Second shift

Or how Dad became my zen master

second shift		

i’ve come to take the second shift of late
(of the two in our night-time vigil).
i’m not exactly sure how that happened
but the first time i simply wanted my brother to get better sleep 
for his drive home the next day,
and i could always try to take a morning nap,
which turns out never happens. 
my brother takes shift one,
it’s just what we do now. 

second shifts usually find the house
dark and silent, even peacefully calm
and still. 
at least that used to be the case. 

during any night now
we really don’t know the shifts that will arrive;
it, 
they, 
depend solely upon our father
who lay there now, just over there, 
in the newly delivered hospital bed
breathing and coughing and dying… and dreaming:

it’s second shift now.


hurry up
hurry up
hurry up
help me. 
sister,
help me. 


sometimes the dreams seem more lucid than others.
sometimes they seem much less.
much 
less.
those are the ones i’ll never forget.

as he seems to be getting nearer 
to the place of his unraveling, 
this plea to 
“hurry, 
hurry, 
hurry up”
and 
“help me, sister”
is the one recurring dream we get
every night now,
at least during my shift.

and now even during the day,
even with eyes open,
his,
when we care not about shifts.
dad never cared about shifts.

[in zen they call them koans:
teaching stories intentionally meant to be irrational
and quizzical,
and puzzled upon until the student receives
a flash of light
and the teacher smiles.
they are hard for normal brains to understand. 
they are like dementia in that regard.

“question: what is the sound of one hand clapping?
answer: the sound of dementia’s undoingness.”]

we don’t know who is to hurry.
or why.
or how he needs help as he lay there
in what looks to be comfort to us
except not inside his beautiful brain,
obviously.
and we don’t know who sister is—
though he had a couple of those himself growing up,
and he did, too, 
grow up catholic.

it is 3 a.m. now in my second shift
and the koan remains in the air.

i’m listening to him right now as i write these lines.
dad sounds distressed as he teaches,
even though his body lay still
and warm
save for his hands that fidgit.

[only the wisest zen masters,
the ones with nothing left to prove,
the one’s maybe with dementia,
will admit the inner turmoil
behind their equanimity]


hurry up sister.
hurry up.

help me.


i’m not sister, and neither is my brother.
i’m the son who works second shift.
so i do the only thing i can to help.
[but help whom exactly?]
i try not to wake him even though i am tempted—
maybe bringing him out of this endless koan
would be the only way to end it for him. 
until tomorrow’s second shift anyway.

no, i don’t wake him.
i approach as quietly as i can in the darkness of this shift—
if i’m not already sitting in the chair we have placed
right next to the bedside, that is.

i sit.

i offer the only thing i can
at 3 a.m. when he’s still sleeping
and i don’t want to wake him.
i know of no other thing to do right now
and I can offer really nothing else.

i put my hand on either his hand
or his forehead, or his shoulder,
and breathe along with the breaths
he takes.

there is nothing more to do; 
it is a perfect moment, just as it is.

i haven’t sat on my cushion in weeks.
but i have meditated. 
every second shift.

i know i’m receiving 
the most important teachings of all from the teacher
who has always been there. 

but i know i’ll never learn the meaning of his koans.



hurry up sister,
hurry up,
hurry up.
help me.

i’m running out of time.