Disaster Falls

by Stephane Gerson

  Berl continued to look at me, and I continued to look at him, although at some point I realized that I was looking past him. He then went back to his soup, and I to mine.

  —

  The next day, when we embraced by the front door to mark the end of this visit, I was the one who pulled away first. I had no regrets on the way to the airport, but did worry that Berl and I would never have a meaningful good-bye. I worried about this for weeks—until the day the phone rang and my mother said that my father had fallen again and lost consciousness this time and could I please fly back to Brussels as soon as possible.

  Cory: How are you doing?

  Monday. His voice a whimper, Berl struggles to answer my questions. I tell him over the phone that I am on my way, but he does not seem to understand. He is fading so fast that I fear he will be incoherent by the time I arrive in Brussels. Still, as I pack, words rise up: follow his cue, tell the truth, touch him, do not feel obliged to say anything profound. Some of these words I gleaned while grieving for Owen in the company of others; others came from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying—someone left us a copy after the accident, and I grab it on the way to the airport. This departure feels like another passage from one state to another, not equal to Owen’s death, but still something like a ritual transformation, enacted by words that, like incantations, resonate inside me and fill the plane as it takes off.

  —

  Tuesday. Berl’s open robe reveals yellow, rubbery skin, shrink-wrapped around the bones. His body has wasted away, but today he is alert and articulate. Propped up in his hospital bed, he asks questions and listens to our answers. The elemental energy that seeped out as he sank inside himself these past months has somehow returned. I feel it the moment I enter his room. I see my father for the first time in months; I hear him.

  We all do—my mother and my sister, too. The sound of his voice is familiar, and yet this resurgence makes me question what really happened during these ten months of decline and withdrawal. I try to understand this striking change. Is it the fluids the nurses have been pumping into his veins? A change in his medication? I want to know, but there is no time to consider such matters. Things are moving too fast.

  Minutes after my arrival, my father says something so casually and yet purposefully that it takes me several seconds to register the full meaning of his words. The oncologist will bring test results in the afternoon, he says, and if the news is bad, he will consider suicide.

  I do not say anything. None of us do. We stare at my father in silence as he speaks, pauses, and starts up again, laying out his thought process. I feel myself entering his mind while remaining at the edge of something so large I can barely take it in.

  Berl reminds us that three years ago, after watching Zosia’s decline at the end of her life, he and my mother signed papers allowing doctors to administer a lethal injection should they fall into irreversible coma. A recent Belgian law made this possible. Berl discussed it with us at the time, but almost in passing, as something we ought to know rather than a question on which we had to opine. Now he is talking about suicide, by which he means assisted dying. This, too, is legal under Belgian law: patients afflicted with an untreatable condition and unrelenting pain may request an injection.

  My father is speaking in practical terms, as if he were assessing a bid for a new patio. He sounds so detached and analytical that I find it difficult to respond emotionally. There is no shock but no sadness either; my father is thinking this through, talking about death, about dying itself and not just assets or funeral plans. I lean forward on the hard chair, elbows resting on my knees, my entire body pulled in his direction.

  In the river, there was time to say only one thing and too little time to decide what it would be. Things are different now. I want to ask Berl if he researched the matter. Did you consider the arguments in favor of assisted dying? Did you consult anyone? Also: Are you afraid?

  The only question I ask is whether he always knew that his cancer was so serious. He does not answer directly. He says that he has been thinking about this for a while. “You’ve kept it to yourself,” I say. I do not mean it as a reproach; rather, I am surprised and relieved at the thought that his silence has cloaked a richer interior life than I have imagined. If he contemplates death, I think, then perhaps he also makes room for Owen.

  —

  The oncologist arrives in the middle of the afternoon. He is a bear of a guy, kind and soft-spoken, with no pretense or unnecessary words. He provides straight information—prognosis, available treatments, possible outcomes—because he is convinced that this is what patients and their families want. I am in awe of this man who fears neither death nor other people’s fear of death.

  After shaking our hands, he asks to speak with my father alone. In the hallway, I walk toward a bay window that looks over red brick houses. These houses and this neighborhood are familiar; it is in this hospital, a few floors down, that I was born. When my mother returned from the maternity ward, she found a huge, handmade banner in the living room: BERNIE WELCOMES HOME FRANCINE AND STÉPHANE. By the window, I remember my father’s softer side and begin to think that he will never return home. Is this what they are talking about in the room? I wonder, again, if he is afraid—as afraid as I would be.

  After a few minutes, the oncologist opens the door and calls us in. Standing next to my father, he tells us that his condition will not improve. This leaves three options. The first is a risky, highly toxic regimen he would neither recommend nor choose for himself. The second is to stop treatment and wait it out, with declining quality of life and a life expectancy of two months at most. The final course is what he calls euthanasia.

  This is the first time any of us has uttered the word. Coming out of a doctor’s mouth, it makes the room feel smaller, the air denser, time palpable. I watch the scene from above: a father in the center, a doctor to his left, the two of them facing the patient’s wife and his two grown children. This brings back memories of the accident, when I looked at Owen’s body from afar, except that my father is still alive and I am not crouching behind brush.

