Late afternoon of April 25. The window slats... | Still Not Going To Do This Every Day

Saturday, February 4 2012

“Late afternoon of April 25. The window slats casting bars of shadow all over his room in the ICU. I had asked my mom and dad if they’d mind giving me a moment alone with him, since I still wasn’t sure he knew quite who I was. I did know he wasn’t aware of being inside a hospital; his most recent idea was that we were all back at my grandparents’ house having a party, and at one point he slipped loose and went to the nurses’ station to find out whether his tux was ready. Now we were sitting there in his room. Neither of us was speaking. Worth was jabbing a fork into his Jell-O, and I was just watching, waiting to see what would come out. Earlier that morning, he’d been scared by the presence of so many “strangers,” and I didn’t want to upset him any more. Things went on in silence like this for maybe five minutes. Very quietly, he began to weep, his shoulders heaving with the force of emotion. I didn’t touch him; I just let him cry. A minute went by. I asked him, “Worth, why are you crying?” “I was thinking of the vision I had when I knew I was dead.” Certain that I’d heard him right, I asked him again anyway. He repeated it in the same flat tone: “I was thinking of the vision I had when I knew I was dead.” How could he know he’d been dead, when he didn’t even know we were in a hospital, or that anything unusual had happened to him? Had a sudden clarity overtaken him? “What was it? What was your vision?” He looked up. The tears were gone. He seemed calm and serious. “I was on the banks of the River Styx,” he said. “The boat came to row me across, but .. instead of Charon, it was Huck and Jim. Only, when Huck pulled back his hood, he was an old man … like, ninety years old or something.” My brother put his face in his hands and cried a little more. Then he seemed to forget all about it. According to my notes, the next words out of his mouth were, “Check this out—I’ve got the Andrews Sisters in my milkshake.”