3WW for Aug. 4

drink, feeble, predict

It was his chair, the one his wife had bought for him. Deacon didn't shop; men of his generation rarely did.
Over time, the blue Lay-Z Boy recliner became Deacon's favorite place in the house. He'd sit it in every morning, drink his coffee and read the the newspaper, grousing about the day's events and checking the obituaries to "make sure he wasn't in them." He'd snooze each afternoon in the recliner while schoolkids noisily walked by the house on their way home from the parochial school across the street. A TV tray was the dinner table in front of chair as he ate and watched movies or "Law and Order."
Faded by time and stained by kids and grand kids, the blue recliner had been a fixture of Deacon's living room since well before the downstairs living room had paneling on the walls, blue shag carpet and that damn fake snow crap on the ceiling. If Deacon wasn't sitting in the chair, he was out in his man shed, smoking cigars and watching old John Wayne movies with the sound all the way up, the TV volume getting progressively louder seemingly with each birthday. Deacon didn't give a shit. He was unconcerned with aging. He didn't care his kids joked about his hearing. He didn't bother to answer the complaints that his jacket, the one he wore on cold nights in the man shed, had a funk that entered the back door 15 seconds before he did. He especially didn't care for the doctor. He'd as soon go quickly and quietly in his sleep one night. No fuss, no mess. "Have the coroner come, pick me up, put me in a box and be done with it all," he told his children.
When his beloved Kathy died, the chair became one of the only things he kept in the house. Everything else was donated, sold or trashed.
The goddamn toaster became too painful to look at -- a reminder of how Kathy had made his toast just so perfect -- crispy, but not burnt and with a side of marmalade -- each morning.
But the chair stayed. It would be his lifeline for the nearly two years he lived alone, before he met Martha and they two widowed friends became life companions.
The funky blue chair eventually migrated out to the man shed when Martha moved in and infused some life and modern decor sensibility into a house that was not only stuck in the past, but stuck in some weird afraid-to-move-one purgatory.
New paint, new carpet, new furnishings all brought life back into the house. But a fight, a big one and the first one the two friends had ever had, erupted over Kathy's chair.
Martha wanted to dump it and update. Deacon wouldn't hear of it. It was his lone umbilical cord to "his Kathy." In time, Deacon and Martha would learn to argue without hurt feelings, but not now. The fight over the recliner got ugly. It got personal. It nearly drove a permanent wedge between them.
Martha left, going to stay at her sons for the weekend. Deacon spent the weekend sitting in the chair, getting up only to use the bathroom. He slept in the chair, where Martha found him early Monday morning when she returned to mend fences.
They worked through the issue and it was decided the chair would move to the man shed. It stayed there for years, absorbing the smoke tendrills of thousands of cigars and watched an unending loop of "Rio Bravo."
Years later, when time had irrevocably joined Deacon and Martha a pair the house that once was stuck in neutral had been home to their children and grandchildren. A new family had sprouted from the ashes of two widowed families, joining in a weird Six Degrees of Separation way to become a group that needed a banquet room in order to go out to dinner.
But no one was in mood for dinner today. The doctor had just come from Deacon's room to let the family know the end was near.
Deacon's breathing was shallow and the death rattle, the sickening gurgle that sounds like you were drowning, was getting stronger.
"A day, two tops," the doctor said in a hushed tone to Deacon's middle son, Fitch, the one the family elected spokesman. "But it's not an exact science. We're close, but I can't predict exactly when."
Normally, Martha would've been the one to talk to doctors, but she was laid up, fighting what would be the final weeks of her three-year long struggle with lung cancer.
When Fitch broke the news to the family that Deacon would be gone in a day or two, there were tears, yes, but more shock than anything.
Sure, Deacon had declined in the past few years, but not to the point of incapacity. He wasn't feeble, but he'd definitely slowed. He still had been there for Martha's chemo and radiation appointments, but those daylong journeys began taking a bigger toll on him as well. Perhaps it was the realization he was going to lose another woman he loved -- a thought he could stomach -- but Deacon hadn't seemed himself in the past few months. A little more disoriented than usual and a whole lot more sluggish, Martha finally dragged Deacon to the doctor after she spotted blood in the toilet one morning. Deacon had been pissing blood for a week -- a secret he wasn't going to divulge.
An enlarged, cancerous kidney was the diagnosis. The 15-pound kidney was removed and the margins cleared.
"The biggest fucking kidney I've ever seen," the surgeon's non-PC boast went.
Deacon came home to rest, recover and, as it turned out, die. He stayed in the chair, which had again migrated, this time up to his bedroom, and he slept in the chair instead of his bed. He catnapped throughout the night, waking at 4 a.m. to pee, get a cup of coffee and then head back to bed. He woke again shortly before noon to eat lunch and then climbed the eight steps to the top floor, his room and another nap. A 5 p.m. dinner made him rise again for 30 minutes before a return to his chair. It became his routine, without deviation.
Martha grew concerned after two weeks, but couldn't convince Deacon's children of the problem. They were busy and they knew he was a perpetual curmudgeon.
It was only after Deacon went into diabetic shock one night that the gravity of the situation slammed his four children in the face.
An ambulance trip, ER visit, lab work and follow-up doctor visit revealed Deacon's cancer has spread; it was everywhere. He had one month, maybe. Less time than Martha.
And when Fitch told her the end was near, she climbed out of her bed -- she and Deacon had been friends, lovers and companions, but always kept separate bedrooms -- and went to his side, sitting next to Deacon's blue recliner.
She sat next to him that night, mopping his brow and whispering to him whenever he would get agitated.
Martha fell asleep about 4 a.m. waking two hours later as Deacon began a particularly nasty coughing fit.
She knew the end was near. She was ready to let him go.
At 7:56 a.m., Deacon died. He found what looked like a moment of lucidity, sat up, looked up at Martha, smiled and took his last breath. He went limp and Martha knew he'd gone from his blue recliner back to Kathy.

