Swing Low (3 page)

My students and I published newspapers every year. Roving reporters investigating the birth of a litter of kittens at the Penner farm, Jason’s second broken arm in less than eight weeks, a trip to B.C., a family wedding, the death of a beloved pet, all the comings and goings of my group of eleven- and twelve-year-olds. The
Class News.
Stacks of paper arranged around the ping-pong table, I’d collate them all night long, around and around the ping-pong table, my tie tucked in between the buttons of my shirt, my sleeves rolled up, my family asleep upstairs, oblivious, thousands of copies to be delivered through town the next morning, eagerly anticipating the expression on my students’ faces when they
would see their words, their lives, in print! It was marvellous! To create a permanent written document bearing witness to real life, better than a thousand photographs, it was out of this world.

My senses were activated by the words describing the events rather than by the events themselves. I put a lot of stock in words, in written words.

H
ave just received my medication in a tiny paper cup. The nurse stands beside me until I take it. I swallow, smile, hand her the cup, and she says, Good.

Nothing I see is familiar and the parts of my body are strange, as though they belong to somebody else. My brain is stuck and every last ounce of energy I have is trying to get it out of its rut like a car stuck in snow. Forward, reverse, forward, reverse. How to explain the process of putting the pieces of my brain together: as though I’m attempting to walk down a street and various limbs, arms and legs, continue to drop off my body. I’m getting nowhere. Certain memories run through my mind on an endless tape loop, over and over and over. When I was a boy I had my tonsils removed. I was put under with chloroform and I dreamt I was somersaulting through the walls of the hospital. I still recall the feeling. It remains the most vivid dream of my
entire life. Over and over and over, like this, and through. What a feeling.

When I was a boy I spent a great deal of time sitting in a homemade airplane in a blue shed behind the J.R. Friesen garage. On one of the airplane’s wings were painted the letters CFAMV. I played with the control panel, and when it crashed in a neighbour’s field I wasn’t in it, but I was sure my fiddling with the buttons had made it crash and kill the man who was. I asked God to forgive me for killing the pilot and to wash away my sins with Jesus’ blood.

When I was a boy I worked for my dad, taking care of chickens and sometimes having to kill them. I tried to convince myself that they deserved to die, that they were bad chickens, sinners, and that I was doing the right thing. I was once so unbelievably young.

I nodded to a tall older man in my room just now and he nodded back. Then I noticed that I was staring at my reflection in the mirror, just beneath “Summer Memories.” Excruciating! Is there a doctor in the house?! (Answer: Yes, but you baffle him. He prefers problems he can see. Am beginning to understand why.)

Daughter says to doctor in hallway outside room: This is the second time my father has been in this hospital without receiving any type of care whatsoever. Where is the psychiatrist?

Answer: He retired this afternoon.

Daughter: This is a farce! Why won’t you transfer him to the city? To a hospital with a psychiatric ward?

Answer: We think he might be ready to go home.

Daughter:
Home!
There’s nobody
at
home! How can you let him go home after what happened?

Answer: Where is your mother? (Excellent question. I listen very closely after this.)

Daughter: In the city! She’s exhausted, she can’t take care of him anymore without help or she’ll die, literally! He won’t eat! He won’t talk! He won’t wash!

Answer: He talks here, some. He eats. He washes. He gets dressed. He’s very cooperative, actually, very pleasant. Your father’s an intelligent man. Perhaps you underestimate him.

Daughter: Because he wants to go home, that’s why he’s —

Answer: Then perhaps he should.

Daughter cries. Doctor must carry on with his rounds. Will stop in on his way back. Why? shouts daughter. For what? One daughter shushes other daughter. They will soon come into my room with their lies and their smiles and their hugs and kisses. We’ll write things down together in big block letters (I haven’t the heart to tell them I’m not blind) and I hope they don’t leave too soon. One of my daughters has been wearing the same outfit now for several days, in fact it’s been almost two weeks. Cut-off jeans, a blue tank top with a greenish flowered blouse over it. This morning I asked her if she had much trouble deciding what to wear and she said, Why? You don’t like it? She didn’t get my joke, and I answered, Oh no, I like it very much.

I’ve heard a noise. There’s a child in the hallway, apparently. It sounds as though a ball is being thrown against my door. Thump, thump, ka-thump. Now it’s stopped. Now it’s started again. Stopped. Started. The child is young and the ball gets away from him. He retrieves it and begins to throw it against my door again. He loses it, it rolls a little down the hall, he runs after it and brings it back … thump, thump. How will I write with all this racket going on?

Now I’ve lost the image of the child outside my door, but I can still hear the ball bouncing. The image has been replaced with another, it’s a boy shooting baskets in the driveway! I know him!

I’ve just had visitors, my sister, Diana, and her husband. When they came in, authoritatively and all smiles, I said: Where’s your basketball? (This sort of thing does NOT help my case.)

A woman has come into my room with more tracts and has asked me if I would be interested in crafts.

What sort of crafts? I asked. I failed the kitchen test, you know.

Kitchen table crafts, she said. We have lots of fun with oh, Popsicle sticks, doilies, pipe cleaners …

Before she could finish I applied catatonic gaze, willing her to leave, which she did but only after telling me crafts would do me good.

Where were we? Well, let me begin again as a boy. I delivered the messages to the neighbours when I was three years old.

My brain is still stuck. I meant to write about myself as a boy but … reverse, forward, reverse, forward, reverse … flooded. So, I’ve been looking out my window for hours at my late brother-in-law’s home. In one spectacularly lucid moment a day or eight ago I remembered every detail of the obituary I had written for him while he lay dying years ago in this very hospital. I would rush to his bedside after work and pull up a chair while he added to and amended the details from our discussion of his obituary the day before. He always wanted it to be longer. He told me there were three things he’d like to do before he left this world: drive his company’s cement truck one more time, have one more game of tennis, and make love to his wife.

You know, I told the nurse after my shower, when I was a child I dreamt I somersaulted through the hospital walls.

Did you really? she asked me.

I really dreamt it, yes, I answered. To this day it remains a vivid memory, as though it happened just yesterday.

There we go, Mr. T., we don’t want you getting lost.

The funny thing is, I said, I feel that I already am.

Oh, that is funny, she agreed. Try to have a little rest.

My desk is littered with notes to myself, my file reads. I saw my file when the nurse put her clipboard down on my bedside table while she removed the dressings from my feet. I object to the use of that word “littered.” Were they implying that these notes were worthless? That they belonged in the waste paper basket?

Why, then, when they don’t want to listen to me, do they allude to my writing as garbage? When I speak I irritate and when I write I litter? How would they prefer I express myself? I wonder. With Popsicle sticks? I could have talked to myself, I suppose, but why raise another thousand eyebrows? It is interesting that I have used the word “myself” three times in the last two paragraphs and have no idea what it means anymore. (What does one do with pipe cleaners?)