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Personal Narrative

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His eyes are made for the road. Two tornado blue irises meet the highway, looking past the smudges on his lightweight frameless glasses. He shifts his hands along the steering wheel, dodging what hurts most. Noting which movements prevent his worn hands from freezing into twisted positions like cream flowing into black coffee. He wheezes a cough. Loses stability. Regroups. Accelerates. On my seventeenth birthday, just ten days before the start of his annual westward journey, my dad was perishing—awaiting the arrival of a pill. His lifeline. Many months passed of waiting on a pharmaceutical company to cease passing the buck. Nothing. My father kept a calm air as my mother’s claws ejected. Persistence. The miracle drug arrived. Instantly he …show more content…

With my father’s health on the line as usual, life went on. I had been watching for years the maturation of my once young at heart father into a cynical senior citizen. “I don’t care what they say, it’s hell getting old,” he would reply to my earnest remarks about aging being a celebrated thing—a wealth of wisdom with a crown of silver. His outlook on life had always been realistic—and was then frightfully so due to the inescapable awareness of death. Each nap he took on the couch was one to startle my mother and I—each time checking the rise and fall of his chest—and hating the fact that we felt the need to …show more content…

My dad began a series of symptoms from a still-mystery virus. Projectile vomiting colored his face with pale green and guilt. The total lack of control and dependence on my mother struck him to his core—diminishing his pride. Severe rigors kept him from eating, drinking, using the toilet, and sleeping. His calm in spirit contrasted the fire inside my mother and I—infuriated that no lazy hospital bureaucracy would admit him, but only give him fluids. Useless fluids. My mother’s claws ejected once more—the mitochondria of my family. At last, he was admitted. My hatred for the hospital was founded inside the hospital itself. My father resided in a cramped white bed with too many veins stuck, too much skin exposed, and not enough care given. His permanent farmer’s tan was almost invisible, as there was no color showing through his rotten fruit skin. As much as I hated it for him, there was none who hated it more than he did. He kept his calm and brilliant composure with his ‘this too shall pass’ attitude. The days went by and his hatred and calm remained, while his attitude switched. Death was slinking in every corridor, making eye contact with everyone in room

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