by Carol Smock

Created on: March 17, 2010

Watching the Sun Go Down 

“Where’s your oxygen?” I ask Leonard. He shrugs, looking around as if the cannula tube had detached itself from his face to play hide and seek. 

“Oh, there it is,” I say. “You hung it on the door handle. I’ll get it.” This routine is repeated several times a day. Leonard doesn’t like to wear the tubing when he goes to the bathroom, so he leaves it outside and forgets to put it back on. I hand it to him. He fiddles with it for several minutes, checking to see if the machine is working. 

 We'’re sitting at the dining table, ready to play Skip-Bo, a game he loves and I tolerate with varying degrees of grace. The cards shush together in my hands.

“I just can’t do that,” Leonard tells me, his worn wrinkled hands lying on the table before him. “They always make big lumps. How do you do that?” 

I smile and shrug. Leonard is my father-in-law, who has come to live with us due to his failing health. He wouldn’t be able to hear me  anyway. At breakfast this morning, I asked if he wanted berries on his cereal. 

“Gravy?” he asked, baffled. 

“No, berries.” 

“Very what?” 

I found a Sharpie and a blank sheet of paper and wrote, DO YOU WANT BERRIES ON YOUR CEREAL? 

“Do...you...want...badly...no...berries...Oh, yes,” he said, and grinned impishly. “Them are the berries.” 

It has been a long day. Long for him, hauling his ninety-six year old body around the house, poking at objects he can’t see. Long for me watching his unsteady progress, washing brown splotches off the toilet and the bathroom floor, making sure he wears his oxygen cannula, pleading with him to stay seated on the couch while the floor dries because the wet tile is slick as oiled glass.

Leonard picks up one of the napkins he hauled home from Red Lobster. “These are big enough for table cloths,” he remarks, holding up the white square of paper and peeking under it. “If I had them sharp scissors of yours I could cut it in two. Last longer that way.” 

Those are my beading scissors. I hid them a few days ago so he wouldn’t use them to trim his fingernails. I make a mental note to buy him a pair of scissors. Then, glancing out the window, I notice what we’re missing. 

“Look, Dad. That’s a wonderful sunset. Want to

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