I don't know how I know it. I have fallen asleep in the lift chair Linda and Allen bought me six weeks ago. Linda said they needed to bungee cord it to the tail gate of her SUV and then Allen had to maneuver it up the hill and into the house. It is a comfortable chair and for the first time in a very long time, I feel like I could sleep. But Linda and Bonnie will be home from the beach soon and I want to see them before I go to bed.
I'm so tired though. So tired of the pain and the medication and the doctors. So tired that Linda needs to do so much for me. And my chair is just so comfortable. I push the remote and lean back as far as I can.
Then, even though my eyes are closed and there is a wall between us, I see Linda and Bonnie out front. They are just getting out of the SUV, dragging suitcases and a bag from Dolle's. Caramel popcorn. Linda has promised me some. She always remembers. Bonnie puts her bag in her red Civic parked out front and for a moment I think she will get in her car and leave. Come in, I think. Say good-bye. And maybe she hears me or maybe she loves me because she walks up the path with Linda and they open the door.
Now it gets really hard.
"Hello!" they say, and they drop their bags on the porch. "We're home!" They are at my chair now and I am trying to open my eyes and find my voice, but I cannot seem to move. I feel--well, I'm sure Linda could think of a better word for it--but I feel absent, like I'm not even there.
Bonnie shouts at me. "Dad? Daddy?" and Linda shakes my arm. I hear Allen coming down the stairs, Allen who went up to WaWa to buy me a soda and a pretzel a while ago then went upstairs to play a computer game. "What's wrong?" he says.
It gets really confusing now.
Linda grabs the phone and I know she is calling for help and she says she thinks I am not breathing, and I want to tell her that I am, too, breathing but then I think that maybe I am not. Bonnie continues shaking me and Allen gets a glass of water and pours it on my feet to wake me up and I want to wake up or maybe I don't want to wake up because sleeping or whatever I am doing is so nice.
Then there are people coming into the house and they have black bags and there are blue lights flashing outside and I think how they will confuse Allen and I want to tell them to turn them off, but everyone is talking, and Bonnie is crying, and Linda is controlled because she has had to be. There are cold things against my chest and people--paramedics, I guess--are pulling at me and one of them tells my wife and kids to leave the room.
I am warm. I am floating. I hear a voice. It is a little like a warm summer breeze and I know that no one else can hear it.
"Son," says the voice and it sounds a little like my dad and a little like Harry Callas, "it's time to come home."
And I want to say, "I am home. I have lived here with Linda for 44 years." But I know that it is not true, that this little house has never been home, and as the people--what are they called again? --are trying to bring me back, I am already gone.
