One thing that really happened

After Dad died I called the hospital and asked if they knew what had happened.

I had been there the day before and seen him

And he was bad but he had been bad for such a long time.

So I just called and asked.

The nurse on the phone told me to wait while they got his nurse

And this is what his nurse said:

            Apparently he was alone in the house

            And he was pretty upset

            And he had a gun

            He shot himself in the head

            But he’s still alive

Now Dad had not been home in weeks,

He had not been off the ventilator,

He was fed through a tube

And he never had a gun

And he wouldn’t fire it

And he couldn’t have lifted it

And he was dead.

But you don’t argue with nurses,

Especially the ones that confide in you when you call long-distance,

And I had been snuffling and crying on the phone,

And those nurses had no doubt forgotten about Dad who was in the ICU for so long,

Lingering and dwindling,

And moved on to the newest tragedy

And I stopped crying upon hearing this new tale of someone else’s father

Which I certainly should not have been told

And I said a quick Thank you to the nurse on the phone

And I hung up

And I laughed and laughed

Before Dad got really sick he would have loved this story

But once he got really sick he got scared and he lost his sense of humor

Which was really how we knew he was going to die.

13 March 2002