Nails in the Coffin

“Give me your arm, Dad.”

“I’m fine.  What the frick, I’m not a complete invalid. Not yet.”

Jim stood inside the garage looking up at his father who stood in the laundry room doorway.  Harold was studying the steps that led down into the garage.  The son dropped his extended hand to his side and tensed as the seventy-nine-year-old contemplated the task before him.

“I just got to remember what the physical therapist taught me, ‘The pain is the worst if the cane’s not first.’” The old man slowly bent over and placed his cane onto the first step with his right hand.  Then came the right leg. Then the left. The procedure was slowly repeated until he safely made the garage floor.

Harold, pleased with his effort, tapped his cane smartly on the garage floor and straightened his back.  “You take the small victories when you can get them.”

“Sure, Dad.  You really nailed the landing.  You got two tens and a seven.”

“A seven? The Russian judge?” Harold asked.

Jim nodded, finishing an old joke they had shared more than a few times.

“Turn on some more lights, will ya Jimmy?”

Jim pulled on strings hanging from the ceiling, igniting dusty bulbs that sputtered to life.  The newly retired son looked around at memories, memories hanging from the ceiling, memories leaning against the walls, memories tucked into corners.  He walked over to one of several shelving units and pulled a canvas bag from the top shelf.  After rummaging around a bit, he pulled out an old baseball glove and tried it on.

“Ha! Still fits.”  Grinning, he held it up for his father to see. “It could use a little mink oil.”

“Yeah, so could I.  That leather looks about as stiff and wrinkled as my ass.”

“Ahhh. Thanks for that image, pops.” Jim flexed the glove and gently rapped his fist into the palm of it.  “This baby scooped up a ton of grounders you hit to me.”

A smile on Harold’s face shriveled. “And now, instead of swinging a baseball bat, I’m struggling to handle a cane.”

Jim pondered his response.  His father had never been one much to complain or fish for sympathy. “You’ve come a long way since you fell, Dad.”

Harold offered a small, silent nod.

“So what did you want to show me out here?” asked Jim, his eyes sweeping around a crowded garage.

“Everything, I guess. I’d like to get this thing cleaned out now, while I’m still alive, and not leave this mess to you and your sister Julie after I’m gone.”

“You got plans for leaving soon?”  The smile on Jim’s face couldn’t hide the concern cornered in his eyes.

“No, but before I get too many nails in my coffin, I’d like to tidy up various loose ends like the stuff in here I no longer use.”

“Nails in your coffin?  Jeez, Dad, have you got a suit all picked out for the occasion?”

Harold ran a hand over a smooth scalp that once sported a coarse field of thick brown hair. Ignoring his son, he used his cane to point at a bike hanging from the ceiling.

“There’s one of them nails.  I haven’t ridden that thing in ten, maybe 20 years.  Crap, I can’t even get it down, let alone ride it.” 

Jim looked back and forth between the bike and its former rider.  Keeping a long sigh to himself, he walked over to a corner workbench and picked up a file with a wooden handle, noting how the wood had been worn smooth by his father’s hands, hands that had used the file to fix toys, maintain lawn equipment, and shape the sharp edges of a home.

“And that’s frustrating, too,” Harold said, now gesturing towards the garden tools hanging from a pegboard. “I haven’t touched a hoe in two years.” 

Jim’s eyebrows raised high above his broadening smile.  His father preempted any retort with, “Spare me the joke.”

Harold continued his contemplation. “Damn, I’d give a pretty penny to be able to walk down the hill and plant some vegetables.  I miss working that garden.  I miss picking cucumbers and bringing them to your mother.  She always said there was nothing like freshly picked cukes. Yeah, that’s a big nail in the coffin.”

Harold walked over to inspect the various garden tools.  Jim stared at his father’s back, a back that had lifted large logs, pushed loaded wheelbarrows uphill, and swept him and his sister together and carried them off to bed. He went to his aged parent and put a hand on his shoulder.

“You know what I miss?” Jim said. “I miss the dad who, when he got laid off from his job at the railroad, picked up work on a garbage truck while he went back to school and got trained to be an electrician.  I miss that dad that went up against a wall and didn’t miss a beat in finding a way around it, over it, or through it.”

Harold snorted. “You miss him? I’ve been looking for that sorry ass butthead for years.”

“He’s still there. He just can’t get out from behind a big cloud of pout.”

Harold looked sharply at his son while his hand clenched his cane.  Shrugging off the hand on his shoulder he said, “That what you think I’m doing?  Pouting?”  His head began to bob and his jaw work back and forth. “You think it’s easy learning how to walk again? You think it’s easy getting on without your mother?”  

Harold looked around the garage at the various tools he no longer brandished. Closing his eyes, his head spun with endless doctor appointments, age spots, and a lonely kitchen table. “Maybe you ought to try getting old, Jimmy, before you dispense with all your wisdom. Maybe you ought to have a bulging pill case, a cane, and safety grips all over your shower.” 

Harold’s volume increased. “Maybe you ought to shit your pants a few times in your adult diaper before telling others how they should act.”  

He shuffled within an arm’s length of his son, staring intently.  

Harold continued with clenched teeth. “When’s the last time you felt diminished?  When’s the last time you didn’t feel like a man?”  His quavering voice matched the wobbling cane at his side. Neither man said anything, each reflecting the pain on the other’s face. 

The old man looked away from his son. His breathing slowed. Jim reached out his hand, covering his father’s claw-like fingers that still worked the cane. Harold glanced towards the cane and then stared again into his son’s eyes.  

“Oh, yeah?” he said.  His face softened some while he took his free hand and covered his firstborn’s hand, making a stack of three.  Jim raised an eyebrow— and then his remaining free hand—placing it over the stack of three, giving a soft squeeze to the pile of fingers.

Harold grunted a laugh. “Get me a goddamn chair before I fall down, will ya?”

Jim strode to the lawn chairs neatly hanging against a wall.  He positioned two of them near the steps leading into the house.  When Harold shuffled towards the chairs, Jim reached out to take his father’s elbow but withdrew when Harold shook his head firmly.  The son let his father slowly lower his frame into one of the chairs.  Jim sat quietly next to him.  Both men carefully avoid eye contact, looking instead at their past lives hanging from hooks, languishing on shelves, collecting layers of dust.

Harold cleared his throat. “It . . . damn, it’s hard not being able to do what you once enjoyed, what was once routine, what once was normal.  It’s hard not being  . . . able.”