by Dad’s bed, dripping teaspoons of water into his mouth with a
medical dropper and feeding him pureed vegetables as if he were a
toddler. He rarely spoke. The pain made it difficult for him to focus; he
could hardly get through a sentence before his mind surrendered to it.
Mother offered to buy him pharmaceuticals, the strongest analgesics
she could get her hands on, but he declined them. This was the Lord’s
pain, he said, and he would feel every part of it.
While I was away, I had scoured every video store within a hundred
miles until I’d found the complete box set of The Honeymooners. I
held it up for Dad. He blinked to show me he’d seen it. I asked if he
wanted to watch an episode. He blinked again. I pushed the first tape
into the VCR and sat beside him, searching his warped face, listening
to his soft whimpers, while on the screen Alice Kramden outfoxed her
husband again and again.
- It is possible that my timeline is off here by one or two days. According to some who were
there, although my father was horribly burned, he did not seem in any real danger until the
third day, when the scabbing began, making it difficult to breathe. Dehydration compounded
the situation. In this account, it was then that they feared for his life, and that is when my
sister called me, only I misunderstood and assumed that the explosion had happened the day
before.