Memories in the Dark
Julian Lopez
Life is short. No matter how you picture it life will always be short. All memories of a lifetime are just that. Memories. Not being able to experience those again is what hurts the most. At least that’s how I felt. Walking through the different levels of the hospital has my mind wondering. Sweaty palms and tear stains on my sleeves tell the story. Walking up the stairs towards level two I get anxious. My stomach turns as if I was on a roller coaster that was always upside down. Walking through the doors of the ICU is a person’s worst nightmare, or second worse. Passing by the rooms on my left I keep my eyes straight. My pa always told me not to stare and avoid getting into the business of others. As I get towards the end of the hall, the lights begin to slowly dim. Walking out of the room is the head nurse. “Are you his son?” she asks me. Shaking my head without saying a word she escorts me into the room. I still have no words for what I had witnessed. My father laying in the bed, with no signs of waking up. On a ventilator is something that haunted me even for the days to come. Standing over the bed seeing my father clinging and fighting for his life is something I never thought I would see in my life. My eyes apparently could not hold back the inevitable. As the tears flowed, I tried to speak. I was hoping that he could hear me through the broken cracks of my voice. Each word becomes harder and harder to pronounce. Through the blinding tears, I could still remember the faint memories of him and me. Whether it would be watching games on the TV or spending hours of time and hard work on the field it was always something that I wish I had again.
One of the memories that live in my mind every day is a lesson he once taught me. We took a trip down Las Vegas for a baseball tournament. The night before we were supposed to leave, my brother and I started wrestling in our living room. Like all memories of siblings having fun, it quickly turned sour. Long story short my brother decided to rag doll toss my, at the time, 140-pound body onto the couch. However, the back of my left heel clipped the side of our coffee table, shaving most of if not all my skin. I remember the searing pain and the blood dripping from my heal. My father picked me up in his arms with the blood coming out of my heel and took me to the upstairs bathroom. The first thing that I had to do when we got to the bathroom was to pull the dead but still attached skin off. I remember how painful it was to be able to pull away the skin from still a fresh wound. As I did it, I felt the first sense of what it meant to be tough. The way we would fix injuries like this is by putting super glue and bond kicker on it to seal up the wound so we could go on with our day whether it was work or a game. That is exactly what my father pushed me to do. Still being the soft 13-year-old kid I was, the mixture of the superglue and bond kicker felt as if my whole foot was doused with gasoline and lit on fire. Running my whole foot under cold water helped relieve some of the heat. Throughout the tournament, before every game, we would apply the concoction onto my feel and wrap it in athletic gauze. It was hard to move throughout every game but somehow, I did it.
Still standing by my father's bedside, my eyes at this point have become a river flooding into the sleeves of my jacket. If there was one thing that my father had taught it was to be tough and to face the pain head-on. Whether it is emotional, physical, or psychological pain there is a way to get through it. I was tough by him that pain was just weakness leaving the body. With my dad's lifeless body lying there on the bed I felt a feeling of emptiness. As if my life had come to a standstill. One question that I keep asking myself is who is going to help me grow? Who am I going to run to if I need advice? I felt empty. As the clock strikes 7, the nurse starts to escort me out. Visiting hours have ended. Walking out of the ICU is almost as hard walking in. Leaving him there by himself feels wrong. It doesn’t sit right in my gut. The walk out of the hospital reminds me of the memories that were once a joy in my mind, now turned into sorrow.
One of the memories that live in my mind every day is a lesson he once taught me. We took a trip down Las Vegas for a baseball tournament. The night before we were supposed to leave, my brother and I started wrestling in our living room. Like all memories of siblings having fun, it quickly turned sour. Long story short my brother decided to rag doll toss my, at the time, 140-pound body onto the couch. However, the back of my left heel clipped the side of our coffee table, shaving most of if not all my skin. I remember the searing pain and the blood dripping from my heal. My father picked me up in his arms with the blood coming out of my heel and took me to the upstairs bathroom. The first thing that I had to do when we got to the bathroom was to pull the dead but still attached skin off. I remember how painful it was to be able to pull away the skin from still a fresh wound. As I did it, I felt the first sense of what it meant to be tough. The way we would fix injuries like this is by putting super glue and bond kicker on it to seal up the wound so we could go on with our day whether it was work or a game. That is exactly what my father pushed me to do. Still being the soft 13-year-old kid I was, the mixture of the superglue and bond kicker felt as if my whole foot was doused with gasoline and lit on fire. Running my whole foot under cold water helped relieve some of the heat. Throughout the tournament, before every game, we would apply the concoction onto my feel and wrap it in athletic gauze. It was hard to move throughout every game but somehow, I did it.
Still standing by my father's bedside, my eyes at this point have become a river flooding into the sleeves of my jacket. If there was one thing that my father had taught it was to be tough and to face the pain head-on. Whether it is emotional, physical, or psychological pain there is a way to get through it. I was tough by him that pain was just weakness leaving the body. With my dad's lifeless body lying there on the bed I felt a feeling of emptiness. As if my life had come to a standstill. One question that I keep asking myself is who is going to help me grow? Who am I going to run to if I need advice? I felt empty. As the clock strikes 7, the nurse starts to escort me out. Visiting hours have ended. Walking out of the ICU is almost as hard walking in. Leaving him there by himself feels wrong. It doesn’t sit right in my gut. The walk out of the hospital reminds me of the memories that were once a joy in my mind, now turned into sorrow.
Julian Lopez is from Albuquerque, New Mexico.