The whole thing was written in something of a stream-of-consciousness style, starting with me dreaming and passing fluidly between different memories and stages in my life. The details of each event described come from a place of emotion rather than scientific exactitude...but that doesn’t mean the conversations/occurrences didn’t happen in some form or another. The following is the final memory I recorded, a hospital stay with my grandfather as he’s on his death bed. I appreciate reading things like this, because I dedicated my life to Christ in 2009, and since then I’m not plagued by the same kind of worry that my past is lost forever. Instead, I have come to have an appreciation for my past, but a comfort in know that it belongs behind me. The thing is, after I came to know Christ, I’ve become far more concerned with enjoying every second of the present, and working toward the awesome future He has laid out in front of me. Taking stock of everything, I feel evermore blessed by the way He has completely transformed my life...why would I ever want to turn back?
Excerpt from “Advice for Corinth”:
I blink hard, rubbing my eyes with my left hand as they adjust to the brightness of my new environment. My hand is squeezed again, this time by my grandfather. I’m in January of the year 2007, in Philadelphia, PA, in Hahnemann Hospital, in the Pulmonary ICU, in room 1259.
I’m in a chair situated as close as possible to the bed in the middle of the room—any closer and I’d be on top of it. My hand stretches through one of the wide holes of the railings on the side of the bed, which swing either up or down when the bed is in motion or stationary, respectively. Connected to my outstretched hand is a 92 year old man, my grandfather Vincent Panebianco. His eyes are open, even if slightly forcedly, and he is looking at me as intently as he can possibly muster. I glance up at the clock on the wall; 2:45. I turn my head slightly to the right, directing my gaze out the 12th story window. The usually immaculately white Philadelphia Inquirer building is draped in a happy green curtain, a novelty change of flood lights. The Eagles must still be well on their way to another Super Bowl bid—the second in what? Four years? Somehow, I have my doubts of their chances.
Perched far above the milieu undoubtedly bustling in this inner-city hospital’s ER and waiting room, there is the most distinct sense of peacefulness in the air. The darkness that rolls across the city outside muffles all of the nighttime sounds: of cars, of people, of helicopters, of airplanes swooping down to divulge their contents at Philly International, of trains crisscrossing our great city haphazardly, much like the ribbons of a May Pole. It is because of the darkness that, though the random car can be heard zooming down the Vine St. Expressway just at the foot of the building, they sound distant, detached.
Hannman Hospital
Sitting there in that hospital room with a man who had just recently endured respiratory failure and a subsequent breathing tube removal a few days later, I feel anything but. When my grandfather squeezes my hand a third time, it is as though I am really feeling his touch for the first time, just tonight. Like somehow, all those years I would hug him, kiss him hello and goodbye on the cheek, or help him around in the later years, I was really just handling what I perceived to be a glass doll—someone far too fragile to endure real correspondence, real interaction. After seeing what he endured since he got in the hospital, though, I feel comfortable squeezing his hand right back; firmly, as though he couldn’t possibly comprehend how much I loved him if I told him with words. I am putting all of my love in the palm of my hand, and when I squeeze his back, it diffuses into him and he just knows.
His wrinkled, whiskery tan face twists up into a comforted smile.
“You tired, Pop?” I ask him, looking into his chestnut colored irises surrounded by eyeballs that were not white, but rather yellowing with age, discolored by the many sights those two eyes have beheld in 92 years. The room lay inconceivably silent. The hallways are absent of any doctor discourse or tittering of nurses to and fro. The only sounds that permeate the stillness of the night air are the random smooth zoom of a passing Expressway car, the airy sound made by my grandfather’s breathing, amplified by the oxygen machines he is hooked up to, and the beating of our hearts. The beating of his that I watch and listen for all day and night long, the constant ebb and flow of green mountains on the monitor to the left of the bed. The beating of mine that he listens for in the stillness of the night, once I can no longer endure and have finally surrendered to slumber. The beating that lets each other know that we are still there.
