Breaking My Father Out of the Hospice Unit to Go to the Italian Market

Even the magnolia was incredulous
at its bloom, the glass doors agape
behind us as we rolled him out,
still gowned, onto the blinding
sidewalk. Dad’s chair barely fit
down the aisles of amaretti, olives,
each pasta shape its own regioni,
the small store crowded and warm,
the owner accommodating with his
nods. We thought we could reach for
peaches or look into the murky
crock of escarole soup or stack
pizzelles and maybe get another
dozen years. We all did it: swabbed
bread cubes in oil and grabbed
that deliciously stubborn, broken
biscotti, working it long in the mouth.
What can I say except we’d taken
turns in a faded green chair for seven
days, sobs wedged in the solar plexus
like a vise, Mom on repeat: These people have a goal, my brother knowing the right
drug to keep Dad from becoming
sedated, and me finding the one willing
surgeon. I still feel the aliveness of that
precise moment we changed
our minds—that glimmer, that urgency
to celebrate, an effervescence that comes
from resolve. He died three long
years later. What I’m saying is forgive me, Father. Forgive me, Mother. I’m saying
what stays with me most is the swerving,
how we rolled Dad over winter’s new
cracks, around potholes of East Liberty,
skidding on the gritty spring ash, my brother
pushing, Mom, I think, to the left,
me to the right, the masses of bystanders
pointing, laughing, waving as we navigated
a park, a Wendy’s parking lot, the GetGo
gas station, workers with their thumbs up
smoking outside the back of a diner, but we
had to stay focused, tried not to look back,
and I can’t quiet those voices even now; even now
I still hear them: the wow, where do you think they’re headed? What are they doing? What the hell are they doing?