(previously published in the Cosmic Daffodil Journal)

I brushed my teeth while you died slowly in the next room. With the bitter taste of baking soda and spearmint thick in my mouth, I listened as your son read from the bible. 

Setting aside the pain and trauma of his childhood, he spoke to you, pouring his need for your salvation down your throat and you let him, giving him this one last gift from a father to a son. Though your throat is restricted and your tongue atrophied months ago, you drank it down. It was the first meal you’d had in years. 

The space between us was heavy with years of resentmentment; me, resentful of my own father for what he never did for me and you and your son resentful of each other for the years that passed where you couldn’t find forgiveness. And so, I brushed; hard and erratically, whitening my teeth and staining them with the blood seeping from my gums. 

Your son’s counsel continued. Your chest was bare except for whatever was left of the greying hairs that once spoke of your heritage and masculinity. Dressed in a pair of America-blue boxer shorts and an unbuttoned polo, the feeding tube that’s taken up residence in your belly was angry, emitting the pungent smell of a body decomposing one organ at a time. When you start to suction the putrid phlegm from your lungs, I gag on my toothbrush. You are no longer the man my mother married all those years ago. This version of you, all weak and drippy, and the color of infection, is not how I will remember you. 

Brushing harder, I spit the bloody paste in the sink, unable to get the taste of mortality out of my mouth. I spit out thoughts of my own father in the same state; a catheter in his penis, his dignity on the bedside table and the sins of the father spread out before him for visitors to behold. 

Brush, bleed, spit! 

My mind races with imagined fantasies of my father’s future passing. Will he give me the grace to pour my needs onto his lap while he dies? Will his end be accompanied by my forgiveness of his worldly sins? Will he set me aside, as he always has and go selfishly from this world? Will he ask for my mother as he takes his last breath? Will I carry the weight of his rejection and disappointment to my own death bed? 

Brush, bleed, spit! 

Brush, bleed, spit! 

When your son has finished his testimony, I rinse my mouth letting the coolness of the water wash away the metallic bite of my bloody gums. I imagine this water like a mico-baptism meant for my tongue, washing clean the daggers in my words and thoughts so they can be reborn into something less murderous.

Spitting the last of my resentments into the sink, I dry my mouth, praying silently that your passing is peaceful; that you go from this world to the next with the knowledge that your work and your life has left a mark on those who were touched by it. 

I pray a little harder for my own father and a little harder still for my sons. My words are a whisper kissing the reaper’s ears. They speak of my hope that this generational tale of the things we carry and the things we pass on shape themselves into something new.