Lost Time (OFF #2)

“You can see him now, Mr. Richards.”

The young nurse motions toward the closed ICU door. Joe wipes his moist palms against the thighs of his jeans and stands slowly. This is it, he thinks, running a weary hand through his hair. This is the last time I’ll see my father alive.

With shaky fingers, Joe pushes open the large door and is greeted by that signature hospital smell, a medley of antiseptic and the odor of illness, of a body failing at life. He forces himself to look at the form of his father in the bed, barely recognizable after losing 30 pounds. Wires spider web around his gaunt face as machines proclaim his heartbeats with an alarmingly slow cadence. The whoosh of the respirator pushing air into weary lungs forces a burning lump into Joe’s throat.

He knows his father can’t speak to him. He doubts he will even open his eyes, let alone be conscious of their final meeting here today. Joe senses that whatever it was that made his father the man he has known all his life has already fled this shell.

It has been seven years since their last meeting, seven years of silence and bitter separation. Joe wishes he could say he has forgotten what the argument had been about, but each painful detail remains lodged in his memory. What he can’t answer is why it has gone on so long. Why peace was never made.

They are family, after all.

He wishes he had been the one to say he was sorry. To take the first step toward healing. To reach out to his father.

And now there is no hope. His father will never know that he is sorry.

He will never know how much Joe loves him.

It’s too late.