Cheese

((Since I'm still 'studying' for my finals, I don't have anything new to write. Nothing exciting has happened, except for the fact that we got out Christmas Tree on Saturday. We did a bit of decorating today, but I think we'll finished it throughout the week. Anyway, here is something that I had written for my Personal Narrative class.))

The first attack must have happened when I was in the eleventh grade. At some point in the early morning, my mom woke me up to say that my dad was in a lot of pain, and that my sister had to drive him to the hospital. Because my mom’s seizure less than a year ago, she had been forbidden from driving until a whole year had passed. We were just lucky that my sister was decent enough at driving by this point to be able to brave the freeways in the dark.

                I stayed home with our dog. She wined and cried, and waited near the window, her ears perked for any sound of a car returning, and her eyes never leaving the driveway. Despite how tired I was, I couldn’t get back to sleep. It almost felt disrespectful to try. While my parents and sister were forced to remain awake, sleeping felt like a luxury. I must have gone to bed at some point, however, because I don’t remember when they came home.

                The next morning I was told it was a gall stone. Nothing too severe or life threatening, as long as he worked to cut fat out of his diet. For a Swede, reducing the amount of cheese he ate was nearly impossible.

                Although it sounds cruel, my dad and I like to joke about such things as this, and if someone wipes out on a bike, we’ll wince, and then start laughing. It’s my theory that is you cannot laugh at the pain of others, you cannot deal with that pain yourself. And so that’s how it went in our house. When my mom asked what we should have for dinner, the first thing I would say is ‘macaroni and cheese, with extra cheese, with some cheese melts on the side.” After all, melted cheese is a nightmare for someone with a bad gall bladder.

                But despite the jests and laughing, we knew it was serious. No more pizza, no more mac n’ cheese, no more cheese melts or cheesecake or grilled cheese or lasagna or tacos. Sometimes I would catch him in the morning with several slices of cheese, and he would argue that it’s only once a week. It’s odd, how easily someone can get addicted to cheese, and even stranger how it seemed to be doing more damage to him than his smoking.

Of course, that once-a-week luxury would always catch up to him. Apparently one time in the mall, around Christmas time, he had a small attack while waiting in line at London Drugs.

I can’t exactly remember when, but it was sunny out and I don’t recall a need for a sweater. During the day, he had an attack. As far as I know, it was the first one during the day that had incapacitated him. My sister and I politely tried to ignore the groans of pain coming from his room. Only when it began to die down did I go to check on him. He sent us out to buy some bubbly water, and when we came back, he was beginning to feel better. As he walked around, looking as if he had not slept in days, he gave me a smile and said that he finally knew how much pain a woman went through when they gave birth. That night we had reservations at a formal restaurant for dinner, but due to my dad’s condition, we had to cancel, instead having a light, fat-free dinner at home.

But out of all those times, one of the latest ones was the worst. Like any diligent and hardworking student, I had been up at one thirty in the morning, working on a paper in between checking Facebook. It didn’t feel that late, because my mom was still walking around downstairs, her heels making a constant annoying clicking sound, and I could hear my dad’s heavy footsteps in their bedroom. Although he always went to bed no later than nine thirty on a weekday, it had become normal to hear him stomping from bed to bathroom and back, even in the wee hours of the morning.

It wasn’t long before he was in too much pain, and an ambulance was called. A few minutes passed, and I heard the sirens. It’s odd, how we can dismiss them as just another sound in the night, but the moment it’s coming for someone you love, each second it gets closer and gets louder, feels like an eternity. Suddenly the sound is sharper, as if everything else has been muted, and the only stirring is that wailing sound. The fire truck came first. And another. The ambulance only arrived after one of the fire fighters had concluded that, yes, my dad was in fact having a gall stone attack. As if we couldn’t have figured that out on our own.

                I remained in my room the whole time, though my mind had wandered too far to be able to properly concentrate on my paper anymore. With a house full of fire fighters and paramedics, someone might have expected me to at least peak out my door. But I didn’t want to see my dad in this state.

I could hear them talking, asking questions.

“How are you feeling?”

“Can you stand?”

“Is the pain gone?”

“We will have to ask you to come to the emergency.”

The fire men and paramedics marched past my door, down the stairs, and out the door. Among them was my dad, shuffling along. My mom, now flustered, scampered around the house, talking to herself to make sure she didn’t forget anything.

“Keys, jacket, scarf, purse, wallet, phone, keys… Where are my keys.”

                Only when my mom was the last one in the house did I dare leave my room. She told me that she had to follow the ambulance to the hospital, and would hopefully be back in a few hours. I silently nodded and returned to my room to get ready for bed.

                But who can sleep when their dad is in the hospital, and their mom is tired enough to possibly get in an accident on the way there or back. As I always do when emotions run rampant in my mind, I began to think. Those thoughts turned to writing, and eventually to poetry. It seems it’s the only time I can truly write about feelings; when they are enhanced by an event such as this. So I turned my light on and picked up my notebook to empty those words from my head;

Oh please, please

Let the sirens pass

Just move, move

To let them go.

It comes close,

The call of the Reaper,

The song of the Angels,

And stops.

Silent as death,

The Last breath

That escapes the quivering lips.

And breathes again.

Oh please, please,

Silence the sirens.

Fall quiet, quiet,

As the sleeping babe.

Pounding steps.

The march of an army.

One by one,

They file by.

Go up, up,

To the resting man.

We wait, wait,

For word of hope.

Faceless, nameless,

The army passes,

The beat of his heart.

Keep walking, keep beating.

Oh please, please,

Let the Sirens pass.

Just move, move,

To let them go.

I placed the notebook down, and succumbed to my leaden eyes.

Like the first time, my dog kept watch, ever vigilant for the car to return. By four in the morning I jolted away to the sound of her happy barking. It must have been adrenalin that made me jump out of bed and rush downstairs, because on any other day, if I was woken at that ungodly hour, I would have just groaned and rolled over. They were both home, looking haggard from the ordeal, but they were most definitely alive. I exchanged a few words before exhaustion crashed down again. As I returned to bed, all I thought was that I was thankful my first class started at four thirty that night, and that I would have plenty of time to sleep in.

He’s getting the gall bladder removed soon, sometime in March. We’re all looking forward to being able to make a cheesy dinner without feeling like we’re taunting him. But once it’s gone, we’ll have to worry about heart attacks. I think I would rather be deprived of cheese, than deprived of a father.