He’d ignored his doctor’s warnings, the diet, the exercise, everything to ease back from a diagnosis of congestive heart failure. Not exactly come back, as I understood it, there was no coming back. But to improve his overall quality of life, not shorten it.
But for some reason, it was my fault, my fault he was sick, his heart a tea kettle screaming warnings. Maybe I shared the blame, leaving him six months before he died with a broken heart.
But there was so much leading up to that moment when the moving van arrived in front of the house; he slept, refusing to believe what was happening.
For one birthday I’d purchased an at-home blood pressure machine when they weren’t easily available, an extra-large cuff suitable for his wrist, a read-out in clear letters, contained in a black nylon bag with a zipper to store its parts. A nice guy thing. He opened it, and removed the bubble-wrap.
“Are you trying to tell me I can’t take care of myself?”
“I thought it would help you monitor your blood pressure.” I didn’t understand why he couldn’t understand a simple gesture.
And even when you don’t’ like a gift, I thought, wrong size, wrong color, wrong choice, wasn’t it typical to at least thank someone? Instead, he threw the wrapping in my face. And despite my sense of personal woundedness, I didn’t get the logic. Why wouldn’t he embrace the convenience of not driving to the hospital twice a month for a read-out? Two negatives don’t equal a positive.
The blood pressure kit remained in his desk. Weeks later, he quietly began to use it, didn’t want me to know.
I joined him for exercise, a walk around the track at a nearby soccer field where we could breathe the scent of eucalyptus, admire the Rastafarian strips of bark. A simple thing. Even the way sunlight dappled the leaves. But he stayed several feet ahead of me as if in between parking and beginning our walk, I had been sprayed by a skunk. So many small things piling up.
It felt like a stubbornness, a wish to see if he could do everything possible to outwit the final outcome and claim victory. After being hit with congestive heart failure, he was diagnosed with diabetes, gout. The doctors told him to stop drinking.
But he was a Faustian character, that big, that talented, a scholar related to one of the celebrated noble families who’d served in czarist Russia, and about whom a famous poet once told me that if I ever returned to Moscow, I’d be given “a free house and honors.”
Maybe his DNA rankled in knowing he was surrounded by plebians in his work life who couldn’t appreciate his princely heritage. It’s hard to say. All conjecture.
Only before I found him dead and blue in his bed, I wanted to tell him one more time, “I really loved you.”