A TREE BY THE SEA

It’s time. The old man takes the smooth soft fingers of the child in his own weather worn hand, rough from years of exposure to life.

“The time is now little one. Listen, do you hear it? It’s the sound of change. I am old. My hair is gray. My skin is splotched with the sun’s after thoughts. I was once tanned with thick dark wavy hair just like yours.”

He pats the boys head, “Now I am pale. The color is drawn from me except these spotted rememberences of years spent in toil.”

The child looks at his grandfather. He is right. He looks shriveled up like a raisen and spotted like an old bananna. His bones are knobby under transulucent vein mapped skin.

“Why did you change?” the child asks.

“Why did you wrinkle up and turn colors like a yucky old piece of fruit?”

The grandfather smiles. His dentures are stained brown from years of use and his eyes krinkle in watery light.

“I did not change.”

He looks at the child’s small hand resting in his. It is plump with smooth indentations where his little bones are hidden under soft layers of flesh.

“I will tell you a secret. There is a light in every man. A flickering flame that burns for eternity. Look into my eyes. Do you see it?”

The little boy looks carefully at his elder. His eyes are wrimmed with moist red membranes visible as his lower lids sag into his cheeks in thin folds. The irises are still a deep blue with wide black pupils.

“I can see your eyeballs.”

The old man laughs.

“Yes you see this human shell. This form that holds me, but look closer son.”

The little boy is peering intently up at his grandfather when his mother enters the room.

“What are you two talking about?”

She looks lovingly at them both. Her daddy spends most of his days sitting in the recliner by the window with a blanket over his lap. Her son isn’t old enough to attend school with his sisters, so he likes to visit with his grandpa while she does housework.

“The eternal flame of the human soul,” her father responds to her question.

“Oh, that sounds deep,” she is gathering dishes from the coffee table left over from her dad’s breakfast.

When she leaves the room balancing a coffee mug, a plate, and the discarded paper from yesterday the grandfather tuns to the boy.

“The young rarely think of time as eternal.”

The little boy nods. He doesn’t know what eternal means. It’s like forever but he can’t even tell time yet so… His grandfather is still talking.

“The young see time in chunks. They break it up in calendars filled with work schedules, upcoming dates, and activities, but as I’ve aged time just flows. Waking and sleeping, night and day blend into an endless rest. Shoot, I couldn’t tell you what day it is most of the time. I have to glance out the window to tell you the month.”

“It’s February!” The little boy is pleased to know something he can tell his grandpa. Valentine’s day is marked with red hearts on his mother’s calendar.

“Oh yes, February,” his grandfather chuckles at the boy’s enthusiasm.

“When I was young, I was like everyone else. Time raced around me in a delicate dance of blancing priorities.”

He sighs. His grandson is growing bored with his ramblings. His attention span is short.

“Do you want to play a game of checkers?”

The little boy perks up. He is serious as he sets up the pieces on the wooden board. A sharp pain grips the grandfather’s left shoulder and spreads into his jaw. His breath catches as a weight settles on his chest. Thes pains have been coming more frequently over the last week. He has a small bottle of white pills that he keeps in his shirt pocket. He fumbles for it and it takes a moment before one of the tiny tablets is dissolving under his tongue. He has to take the three prescribed pills before the pain subsides. He pops one more into his mouth for good measure. His daughter wouldn’t approve. She doesn’t like it when he doesn’t follow his doctor’s instructions exactly. She would be upset to know how often he has been relying on the little tablets too. His grandson has made his first move and is waiting for him to counter.

“Oh that’s a good choice,”he says as his grandson slides another piece forward.

The pain is lingering again, now just below his collar bone. He starts to feel light headed and the room is tipping at odd angles like he just jumped off of the merry go round in his childhood school yard.

“Go get mommy,” he whispers to his grandson.

