Two Years for Dad

you remember the game, i bet. here’s how it goes: the kid next to you under the neighbor’s front porch (after the seance) asks, “what would you do if you had two years to live?” and you kind of freak out. you think, what if my answer isn’t clever enough? what if I forget to say the one thing everybody says? the ‘duh’ thing. and then you think about that kid you’ve had a crush on that nobody knows about (or ever will because that kid doesn’t even know you exist) and you imagine... but you can’t say, and you feel your face go flush, and you wish you hadn’t been asked, and you wish someone else would answer first, because you suspect it should be something more than eating lots of pizza and chocolate and almost for sure getting a phone in your room?

you remember the game, right?

it never once, in all the times I played, spun out like the conversation I had with my father a couple of hours ago. “That’s what he said, that you have two years?...”

yes, better than i expected.

not bad, really.

I am 80.

“I am aware of that.”

chemo. radiation.

“and what happens after two years - I mean how can they say two years like that?”

after two years, I guess things fall apart. Go down hill. precipitously, i should think.

what would you do if you had two years to live? now, I know the answer. I would beg my children to be near me. I would cling to my beloved. I would hope for the company of my friends. I would hope for the money to go somewhere warm.

I remember the game. It never once occurred to us when we played that we might not feel good in those two years before we died. I never once thought how strange it would be to hear those words, or that the length of time - 2 years two years two (2) years would seem like an eternity, a gift, a far-reaching outside chance.

it never crossed our minds that we might be old and tired and wheel chair bound, nor that our death-sentence, however long, would fail to remove those earthly barriers.

and even now it doesn’t occur to me that my children might live somewhere else when I have two years to live - and they might not come see me right away.

My father says he feels good. He does not say what he wants to do. I don't ask.

you remember the game? under the neighbor's front porch? after the seance? when your friend asked what would you do if you had two days to live? and your parents were urging you to get home for dinner?

it was never two years.