The Top Winds Down

It has a lovely body, with legs so short and thin. When it gets all tired, it drops and then I win! Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, with leg so short and thin. Oh dreidel, dreidel, dreidel, it drops and then I win! "What do you want to do today?" I asked Mr. Top last Thursday morning. "Die," he said. "Do you really want to die?" I asked. "No," he said quietly and uncertainly, implying that he did. We have run out of things to talk about over the past ten months, and I am not chatty. As family, my company is no longer terribly exciting. So we pass what meals we share in relative silence. I love it when enthusiastic visitors come. They lift his spirits. He soaks up energy from others like Sponge Tom Lumpy Pants. He loves people. Mr. Top's legs are thin, though his belly lops down over his thighs, a belly that is now primarily extra skin, left over from weight loss, weight loss due to loss of appetite, loss of appetite due to loss of appetite for life, loss of appetite for life due to . . . loss, lots of it, over many years. And his dreidel of a body is lovely. It is almost 93 years old, exhausted and crippled, yet the skin under his clothes is smooth, and the gentle spirit this body houses ennobles his flesh. I want him to have a stroke in his sleep, perhaps tonight, so he can exit this world silently and peacefully. But Mr. Top is tough, pound for pound one of the toughest man I have ever known, the equal of my own father, and my grandfather, Mr. Top's father. "I'm a tough little guy!" Mr. Top often says. He's right on both counts. He is a tough little four-feet-ten, 115 pound guy. And that toughness is working against him now. I am not so tough. What's tough is spending these difficult last days, weeks, perhaps months with Mr. Top as he fades and rallies. As a confirmed existentialist, I want his heart to beat every beat it can beat. Life, even a profoundly diminished life, is worth living . . . no? As a nephew who sees how difficult is is just to eat, I hope for that timely stroke. When this dreidel drops I win some freedom. I will leave St. Louis for a different place, perhaps return to Santa Fe, Taos, San Francisco, or Denver, with no more responsibility for meals, appointments, hanging out, and shopping for another. I don't like St. Louis much, though I have met some lovely people here. And when this dreidel drops I will lose the last remnants of my father's world, a world I have always identified with. My son, daughter, and I will be the last Pattersons of this line. I find it charming that if another Patterson is born, he or she will be half Vietnamese. My grandfather would probably not have found that charming in the least, though I can't be sure. If he had the chance to meet Van, my son's wife, I think he would be quickly won over. So, on that Thursday night, the day he said he wanted to die, he went to bed for four days. He had pretty much stopped eating a few weeks before. I was sure it was the beginning of the end. But it was more like Chief Dan George's death scene in Little Big Man.  Tuesday he asked to be gotten up and he had breakfast. The same on Wednesday. Yesterday we went to Red Lobster after an appointment with his dentist. We waited for our food and he said "Are there any Red Lobster's in St. Louis?" "Yes," I said. "In fact, we are in one right now." "Oh," he said. It took him ninety minutes to eat six tiny scallops. Yet today he has slept almost all day. Last night one of his outstanding caregivers, Nina, brought her new puppy with her. Mr. Top loves puppies. Who doesn't? She had named him Tom, after Mr. Top. Because she loves Mr. Top. Part chiwawa and part shih tzu, he'll certainly be tiny, and undoubtedly tough. Mr. Top has a wonderful doctor, a dear and gentle fellow originally from Gatlinburg, Tennessee who just lost his own father. When we visited him Tuesday for a checkup he said to Mr. Top, in a direct yet loving way, "You are fading. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know. I can't tell you how long you have got in days or weeks or months, but we will probably not be having a conversation a year from now. Be gentle with yourself, and do what you can to enjoy the days you have left." He was likely correct, and he could not have delivered the news with more tenderness. But no amount of compassion can cushion such news, even when you already know it. We want to die and we don't want to die. And Mr. Top, tough fellow that he is, and not really wanting to die, took it as a challenge, I think. He has since rallied. He has rebelled against this news. But it is news that ultimately will brook no rebellion. Not from any of us. So, day by day, breath by breath, crime show by crime show, he lives. God, possessing a demonstrably ironic sense of humor, may deliver a heart attack or a speeding truck to take me out before be delivers a stroke to Mr. Top. That is certainly God's prerogative. But the Top is winding down. The dreidel is going to drop. And I will not win. There are no winners or losers in this game, only mortals.