Friday With Joseph

He lay there. His body, seemingly embalmed. The iceman. His skin, smooth, yellow, and leathery. Not a visible wrinkle, pore, or drop of sweat is seen. His mouth, open, taking in air with loud gasps, and pushing out with groans. A tanned adhesive strip covers his nose, holding a tube that goes through his nasal passage, down his throat, and into his stomach. His eyes, closed. His hair shines as if it were a thin black rubber hat with swirling gray pinstripes. His arms are decorated with pink, blue, and purple bracelets and doodads that feed him doses of morphine every thirty minutes. Hash marks with turquoise and forest green lines, allocated evenly over a pale green cotton gown, cover him from his heaving chest, down to his skinny thighs. His legs are slender. His feet are small.

My uncle is dying. Questioning what his fashion designers were thinking, or what fashion really is, or what the value of appearance is, seems trivial now.

"Oh, Jia Tseng. Did you come by yourself?" my aunt asked, as she got up off her makeshift bed (a chair and a footstool).

It's my day off from work today and I decided to visit my Uncle Joseph at the hospital. I haven't had much time to visit him since he was admitted and figured that today would be a good day since the doctors predicted his last day would be last Tuesday.

"He's not doing so well. He's restless and he hardly gets sleep at night," she explained as I slowly closed the authorized personnel only door behind me.

A few months ago, my Uncle Joseph was diagnosed with skin cancer. He went through chemo and surgery, but it his health hasn't improved.

"Your father just left a few minutes ago. Did you know?" she continues, trying to figure out why I came. "Is your mom coming?"

I hardly know my uncle. We never went fishing, or rode on roller coasters together, or whatever it is that uncles and nephews do, so my aunt's curiosity didn't come unexpected. We had never even been alone together until today.

"Back in Burma, he had a lot of friends. He'd go out all the time and do business or have fun. He misses it," my aunt gave up with the questions and we settle down beside him. "Over here, it's like he has no one. I mean he does have friends, but they live far from us.

"He gets lonely sometimes and he gets tired of the routines in this culture. Waking up, going to work, coming home, sleeping, and doing it all over again the next day."

It was during fall of '97 when I learned from my father that his younger brother's family would be coming from Burma to live here. When they arrived, they came through the door in a quiet manner; shy and smiling like most immigrants do when they come to America. I remember the strange looks of admiration I got from them. Especially from my uncle. It felt awkward coming from someone older than me, some one that I was supposed to look up to.

As I nod, confirming that I understand my aunt's broken English, I notice my uncle turning his head towards me and opening his eyes. And even though it might have only been a split second, I stared into his sick eyes for the longest time and saw something that frightened me before his heavy eyelids fell.

Then he said something I couldn't hear.

"He said something like you're the first in line. You'll have everything. He thinks that because he's lying in this bed, he has nothing," my aunt explained.

The morphine had not only eased the pain, but it also made him speak his dreams. He's been receiving doses regularly for a few days, but he demanded more and so the intervals were shorter now.

I sat down, trying to decipher what he just had said. It was the second thing that he had said since I closed the door. A few minutes earlier he asked my aunt if I was taking him home today. She said no, smiled at me with sad eyes, turned her head away, but maintained her composure.

During the nights, my aunt pushes the chair/bed closer so that she can keep an eye on him while they both try to sleep, but these recent nights haven't allowed any rest for either of them. His pain threshold has gotten lower. It's hard for both of them.

I offer to stay and look after my uncle while my aunt gets some much-needed rest. I observe the habitat more closely now.

It's a large room. Dim in all corners except for the bed holding my uncle. The light fixture is bolted to the wall directly above the bed, a normal hospital bed with two steel bars on both sides. The bars have tubes tied around it that lead to, and around his arms and head. On the other end of the tubes are pouches of IV fluid and morphine. The morphine is locked in a container that's also holding a device that makes sure he gets the allowed dosage whenever I activate it, which is every thirty minutes. It's quiet except for the faint monk-chanting coming from an obscured place. I would have asked my aunt where the sound was coming from, but I thought that would have been a stupid question, considering the situation. I would have asked her many things, if I hadn't debated if they were appropriate or not in my mind.

And a lot of things have been going on in my mind since I stepped into that room. The questions, the past, the future, but mostly just concentrating on swallowing the sourness at the back of my throat and not showing any tears or worried faces. He caught me a few times though.

Now and then, his hands and legs would twitch a little, a sign of worse things to come. The twitches turned into spasms, which turned into loud groans and quick changes in body position, which turned into his questions about when the last morphine dose was. The only thing that could be done was to massage him. I started where it hurt most. His legs were narrow now. The cancer had devoured most of his body fat. I could hold the portion just above his ankles and have my middle finger and thumb touch. His thighs weren't much larger.

