The Iron Man  

The iron man walked into my apartment yesterday.

Walked.

Up the icy walkway...through the front doors...into the building.... down a flight of stairs...and into the apartment.

Walked.

My father walked into my apartment yesterday.

I found myself falling into character as I rushed around the kitchen making him lunch. Filling the tiny apartment with incessant chatter about meaningless insignificances so as not to fall to my knees and weep before him. Spitting out stories about doctors who were wrong and waters that could heal him and made-up people who have beaten the odds just as he will as the iron man's desperation to believe me forced his nods of agreement. Lies painted upon an apartment wall to encase hope in a place where it has grown too thin to believe in it anymore. Made up people who have become as real to me as I have made them for him in this game of cancer roulette that nobody ever wanted to play in the first place.

It scares me how strange it is to see him without the wheelchair. His two-wheeled prison that I have somehow grown so accustomed to over the past nine months. My fear lies in my ability to have accepted it so easily. In my ability to pretend that I am not watching my father die as I dance in a crowded auditorium of illusion, the iron man's denial my only audience. For months I have wrapped him in blanket upon blanket of lies, frantic to shield him from the grips of his own mortality. Swallowing bullet upon bullet of inevitability to save him from his own terror. Learning to exist with my mouth wrapped tightly around the nozzle so as not to allow him to taste the venom of his truths.

My concept of normalcy has become jaded in my experiences over the past nine months. For normalcy has become jaded itself. Eroding bitterly from the moment the doctor showed us the black and white x-ray as we sat huddled in that cramped hospital bed. From the moment the iron man, the rock, the man of resilience, strength and absolute power crumbled before me. Crying into a white and blue speckled hospital gown as we smiled with upside down mouths and whispered words of comfort unable to allow ourselves to feel the horror that leaked from our tears and onto a camouflage floor.

He fell in the snow that night.

We had driven home from the hospital after midnight and for an hour, had forgotten. Laughing and listening to music, so relieved to escape from white lab coats and pastelled prison walls. But all too soon the van doors opened and reality blew inside. And down he went.

Falling down...falling down. The iron man is falling down.

Betty running frantically into the hotel for help, the banging of her panicking knuckles on wooden doors as I pushed and pulled and clawed at him, in vain, unable to lift him from the ground. The unforgiving snow melting through the flailing hands of a man that had once the strength to carry the world on his fingertips.

I remember the face of the man who helped us that night. An Indian man whose eyes met mine and understood before I spoke a single word. Still now I can remember the look on his face as he pulled my father to his weary feet, refusing to meet his eyes as if he knew the shame that bled from the crumpled man before him. He only touched my shoulder as I whispered my humbled "thank you", and vanished just as quickly as he had suddenly appeared.

And when I burst into the bathroom door minutes later, there the iron man lay once again. His pants half off, crumpled in the corner. Turning away in shame, his humiliation smashing into my very being. And try as I might, I could not get him back up again. My screaming fingers betraying me as I dragged him from the corner, begging my shaking hands to somehow find the strength.

Please God help me. Help me. Please God help me.

And so we crawled.

Him in front, sweat pouring from his defeated face as I pushed each limp leg forward, one agonizing movement after another as we made our way towards the bedroom. Willing myself not to comprehend the horror of the iron man crawling across the bathroom floor. Crawling. Crawling across the bathroom fucking floor.

Please God help me. Help me. Please God help me.

By the time we reached the edge of the bed, I believed in angels, even though I could not see them. For strength I did not know that I had pulsed through weary arms and helped me lift him up onto that bed. My calm threatening to unleash as trembling fingertips wrapped him in the blankets, silently begging God to will my legs to hold me as I turned off the bedside lamp. His bald, bronze face etched in a mould of terror as I stroked his bald head, lying that everything would be all right. Lying that he didn't have to be afraid. Listening to his sounds of exhausted sleep before I fell to my knees, bowed my head, and wept for the iron man on the bathroom floor.

The iron man walked into my apartment yesterday.

Walked.

Up the icy walkway…. through the front doors.... into the building…. down a flight of stairs...and into the apartment.

Walked.

My father walked into my apartment yesterday.

In a month from now, I might see him in his two wheeled prison once again. In a year from now, I will not see him at all.

But yesterday, he stood tall. He stood proud. Free from wheelchairs and chemo needles and mechanical bathtub chairs and morphine prescriptions. And I dared take my mouth from upon the nozzle. Dared to hope. Dared to believe.

To believe.

Because my father walked into my apartment yesterday.

And for today, that is all that shall ever matter.

© 2008 Keisha Grant