My father, Tony Martone, died late Tuesday night. It took awhile for the funeral home to arrive and fetch the body. I sat on the floor in the hallway outside the room where the Tuesday before he had fallen on the way to the shower. He was still trying to use the walker then, and he fell backwards, away from it into my arms, and then I fell with him, down to the floor where a week later I was waiting for the funeral home to come collect the body in the bed in room 216. And they did eventually. By then it was the next day. After they left, we collected the few things we had moved into the room to leave, leaving it even emptier. I cleared the things from the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. He had his shaver there. He had been shaved a day before he died, and I had slapped on a drop or too of the Old Spice, an almost empty bottle to be collected there too. He always liked Old Spice. And I always liked the ivory tusk-shaped bottle with its little stopper. The faked scrimshawed clipper ship up on step sailing away. I popped the head off the razor before putting the odds and ends into the Dopp kit. Beneath the shaving heads the gray dust clump of his whiskers. My grandfather, Tony, I always called Grandpa Moosh. He was blind and seldom shaved, and when I was little he would take my hands and rub them over his throat and cheeks--Moosha, moosha, hed say. Earlier that night I had rubbed my fathers face, moosha, moosha, I said stirring the scent of the Old Spice, the broken accent of Grandpa Moosh. The cloud of whiskers slipped from the razor, spilled into the white white porcelain of the sink, an ashy nautical chart, an old newspaper photograph, pencil lead, steel filings, storm clouds. Out in the empty room, the room was being emptied. I turned the water on and watched the residue of all those daily rituals drain away.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Apr 2014 19:34:26 +0000
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