Darkness is pushing in from his peripheral vision. He is working to keep his eyes open as his daughter talks to his doctor’s office on the phone. Her voice is shaky. He can hear her fear and sadness as she explains his symptoms and reveals that his bottle of nitroglycerin tablets is almost empty. He hopes she sticks to his plan. He has known for a long time that his heart is bad. He’s already had two surgeries and multiple hospital stays. He doesn’t want to go back there strapped to gurney in the back of an ambulance. He just wants to sit here in his chair. He wouldn’t mind a reprieve from this pain that is squeezing his ribs in a tight bear hug though.

“Daddy?”

His daughter is kneeling beside him. Her hand is cool on his arm. His eyes flicker open. He is trying not to show pain in his features but he can tell by the look on her face, that he isn’t fooling his daughter.

“The home health agency is sending a nurse over. Dr. Kennedy already gave them orders to make you comfortable. He thinks you are having another heart attack.”

Her eyes are filled with tears and they are spilling over onto her cheeks. He nods glad she didn’t call 911 like last time.

“Dr. Kennedy’s nurse said you should wear your oxygen. She thinks it might make you feel better.”

She flicks on the machine and puts the mask he wears at night when he sleeps over his face. It’s constrictive but he can feel a decrease in his anxiety when his daughter turns up the dials on the oxygen tank. She sits beside him until the nurse gets there. His son in law arrives home from work early about the same time.

The nurse is listening to his chest and checking his blood pressure.

“Dr. Kennedy ordered some morphine to help with the pain. Is it okay to give him some?”

She is talking to his daughter. It’s strange how medical people often leave him completely out of the discussion anymore.

His daughter looks at his pain lined face.

“Yes, of course, please make him comfortable.”

The nurse gives him a small injection and soon he can no longer force his eyes open. He is floating in soft enveloping sensations of dulled numbness. Time stops. Like the ticking of an old clock his heartbeat is slowing. Ba bump. Ba bump. He can hear it. He knows change is coming.

They’ve moved him to his bed. His son and daughter in law are there after flying in overnight. His children and his grandchildren. Faces keep appearing at his bedside.

It’s early morning maybe. The color of the light filtering through the curtains reminds him of dawn. His room is quiet except for the snoring of one of his children sleeping next to him in the chair. They have been taking shifts but someone fell asleep on the job.

He feels the soft tickle of familiar little fingers gripping his hand.

“Grandpa?” a whisper.

It takes a little effort because his mouth is dry and feels like he has a wad of cotten between his gums, but he responds, “Yeah, buddy.”

He can see the sillouette of his little grandson as he carefully climbs up onto the bed to pearch beside him.

“Open you eyes up wider.”

His grandson is leaning in, hovering over his face. He can smell his warm morning breath.

“I can see it.”

“What do you see?” his voice is raspy. His words sound foreign to him.

“I can see your fire.”

The sun is now glowing through the window and it is falling over his face. He has to squint to look up at his grandson. My fire. My flame. Under eternal vision. In an illusion of time marked in life and death. My fire burns. My flame flickers. My heart yearns.

Like the sun breaching a darkend sky. Like vision blurred in half closed eyes. Like the dance of two lovers in the silent night. Time slips quietly by.

Hidden flames. Dreams and desires. Uncovered love. Smoldering fires. Time is under, above and below. It grows in the spring and falls in the snow. Raindrops trickle and wind brings a chill. There are ripples even when the water is still.

Open your eyes. Take in all that you see. Understand that there is so much more to me. If you looked with all of your might. If you sprouted wings in flight. Even in the brightest of light, your vision would lack adaquate sight.

You see the darkened tunnel on the other side. The one you hear of when the dead close their eyes. Walk down it with me. Your hand in mine. Take a good look. Peer into endless time. Step through the portal. Unwind. Loosen the grip of life’s hold. Let go. Release what you have been told.

In a song sung over the dead. In a melody it is said. Your life lives on. It’s not just the hope of of the living. It isn’t only for giving comfort to the ones who grieve. Those who mourn on the day your soul leaves your eyes dulled in death, your lungs stilled and empty of breath.

The flame burns on hidden from natural sight. In the dark, in the blackness of night when the living lie down and close their eyes there are moments they will see your flickering light. In dreams and visions, memories of the future and the past your eternal flame will last.