A Promise to Keep

“It’s ok for me to go now.”

I paused for a moment and realized that this was really going to be it, I thought.

“Billy, could you give me a shave?”

The nurses and other people in the nursing homes and hospitals often were rough and nicked them a lot. Whenever one of us had come in, we gave him a shave if he needed it, and sometimes even when he didn’t need it. The physical contact I know was comforting, if everything else was a death sentence.

I often wondered what it must be like, to spend the last years of your life, confined to hospital beds and nursing homes that you can’t leave. Our ability to prolong life has outpaced our ability to live it. I thought about the asbestos and the other toxic chemicals like PVC etc, and that the corporations knew for decades that these things were highly toxic, but never cleaned it up, or changed to alternative methods. The men that worked in these places got asbestos and PVC on their clothes, in their hair, and in their lungs and brought it home with them every day. When their wives washed their clothes with other laundry from the family, those fibers eventually made their way into all the clothes of the family, even the children, contaminating untold numbers of other innocent people not directly employed by the companies. What a difference it might have made, had my grandfather not needed to be on oxygen for the last ten years of his life, and hospitals for the last 4, just waiting to die.

“They always cut me Billy, they don’t give a shit about me,” grandpa states.

It was such a simple request, I thought, how could I refuse? After all, how many more days would he live? “Sure, I would be honored to,” I replied, not trying to sound solemn, but it still came out solemn as I got all choked up thinking that this could be the final preparation before his death, before the passing of his soul. This was it….

My mother said that was the last word I said to him for the next 45 minutes as I began to gently massage his face with shaving cream, taking great care not to nick his face as she sat there holding his hand. When done I just sat there looking directly into his black cataract filled eyes without blinking or flinching as my eyes filled up with tears thinking this might be the last time I see him alive and all the memories of the time I had spent with him came rushing back.

And I said aloud to myself:

“Of course I can’t remember our last words…”

“…Because We Never Stopped Talking.”