| esquire within |: December 2009

I thought I had decided against sharing this. Too sharp. Too personal. Too hard for certain members of my family to read. That instead I would tell a funny story, something light and happy -- that I should share one of the countless precious and happy memories I have of my uncle.

But it would not have been particularly genuine. Not today. Not when these are the memories that are in my thoughts. For me, it has always been important to voice unhappy memories. More important, sometimes, than the happy ones. Maybe it's an Armenian thing. Maybe it's just Cathartic. I don't really know, and I don't suppose it really matters.

When I got to Dallas the day after Christmas, my mom, brother and his family had been there for a full day already. They had already been to the hospital -- already saw my uncle at the intensive care unit.

My brother picked us up from the airport and took us straight to the house. We had a few minutes to clean up and change before heading to the hospital. Before we packed back into the car, my mom pulled me into one of the guest rooms to prepare me for what I was about to see. When she told me he was very sick -- that it did not look good -- I remember the hot burn of tears and my jaw clenching so hard I thought the muscles might spasm. I was so angry. It was so fucking unfair. He had fought and fought and fought, had endured so many horrible treatments and kept his spirits so high. And still, it had come to this.

My brother came into the room -- he hugged me hard, and cried.

My aunt drove us to the hospital. I didn't talk. I couldn't. My aunt was talking just to talk, but I don't remember what she said. All I remember is the red taillights of the car ahead of us while I tried to brace myself for whatever it was I was about to see.

I prayed silently -- for the first time in memory -- for the strength to keep from crying, to bottle up my fear and grief, to hold it all together. I made that request several times that week. By the time we got to the hospital, the pressure in my throat was gone, and I had more of a grip on myself.

My brother had told me at the house that the man I would see at the hospital was not my uncle. But he was wrong.

That night, keri Vahe did not open his eyes, but he responded to us. He knew I was there. When I told him I loved him, he said he loved me, too. When we told him the Girl had come with, he smiled -- and the first thing he asked was how her parents were doing. They've met only once, but he asked about them often.

That's the kind of man he was, lying in critical condition, wondering about how everyone else was doing.

He was so thin -- less than one hundred pounds. The whole way home, I kept thinking about the way his skin clung to his collar bone. I kept trying to imagine how he could go from that hospital bed back to the house -- back to walking around and eating and playing cards with his friends.

His blood platelets were a major concern -- a healthy level is 150, and his had been 23. Transfusions boost them temporarily, but platelets die quickly. You have to be able to make your own. They were so low the day we got there that his nostrils were caked with dried blood. Blood had been seeping out everywhere it could -- his urine, his bowels, his gums. And his mouth and throat were covered in sores -- from a fungus that sprang out of his stomach, a side-effect of the last chemo. It kept him from eating and drinking.

The next day, he seemed much improved. His eyes were open. He was totally alert. He ate and drank water. They managed to get him into a sitting position by adjusting the bed, and his nurse encouraged him to exercise with a contraption to improve his lung capacity. We talked, and joked, and it seemed there was so much more reason to be optimistic. His blood platelets climbed to 50, enough for them to clear his nose of the scab without worrying he would bleed to death. The sores in his mouth were getting a little better -- now that he could breathe through his nose, he could swish the medicine they gave him for it longer.

My aunt said she believed he would come home -- that the last chemo treatment -- a clinical trial -- had knocked him down, that it wasn't the cancer itself, that he just needed to bounce back if given enough time. I wanted to agree with her, and that day I found it easier to nod in encouragement.

I knew I was walking a thin line between hope and denial, but I wasn't ready to give up on him. I needed to believe.

That was his last good day.

The next two or three days, he fought a low-grade fever. It took a lot out of him. He still talked to us, but slept more, and his eyes were rarely open. He would fall in and out of consciousness -- talking in his sleep. He still had his sense of humor -- he stilled smiled and laughed and called me a shit head when I asked where he kept his money for the casino -- but he was much weaker. He submitted to my aunt's insistent care, though, and was eating a little more than usual. Half a cup of soup, some sorbet, a little tea with honey.

The social worker who made the rounds in the ICU started harassing my aunt about transferring him to hospice care, even though she had repeatedly indicated he would stay in the ICU. The doctors had nothing optimistic to say.

When the fever broke, I found more reason to hope. I thought, this means his body can fight things off -- that if this were it, the fever would have run unchecked and taken him with it.

Then his blood pressure started to drop. His liver stopped functioning as it should. His platelets again crashed, even lower than before. The nurses were saying this was it.

A year ago today, I didn't go to the morning visiting hours. The Girl and I went to the grocery store -- bought everything we needed to make dinner for everyone -- then drove the 45 minutes to my cousin's house to visit her and the baby. She'd had little Nyrie early, and was still recovering very slowly from the Cesarean.

Ten minutes before we got there, American Airlines called to say our flight the next morning had been canceled. Originally we had planned to fly out the 31st -- flights were cheaper -- but right before we booked, flights on the 1st changed to the same price, so we decided to stay the extra day. Now we'd be staying until the 2nd, because of the cancellation.

