Latrino Gal #8; Photo by Jacqui Bellamy

No one in my family understood why I refused to visit my great-grandfather at home, sitting in that same brown leather recliner.  The one time they guilt-tripped me into going, I only glanced his way walking from the front door to the kitchen.  Gone were the Old Milwaukee beer cans and ashtray overflowing with stubs of Camels, replaced by a glass of water and pill bottles.  My brother leaned over his inert form, preparing to empty the catheter bag tucked between the recliner and the side table dimpled with cigarette burns.  With my brother's broad shoulders blocking him from my view, I gratefully hurried past, into the warmth and welcoming cinnamon aroma of my great-grandmother baking pumpkin bread.

When he was in the hospital and had no chance of surviving, I still wouldn't visit him.  At thirteen, I may have been eight years older, but I had forgotten and forgiven nothing.

My Uncle Bert and his second wife, Aunt Francis, finally convinced me to go.  "This may be the last time you'll see him alive, Amanda."  Although secretly delighted, I chastised myself for being so heartless.  As the days in southwestern New York had grown shorter with the impending winter, so had my patience with his dwindling existence and my family's incessant concern about him.

I bundled up in my winter gear--coat, boots, mittens, scarf, and hat, with only my face peering out--and we braved the elements to drive to the hospital.

Uncle Bert, Aunt Francis, and I shuffled inside his room, looking like humans that had just been magically released from the confines of snowmen.  I glanced at the innumerable machines and monitors, blinking and beeping.  The only one I recognized was the heart monitor, which kept a lazy rhythm to his barely-perceptible pulse.  Inhaling, I almost gagged on the smell of ammonia and stale urine.  Uncle Bert and Aunt Francis stood at a respectful distance, allowing me space to say goodbye.

I finally forced my gaze to the bed.  I wanted to see him suffering, dying inside--just as I had died inside so many times because of him.

Could this shriveled half-person, sunken into the bed, slowly being erased, possibly be the monster in the living room, the one I feared for so long?

"Why don't you go up next to the bed and put your hand in his?" Aunt Francis suggested.  My fear of arousing any suspicion forced me to do as she asked.  I could have taken that gnarled hand, with protruding bones and indigo-blue veins, that hand that did unspeakable things to me, and crush it in my smooth, strong one.  Instead I hovered my hand over his, without making contact.  I bent my head low so no one could see my face, and I glared at him.

His eyes slowly opened.  They were vacuous, light blue depths.  I took his hand in earnest, hoping that if I did he would look at me and see the hatred in my eyes.  No response.  He was already dead inside.

Giving his hand a gentle squeeze, I let it slide back to lie motionless on the bed.

About the Author

Amanda C. Bauch, writer and teacher, received an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University.  Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared online in Tattoo Highway, Bent Pin Quarterly, The Hiss Quarterly, and Writer Advice, and a memoir piece was published in the book Tainted Mirror: An Anthology.  She also won an honorable mention in the 2007 Writers' Workshop of Asheville Memoir Contest and second place in the 2006 Lantern Books Essay Contest.  Her current works-in-progress include a young adult novel and a memoir....

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