Sawdust

When I saw him yesterday he wasn't really talking. He was playing with the pills on the table, lining them up in rows. He had been refusing to take them. His mouth is very dry. It's hard to swallow.

'G'day!' he said, happy to see me. It was a shadow of a conversation, the communication of a man slowly losing his ability to communicate on a meaningful level. He'd told my sister he had days left. Mum was thinking November. My sister and I worried it'd be that long. Mum is exhausted. Dad isn't Dad.

He asked if I'd been for a surf.

No Dad I can't surf, coz of my hip.

Oh okay he said. How was it?

What dad? The surf.

Oh, good, Dad.

Mum brought him fruit salad and yoghurt. He ate a strawberry, a few blueberries. Dropped one in his lap. I laughed, he mock scowled at me. He still has a sense of humour.

The table was moving toward him, he said. His fingertips are blue. Mum rubs his hands. He has been having vivid dreams. He is getting reality topsy turvy. He never knows where in the day he is. He's been telling us that for a while now.

He offers me the fruit salad. I don't fancy it but I eat it anyway. It's good and sweet and wet. It could be the last thing he offers me. Mum is talking about online shopping and fresh blueberries. She tells me about his ailments.

Do you want to know a list of everything wrong with me? He whispers. It's a joke.

Later he will tell me not to fall off the ladder. I don't know what he means. I think it's because I had half a glass of wine and it gave me a headache. Perhaps he's talking about wagons.

That night - Sunday night - he fell and Mum couldn't get him up. She called my sister and bro in law, they are minutes away. It's a hectic day, today, Monday - and they have a new palliative team that will come four times a day. They bring in a hospital bed to the main bedroom.

Maybe he called it right to my sister. Maybe it isn't long.

I tell Jamie the updates as he washes the dishes. He begins to cry. It's perhaps time in twenty years of marriage I've seen tears roll down his face.

I must have sawdust in my eyes, he jokes.