I don't know what to do

I don’t know what to do.

The line rings in my ears—sometimes it’s louder in my own voice, sometimes in my dad’s. The confusion in his searching gaze haunts me, jabs and tears at the flesh of my heart and the sting sears through my veins and aches in my throat.

I don’t know what to do.

How many times did he ask me what was wrong?  Why was he here?  And I would tell him a variation of how the doctors found cancer in his stomach and in his liver and filling his veins soon to take over his heart.  I told him how it was all preventing him from being able to sleep, from being able to get to the bathroom by himself and how Mama could no longer safely help him. So he was here where he could get help.

He would then say, “I don’t know what to do.”  Those sad, hazel colored eyes have haunted me for years, though.  I would hold his hand, palm-thumb curled—his right hand to my right hand, like arm wrestling with inevitable truth—and I would say, “Me neither.  I don’t know what to do either, Dad. I wish I did.”  Then we would sit together like that for eternity.

Later we were told that we (the so-called living) think in bigger pictures, more extended meaning, larger contexts.  One who is as ill as Dad, one who is dying, has a very simple and immediate world.  Answers should be simple and immediate.  (Like he would ask if everyone was out of the house—we were in the hospice wing of the hospital—is everyone out of the house? Are we alone now? ...  Yes! We’re alone...what word do you have for us, what insight, what treasure, what wisdom? ... No, he only wanted the opportunity to launch from the bed and outrun the orderlies to the bathroom for a little privacy to do his business.)

So how much worse did I make his confusion?  How much harder did I make his transition?  I apparently was as confused by his question as he must have been by my answer.  He would look at me with such concentration and determination to understand.  I languished in my determination to be honest and truthful.  Then he would nod and put his head back upon the pillow.

Sometimes I think no matter how much time passes, I will weep tears of grief.  Sometimes I think no matter how much time passes, I will feel pain in the memory of those last hours, days, weeks, months, years... a mere instant.  Sometimes I think no matter how much time passes, I will long with every fiber of my essence to have him back, everyone back, everyone right, everyone here, everyone whole, everyone now.

What is it about that statement that twists the knife in my soul?  I don’t know what to do.

This primordial drive to do something.  Even so long since the dying.  Even now.  It is all one moment.  I don’t know what to do.  We long to act.  Long to fix it.  Make it right.  Do something.  Engage.

The only thing I know to do is write.  Tell the story.  Express.  This helps me regain my sense of balance and being after the hopelessness of unknowing.

Is it really part of our nature, part of our original created essence, to need to do something?  Or is it indicative of how far we have strayed from our true nature?  Be still.  Know I am God.  These are two things we are told to do.  Be still.  Know I am God.  Psalm 46.  The whole psalm is about radical and violent change, and about a new heaven and new earth.  End to war.  God’s presence until then, God’s help in time of trouble.  Be still.  Know I am God.

It is only comforting, hopeful, when by some miracle you...I...do it.