  There are things to know about euthanasia. Patients must request it in writing, more than once, and without external pressure. Also, Belgian law does not grant them the absolute right to euthanasia; doctors may refuse. Before assenting, they must inform patients of their life expectancy, make certain that their suffering is unremitting, lay out all therapeutic options, and confirm their intent to end their life. The doctor must also consult with close relatives.

  My father has set in motion a process that is codified and yet heavily reliant on his relationship with his doctor. There is clearly between these two men an intimacy forged out of trust and respect and built upon past understandings. At other times, I might have envied this bond, but not now; I am glad Berl found someone who could help him to make this decision. The oncologist promises to return tomorrow with the latest tumor markers. Let’s resume the conversation at that time, he says.

  —

  Once the door shuts, Berl tells us he has ruled out further chemo and cannot see the point of palliative care. He does not want to drag things out for weeks or suffer any more. I hear no despondency in his voice. He expected the test results to be bad and knew what he would do upon receiving them. He has made up his mind; this seems clear.

  When he asks for our opinions, I realize how little I know about assisted dying beyond the argument about dignity and the counterarguments about vulnerable patients or the sanctity of life. My instincts tell me that my father has the right to control his own end, and so, when my turn comes, I tell him that it is his life and that I will support whatever choice he makes. This is the consensus in the room.

  My father says he will ponder the matter overnight and then let us know his decision.

  It strikes me that Berl is dying as he lived. So much about his behavior is familiar: the pragmatic approach, the systematic planning, the methodical weighing of variables. And also the focus on his own
goals. He needs us close, but he does not ask us point blank whether we would like him to carry on a little longer, or whether his sudden departure troubles us in any way. He does not wonder what his death means for us rather than for him. I do not believe that he is under any obligation to ask such questions, but I am not fooling myself either: this death is neither virtuous nor heroic.

  But it is unexpected. He says that he is not afraid of dying. He will simply fall asleep and never wake up and finally know what lies on the other side. I cannot understand how he came to accept death, how he achieved something that seemed so far outside his reach. My mother once told me that, whenever she confronted him about his verbal abuse, he replied that he could not change. Now, during his last days, he is venturing beyond himself—in full view.

  —

  Later that afternoon, my parents reminisce about trips they have taken over the years, smiling and laughing, returning to places that are theirs alone. I feel as if I am intruding, as if I had walked in on them in bed.

  In the early evening, my mother and sister leave to take care of my nephews, and I remain alone with my father, who stares out the window. The day has exhausted him. I offer him some water but he declines so I place the glass on a table within his reach. I fidget, I bring my chair closer to the bed, I rest my feet on the frame. Berl tells me to stop kicking the bed. I had not realized I was kicking his bed.

  His eyes shut for long seconds and then reopen. This happens two or three times. He murmurs that he is falling asleep. I ask him whether he would like someone to spend the night with him. He does not answer, so I close the drapes.

  As I walk out, I hear his voice asking me to bring his razor tomorrow. He says that he looks as if he has not shaved in a week. In truth, there is only a hint of white stubble on his face.

  —

  Wednesday. Berl asks to speak with me as soon as I arrive at the hospital. It is midmorning. I pull up a chair. We are a few feet from each other, closer than Owen and me on the river but not much.

  “It’s hard to say good-bye, and it will be even harder when the time comes,” he says.

  In a hushed but assured voice, he says that he is proud of the way I have managed my life, proud of the family I have fashioned, proud of my professional achievements. He thanks me for being a wonderful son. When I reach over to kiss him, his cheeks are moist. “I’m so lucky,” he says.

  As a child, I found it difficult to believe my mother when she told me my father was proud of me. Why couldn’t he say so himself? After the accident, I doubted that I could ever again be seen as a wonderful son. Now I cannot question his sincerity.

  Berl does not move. He seems to be waiting for me to speak. I have not prepared anything, but his words make it easy to follow. I thank my father for what he taught me. I tell him that the values he holds dear—honesty, hard work, loyalty—are values I have sought to impart to my children. I also tell him that after I left for college, he gave me freedom and support. It was not an easy transition; I appreciate that.

  There must be families in which fathers and sons talk to one another in this way. But Berl never had the need or the ability to do so, not even in the letters he sent me in my twenties. I, in turn, did not trust that such exchanges would prove welcome or safe. I did not even know how to launch such conversations.

  Still, my words have not conveyed the full truth about our lives together. I also need to tell him what it means for an eight-year-old to live in a house in which love and violence mesh in seemingly arbitrary ways. I need to tell him he has been a complicated father, which is not the same thing as a bad one. I need to tell him that over time I learned to love him with less fear, but never complete security.

  Two days ago, I had reconciled myself to never saying those things. Now I need to find the words. In the past, I would have been too frightened of his rage or my own bitterness to mention his violence. But there is no anger in Berl’s hospital room, neither spittle nor narrowed eyes, and so it comes out like this:

  “You were a bit tough when I was a kid.”

