Waiting Room.

(*I wrote this piece while holding vigil by my Dad’s bedside shortly before he died.)

Morning light creeps in on my sleeping father in a blank Delaware hospital room.

His skin is paper.

His breathing labored.

Mouth open to get In all the air he can.

His poor, fragile chest rising and falling with every anguished blink I give as he dreams sweet morphine dreams.

Calm & peaceful.

Looks that belie his frame; that of a broken baby bird,

curled up in a nest made of plastic & wires.

A lonely trio of cups with straws

sit by him at the ready; should he wake again (he will not), and thirsty, feebly reach without recalling where he is.

His agitated brow and tufts of Irish grey still hold in his

Jersey thoughts, Mt. Holly memories, & Bradley Beach revisits.

I am sure I am scurrying around in there somewhere.

A two-year-old baby harpy playing in the shore sands & Haunted Mansion waters I was conceived and born near.

Flashes of gulls cackling above my Grandmother and my Dad’s laughter lull me into a stupor.

A tired 40 year-old-daughter raises her zombie eyes, which have cried for untold hours, and fixes them on this fading fellow crumpled in his sheets.

As dawn breaks,

and tears give way to songs,

give way to conversations

(both deeply urgent and Python-level silly);

sleep threatens to attack from every kitty corner

of this plain little brown room.

Death is humming.

She’s biding Her time, allowing me to have my time

with this beloved broken bird.

And so we both wait,

sitting sentinel as my phone plays The Beatles (and that bloody James Taylor)

until the moment his wings will eventually expand.

Soon, She will fly with his tired lungs through the glass that contains us both,

and out into a cold blue twilight sky, untethered in sweet release.

I am no longer worried.

There are still many good conversations to be had with my sleeping Father,

for love does not die with the body.

— -Shannon O’Neill ©(2020)