes. Purse. Grab. Car keys. A package of muffins off the countertop for the kids’ breakfast. Go.

We’re in the car six minutes after Adam’s phone call.

***

“Yes, he’s here. We’ll call you to come back soon”, the gargoyle
guarding the swinging doors that lead to the ambulance bay,
to my father, informs us in a curt, condescending tone.

I very much doubt that, I think, as we take our seats in the waiting room.

My mother sits with heavy stillness, in stark contrast to the grandchildren that fidget and fool around her. Her hands lay in her lap, one clasped atop the other.

Unconsciously holding my father’s hand?

Her gaze stays fixed on the door beyond, over the gatekeeper’s head, as if the barring of her entry is immaterial. As if there are some things that transcend doors and directives.

Adam enters in a breathless rush. I meet his questioning look with a silent headshake. No news yet. The stirring air of his arrival rouses my mother. And her ire.

“This is ridiculous”, she snaps. “It’s been almost half an hour. Tell her I’m going in”, she nods her head in the direction of the gargoyle.

I immediately hop to my feet to obey. I agree, it is ridiculous. I also know that tone. My mother’s spent years as an emergency room nurse herself and will have no qualms telling the gargoyle what she thinks of her manner or her protocol if I don’t intervene.

“I’m sorry, I know you’re busy, but I really would just like any information at all on my father” I ask as I approach the desk.

“Name?” she snaps out.

My name? His name? I look around pointedly. There’s only three other people in this waiting room.

“Donald Moore” I say, eyebrows raised.

“Oh, sorry, yes”, she replies offhandedly. “You can go through now.”

I bet I could have gone through ten minutes ago, I think.

My mother immediately sails past the gargoyle, her reproving look echoing the thought.

***

It’s a portal to another world. Concerned faces, soothing voices, antiseptic smells. There’s a thrum of busyness, of urgency, but of calmness for all that. A nurse approaches, lays a hand on my mom’s shoulder.

“You’re Donald’s wife?” she confirms, looking kindly into my mother’s eyes, and then back at the straggle of us milling behind her.

“We’re just getting him hooked up right now”, she continues at my mother’s nod. “The doctor is on his way. You can see your husband in just a few minutes.”

Her manner is calm. Her voice reassuring.

“I’m just going to take you and your family to a private room down the hallway instead of the main waiting room. You’ll have more privacy there.”

My mother and I instantly recoil.

No! I balk silently.

I turn an alarmed face to my mom. I know what the private room means. Whether airport, jail, or hospital, it’s never good. She knows even better. Her expression turns granite. Stoic. A mask to hide the fear. From us? From herself? I don’t see how. It has our scent now. It trails us to the private room.

Fuck. No wonder my dad has always hated this place.

***

“Mrs. Moore?”

A new nurse peeks her head into the room. Her eyes zero in on my mother, the obvious choice.

“Mrs. Moore, why don’t you follow me”, she says. “You can see your husband now.”

My mother’s hand grips mine.

Eyes, then voice, insist: “You’re coming with me.”

I want to shrink back. Torn. I want more than anything to see my father. But.

It’s not my place, I think. She should have him to herself in these first crucial minutes.

I don’t even realize it’s the first step back, if only mentally. The first step away.

I get up and follow my mother down the hall. I know very well that it’s not good news if they are letting more than one of us in here at a time, but the nurse doesn’t comment further. Just twitches aside the curtain at the entryway to my father’s cubicle. My mother is at his side in three swift steps. I take up position on the opposite side of him, leaning over the stretcher to take his hand amidst the web of leads and lines.

He’s barely conscious but his head turns at her voice and his arms flail in her direction. He’s agitated and insistent, and becomes more so as she tries to soothe. She leans in close to him. Her touch. Her tone. Comforts? Cajoles? I can’t translate the language they’re communicating in. It’s been fifty years in the making. I don’t belong here.

I step back—step out—of the triangle in this triage. Become an observer. I watch as my father garbles some instruction. Watch his body strain with the effort to make himself understood. Watch as she grabs for his false teeth seconds before he leans and vomits all over the floor. The bile has the dark muddiness of a river bottom. She doesn’t flinch at the vomit, she’s seen much worse, but she does at its colour and shouts for a nurse.

A different nurse bustles past me, pushing me back through the open doorway. Looks at the floor in distaste as she minces around the mess. My mother doesn’t see this, and I realize that her memory of this day, whatever the outcome, will not include the stinging indifference of this cavalier nurse, and I’m grateful.

Mine however, will.

***

The doctor says they are going to admit my father.

“Likely the bowel. Let’s get some scans done. Wait a few hours and see how things progress before deciding anything.”

Back in the private room I organize. Send Adam home with the kids. I have calls to make. Details they don’t need to hear. My husband first. My brother, before he heads up north for work; it’s clear I won’t be babysitting his kids after all. It’s also clear none of us should leave town. My sister. Repeat it all again. My other children. My dad’s brother.

It doesn’t register that my solitary voice is the lone sound in the now empty room. I don’t hear my words bounce off stark steel and concrete; see the illusion of community their echoes have fabricated.

I don’t understand the threshold I’m on. Don’t yet understand that grief isolates. Separates. Or that when I bury my father, he will take with him that part of my self.

There’s no respite over the next hours. The frantic pulse of family members arriving at hospital. The constant updating; an IV line keeping me hooked to my cellphone as others check in for the latest news. The busywork of emergencies. The illusion of control.

Gathered together as we are, I don’t register our separateness. I haven’t yet learned the loneliness of loss.

About the Author – Karen Moore

Karen Moore is a writer, pianist, and composer based in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. Pivoting after a thirty-year teaching career, her studio-turned-writing-sanctuary continues to be a creative space for her art and her voice; she’s still weaving melodies, just with a different medium. Her work has appeared in Fahmidan, Beyond Words, Slippery Elm, Red Noise Collective, So To Speak, 50-Word Stories, and has been longlisted for multiple international awards and contests.

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