  Just this—a bit tough—but enough to condense two decades spent in my father’s house.

  These words hang over the bed, within his reach, like the words that floated before him at dinner in Belarus, when Vera asked if I had other children at home. This time Berl does not tighten his features or look down or let the words pass by. This time he softly says, “Perhaps too tough.”

  It is not much, but more than I expected, and apparently more than he expected as well because he looks down, as if to give me time to digest his words, or perhaps because he needs time to digest them himself.

  I remember how much, as a child and teenager, I had wanted him to say such words, or any others that acknowledged my daily experience. If he had talked to me about his violent mood swings instead of evading my questions, then his life and mine might have followed different courses.

  Berl looks up. “You were with me in Belarus,” he says. “You saw what kind of world my parents came from.”

  I move in closer. In Belarus, I saw the old markets and dirt roads, even the river where his mother used to swim, but I realize now that I missed what, maybe, he most wanted me to see: a world of rickety houses in which mothers and fathers and children could love one another despite the deep silences and rough edges. Berl had felt the power of a place and a history that shaped him in ways he did not think he could escape. Despite all of his talk of personal initiative, he seemed to accept this destiny, and now he asked me to understand it.

  Maybe this was why he did not travel to Belarus until I pushed him to do so. Maybe he sensed that once he went, he would have to recognize that perhaps he had been too tough.

  —

  With my mother and sister in the room, Berl says he spent the night thinking things through. He is ready to go. Now, it is back to practical matters When will the funeral take place? Who must we call?

  The oncologist’s visit proves anticlimactic. The markers have crept up, but this was expected. My father and his doctor discuss the next step like two partners finalizing a deal that has long been in the works. The doctor explains that some of his colleagues induce a coma that can last days. He prefers a quicker process—five minutes at most. This sometimes shocks the kin, but he sees no point in dragging it out. My father agrees. He turns to my mother and asks about Jewish funerary ritual without really caring. Only one thing matters: that the procedure take place tomorrow.

  Once this is settled, my father thanks his doctor for his expertise and human touch. He extends his hand, which the doctor cradles with both of his. Soon their four hands are interlocked above Berl’s wan body. This lasts a few seconds and then it is over.

  There is a languorous rhythm to the afternoon, an easy drift between banter and nostalgia. Berl grows wistful when recalling how much he admired his older brother as a child. He smiles when my sister and I tease each other as we did when we were little. And he becomes animated when he recalls his early years in Brussels. One of his friends, a Greek bureaucrat, worked at the Common Market in the early 1960s. “He fucked everyone in sight,” my father tells me. “He’d say, ‘Bernie, the married women are the best. They just don’t know about sex in the afternoon. You screw them, get dressed, and return to work reenergized.’ ” More than the rawness of his words, it is the grin on his face that stays with me. My father still cannot believe that he made it out of Akron.

  Dinner comes around five p.m., and so do his stomach cramps. Berl is sapped. Before leaving, I tell him that I love him, and also that I will miss him. “I hope so,” he says without irony.

  Owen did not say anything during his last moments. In the photograph that Alison took on the river, he looks ahead in silence. He remained quiet when we hit the rocks seconds later. Nor did he speak in the water, when the two of us stared at each other. This may have been Owen’s choice; perhaps he was already on his own. More likely, there was time for only one of us to speak, and I told him to keep his feet above water.


  When my father and I looked at each other in his hospital room, there was enough time for both of us to speak. Neither one of us had to yell to be heard. Neither one of us told the other to keep his feet above water.

  Instead, I heard that I was a good son and Berl heard that he would be missed. This does not happen to everyone. The sun had long set on the Green River when, sitting together in the tent, Alison and I told Owen that we would miss him.

  —

  Thursday. Faint orange light enfolds my father’s still body. It is early in the morning, and he is lying on his side, wrapped in a blanket. Until he lifts his head, I cannot tell whether he is awake or asleep. He whispers that the pain has been excruciating. “One night too many,” he says.

  I sit down. At home last night, I jotted down questions for him. Any final advice? Did the euthanasia documents you signed make things easier at the end? And Owen—where do you keep him?

  The first question now seems trite and, after all that has been said, pointless. The second feels self-absorbed. As for the last one, I cannot bring myself to force Owen upon him again; I cannot expect that, even now, my father will give me anything more than a groan. But the silence that fills the room this morning is enough. Unlike my father’s hollow silence in Belarus, this silence is soft and round. It encompasses the blame he never directed my way, the insinuations he never made about my decisions, the pain he felt and never imposed on me. This silence wraps itself around me and envelops Owen. It shrouds his eternal presence.

  It is true that, surrounded by his wife and children, Berl reached a state of equanimity that made me feel Owen’s solitude on the river in ways I never have before. It is also true that Berl called me to his side as his son rather than as a bereaved father, that he still has not acknowledged the entirety of my being. But Owen has been with us.