Two for Tuesday

Mary Williams



Ferris Anthony

Monday's Musings

A break from photos and stories to talk about ... random shit.

I felt like a 3-year-old this weekend, no not shitting my pants and drooling. I walked around most of the weekend asking the age-old question ... "Why?"

1. Why do i have to dust? It's not like it's a winnable war. I cleaned house on Sunday and cleaned and dusted the living room before moving on to the kitchen and my bedroom. By the time I sat down to watch the Giants game at 5 p.m., there already was a layer of new dust settling on the TV stand.

2. Why do I never have enough hangars? Even when I buy more, they seem to disappear. Kind of like sock.

3. And speaking of socks, why do I never wind up with an even number of socks? It's a toe-curling conspiracy, I tell you.

4. Why does my boss fail to answer my e-mails in a timely manner -- two days -- but if I don't respond to hers by the end of the business day, she saunters over and asks me what she probably should asked in person anyway?

5. Why do some dudes insist on striking up a conversation while standing at the urinal? Rule No. 1 in life: Don't talk to another man with your dick in your hand.

6. Why don't I get rid of my dog? I don't like it, don't want it and ignore it except to feed it and give it water.

7. Why don't I get a dog I actually like?

8. Why don't I learn to say what I'm thinking, no matter who gets offended? I watched my former colleague and one of the replacements cover a football game on Saturday. I was pissed that something I took six years to build up unraveled in one afternoon. The new guy needed nearly 24 hours to post a story to the web, something that should've been done before he left that evening. And the old guy on staff should've taken the lead on that, something he was always spared of having to do, but now has to do it.

9. Why don't I follow a friend's lead and quit this shitty business? I'm sure it would be hard, but I honestly think I'd be happier and could make a living, even if I had to work a couple of jobs for a while.

10. Why is that I always seem to wake up at 5:22 each morning, look at the clock and roll back over. Happened four times in the past two weeks.