Deathbed Argument
After my father died, my family fell apart. We didn’t fight about money — dad didn’t have any — or about how to dispose of the body. We fought about Dad’s last words. We all knew he’d lifted his head, clutched my mother’s hand, and said something to the four of us. That’s where the agreement ended.
My mother thought he’d said, “We are all God’s children,” and that we would have to start going to church again. But my brother was sure he told us, “I was right all along,” meaning we could relax about religion because there’d been no white-robed figure at the end of Dad’s tunnel.
My sister cried and asked them why they thought that Dad would care about God or any afterlife. She swore he’d told us all, “I’m sorry,” and that we should now forgive him for the long tedium of his philandering, the stock lies repeated every Wednesday night as he brilliantined his hair. My mother began to yell. Church she could handle, but she wouldn’t give up the resentment she’d nurtured all this time, like a fourth, favorite child.
I said nothing. In my opinion, Dad had said no words at all, had merely mumbled something shapeless and without meaning. But I had seen his face, too, before he shut his eyes, full of a kind of pleading. He hoped we would form his twisted syllables into some benediction, something to make his life and death less disappointing to us. I couldn’t help but be a little angry. He should’ve known the line between blessing and curse for us would be nearly nonexistent.