Right after we got to my cousin's, Mom called. She sounded exhausted and upset -- said to come home right away. That keri Vahe had taken another turn for the worse. His blood pressure had dropped further, he was having trouble breathing. My aunt had had to go back to work that day -- I called her immediately, she was hysterical and on the road to the hospital.

I told my cousin we were leaving and that she should come with, that everyone was concerned but that no one seemed to have all of the information -- that we had to stay calm until we knew more. By the time we got to the hospital, it was apparent to everyone that this was the end of the road. Later I told myself not to feel bad for missing his morning visiting hours -- that otherwise we would not have been with my cousin when the call came, that we couldn't have taken her to the hospital.

He was still somewhat alert when we came into the room -- his eyes were closed, but he would still smile, and speak to us, though it was difficult to understand him beneath the oxygen mask. He hated that goddamn mask.

By around 4:00, the whole family was there. We stayed with him, talked to him, left to the waiting room to cry when we needed to. We had all been so careful not to cry in his room. He wouldn't have wanted us to cry. He didn't want anyone upset over him. Because that's the kind of man he was.

I don't know what time it was -- past visiting hours, though the nurses said we could stay -- when my aunt said everyone had to leave. That we shouldn't be here for the end. That we shouldn't stay and remember him that way.

I was so angry and upset. I argued with her -- insisted that we not leave him alone -- that it wasn't right. I left the room, closer to hysterical than I have ever been in my life. By the time I pushed it all back down and capped it, she had changed her mind. We could stay if we wanted to. If we needed to.

I didn't leave his side. I kept holding his hand, telling him we were there, telling him I loved him and that he needed to get well -- that we had so much cooking to do together.

The Armenian priest came. He talked to my uncle -- read him what I assume were his last rites -- and then continued talking. My uncle tried to say something. He reached for his oxygen mask. The priest kept talking until finally keri Vahe yelled in Armenian. I didn't understand him, but my brother did, and so did my aunt. He told the priest he talks too much, enough already, get out.

He had always said that priest talked too much.

My cousin had to leave -- her husband had come to the house with the baby, and she needed feeding. The Girl took her and my two nieces back to the house, and started working on dinner and keeping everyone occupied. My aunt left next. She just got up and said she couldn't be there anymore -- that she had to get out -- and she kissed him and said she would be back. My sister-in-law took her. Mom, my brother, me and my other aunt and metsmama, who had taken care of my uncle these last two years, stayed in the room.

His breathing had been so labored. I kept holding his hand and watching his mouth. For the next hour, after each breath that he took, I willed for the next -- begged and demanded and pleaded that he keep breathing. I squeezed his hand and he squeezed mine back.

Then suddenly the raggedness of his breathing stopped. He was quiet -- his breathing seemed shallow. I yelled for a nurse. His blood pressure was slowly sliding down. She turned off the sound on the machine -- said this was it, that there was very little time. She took off the oxygen mask.

We called my aunt -- said she had to come back. She was holding Nyrie when we called her.

I told myself this was what he wanted: for his wife and his daughter to be at home with his granddaugther, and not there to see him go. I told myself that it was up to the rest of us to stand watch over him so he would not die alone, in an empty hospital room.

I kept holding his hand. I looked at the machine display and saw that his heart started to slow. I told him I loved him -- he said he loved me too. He said so quietly that he would miss all of us. A few more minutes and his heart had slowed from 90 to 20. Then 15... 10.

I wish I could say I stayed strong through the end. That I kept my composure.

The truth is, I lost it. I gripped his hand and totally lost it. Everything that had been bottled up that week spilled out of me in a flood. I vaguely remember hearing my aunt crying at the foot of his bed.

My brother was behind me. When my uncle's heart stopped, I looked up, sobbing, still holding his hand, and saw a tear rolling down his cheek. My brother saw it, too -- he wiped it away, kissed his forehead.

For weeks I would close my eyes and see that tear. It haunted me. I kept thinking -- the last thing he heard before he died was the sound of my crying. Uncontrollably crying. I couldn't keep it together.

I didn't know if his tear was pain, or sadness, or fear -- or just some physical inevitability of a body stopping its processes -- but I saw it, watched as my brother wiped it away, and then in the next moment I could see and feel and knew his body was empty of him.

I was so scared that the last thing he heard was the sound of our grief. I felt so guilty.

That tear ripped my heart out.

It was not until my very dear friend Laura listened to my confession of guilt that I was able to put those misguided feelings behind me. She reminded me that tears do not come only from great sorrow -- that they can come from a place much, much deeper than that. That it was not the sound of our pain that surrounded him at the end, but our love -- the sound of how much we wished we could keep him with us. And his last tear was shed in the peace that love could bring him.

I'm grateful that he did not die in an empty room. That his family was there with him. That I could hold his hand while he left us.

I miss him. And I cherish every detail I can recall of him. Even those vastly outnumbered memories that bring me pain.

Happy New Year.