Sometimes he would ask for some water. He'd get up in a quick manner and sit with a slight crouch as if he wasn't tired, as if he didn't have cancer, as if everything was okay for a moment. And in that moment I thought, maybe he got better, maybe he was just faking it, and maybe I didn't have to look for that picture, but then I knew better.

When it was dinnertime, a nurse brought in two cups of warm water, an empty Styrofoam bowl, and a little pouch of instant chicken soup, which looked like something that came in a ramen noodle pack.

He swallowed a bowl full without stopping to take one breath. As he drank, the tube connected to his nose changed from brown to yellow and felt warmer in my hand as I helped him move it out of the way. The soup he just had, along with the ice cream and water he had earlier, were now all in one container on the floor.

One of my cousins came back and my aunt woke up from her short nap. They shooed me away, feeling bad that I stayed a while longer. They woke my uncle up to tell them I was leaving. When he opened his eyes again, I wasn't scared. They were the eyes I was used to. The sad ones, that were set just below his thin eyebrows. The ones that complimented his gentle smile so well.

He held out his hand and said thank you. I held it and smiled, and nodded, swallowing the sourness.

On the long walk back home, I thought of all the possible places I could have lost that picture. It was a nice photograph I took back when my uncle was not as sick. We all went to Tahoe for a day so my cousins, my uncle, and my aunt could see what snow looked like. It was a nice photograph. Trevor had Audrey on a piggy back, Christopher was holding a stick, trying to catch up with the rest of them, my aunt was right beside my uncle, who had those same eyes, that same look he would give me every time. In the background, snow, of course, trees, a stream, and a small wooden bridge that really looked like a broken boat. But the best part was the sun; it had just started to set. The lighting was perfect. A great picture.

Since I couldn't find it anywhere, I thought that I could paint what I could remember, but when I was in the art store, I realized I knew nothing about the differences between acrylic and oil. I wanted it to be good.

Still walking, I was approached by an elderly woman, who at first glance, looked like a homeless person. She looked terrified as she explained to me how a man standing a few feet away was going to steal her groceries. I asked her to point out whom she was talking about exactly.

"That man right there," she said in a frightened whisper.

The man was about as tall as I am. He looked a little tougher than me in that hoodie and with that scar, but I thought I could take him, maybe. The strange thing was that he seemed oblivious to what was going on and basically ignored the terrified women like she was a crazy person.

I offered to walk her past the man, but she said that she needed a cab instead. I looked around for one, but none were in sight.

"What about that bus stop right there? Do you want to walk that way?" I asked, wondering why she didn't do that earlier.

"No, I need a taxi," she said, still looking terrified.

So I went across the street looking for a cab, and surprisingly, she followed me, leaving her groceries on the corner, a few feet away from the man that was supposed to steal them.

"Hey! Hey! Man, look! That lady needs a taxi right there... Hey!" a man a half a block away shouted into an empty cab that was driving off. Apparently she had hired both of us suckers.

That man with the hoodie wasn't going to steal her groceries, and she wasn't terrified. All she wanted was a cab, but for some reason, taxi drivers don't stop for elderly African American women that don't dress well.

She had a brown shirt on, and a white skirt that looked like it was made out of pillowcases. The same material was wrapped around her head. Something the modern French would wear on the runway.

I thought about it as a walked away from the now fed up elderly lady/thespian and the other sucker. She couldn't get a cab because of her fashion sense. And she lied to get someone to help her because every other honest way didn't work. We have to be presentable in order get help in this image-obsessed world.

How lucky we are, to be able to cast death as some mythical creature that lives on the other side of the hill.

We work eight-hour cycles and come home everyday to earn money in this round world. Oh yes, we support our families and ourselves, yes. But we also buy Mercedes, and Armani. We look good in front of others; we laugh when it's not really funny, and we laugh when it's not funny at all. We emulate the celebrities on television, we speak with big words, we wear make-up. We avoid the fashion-impaired poor, the ugly sick, the creepy foreign. We conform and ostracize because it is easier. Safer. We are circles, we live forever, and the squares are the only ones who really die.

But we forget. From the moment we're born, we're living, but we are also dying. Do not fear death. It might come soon and unexpected, or hopefully, way down the line, but it will come. Death is not the opposite of life, it is an essential part of it. Find out what you value and be honest with yourself. Help others. Love each other. We may look different, and sound different, but we all feel. We all can love. Love is the only thing that lives forever.

The problem, Mitch, is that we don't believe that we are as much alike as we are. Whites and blacks, Catholics and Protestants, men and women. If we saw each other as more alike, we might be very eager to join in one big human family in this world, and to care about our own.

But believe me, when you are dying, you see it is true. We all have the same beginning--birth--and we all have the same end--death. So how different can we be?

In the beginning of life, when we are infants, we need others to survive, right? And at the end of life, when you get like me, you need others to survive, right?

But here's a little secret: in between, we need others as well.

--Morrie Schwartz

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