My grandfather nods his head. “Yeah,” he finally manages to offer as a response to my question. His voice, even for a man of his age with emphysema, is raspy and hard to grasp, like the hissing sound of vapors escaping an opened hot water heater pipe.
“I know, Poppy. Do you want to go to sleep? You don’t have to wait up for me,” I hold up the object in the hand he’s not holding, “I brought a book to read this time. See?”
“No…I’m gonna stay awake with my boy,” he whispers hoarsely.
“OK. Is everything alright, then? Are you comfortable? Warm?” I say, issuing a line of questioning that I would repeat many more times, always trying to do what is physically possible to take away from the great amount of pain and discomfort he is already in.
“A little…cold,” he admits, hesitantly. He always hated bothering people. He was self-sufficient and lived alone until he was midway into his 91st year. Getting up from my sedentary post, I grab an extra white cotton blanket from the closet in the far side of the room, returning to drape him in it and tuck him in around the sides. I tuck him all the way in, all the way around his body, shielding him from the harsh coldness that travels the hospital’s nighttime halls, creeping under closed doors, surrounding patients, engulfing them. I do my best to make sure that he always feels an unmitigated warmth.
“How’s that for ya, Pop?”
He nods his head, his face again turning upward into his twisted, contented smile. His eyes are soft and seemingly twinkling as he looks up at me, standing next to his bed. I take my seat once again, taking hold of his hand as well.
“Something on your mind?” I ask.
He waits a second, and again he nods his head.
“Are you…scared?”
Another nod, slower and more deliberate this time.
“I know, Pop. There’s no need though. Look what you’ve been through this past week. I’m not going to lie to you, when we brought you in here last Wednesday, I was terrified. You probably don’t remember, because you were completely unresponsive, but one minute you were with us and,” I stop for a second, trying to hide my emotion. My grandfather understands, a sober expression on his face. “Well, it doesn’t matter. You are with us. It amazes us all how strong you are, Pop. You hear them all, all the doctors and nurses that pull us out the room so you can’t hear them talk about you. They say you’re a miracle case,” I smile broadly, my eyes still wet from the unintended outpour of emotion, “but who didn’t know that, old man?”
He shares my smile, nodding back once again.
“So, you still scared?”
“A little,” he growls in his gruff drawl, his throat still sore from that recently departed breathing tube.
“I don’t blame you,” we sit in silence for a while, him still staring at me intently, me gazing down to where I’m holding tightly onto his hand. “You know what, though? I haven’t a doubt in my mind that everything will be OK, no matter what happens.”
“Me too.”
“Listen to me, talking like I have some authority on the matter,” the smile returns to my face. “We both know that it’s not up to me, or mom, or dad, or Uncle Jimmy, or even that army of ignorant doctors out there. It is between you,” I say poking my pointing finger gently on his chest. “And Him,” raising my finger toward the sky. “No one else.”
He nods again. I can tell that he is beginning to feel more at ease. His breathing is becoming more natural, more relaxed.
“And, Pop,” I say, his calmness rubbing off on me, “whenever it is that you two decide that it’s your time to go, don’t be afraid. You’re not going anywhere. Don’t think of it as dying…think of it as going home.”
“For now,” he finally musters the energy to say, “I’m still staying here with my boy.”
“Well, I’ll be here as long as you are, old man.”
His eyes twinkle as his heavy eyelids begin to slowly drift shut. He is visibly tired—I had witnessed an entire day of him getting prodded, poked, flipped, turned, squeezed, and stuck by a legion of faceless doctors and nurses.
“Go ahead, you rest up, Pop. You‘ve got a lot more to go through before we get you out of here.”
“Chi che cambia la strada vecchia per la strada nuova, sa che ha lasciato ma non sa che lui trovera’.” He who changes the old road for the new, knows what he left behind but doesn’t know what he’ll find.
He nods his approval, happy to have imparted some ancient family wisdom upon me.
“You see, Pop,” I say softly, “today wasn’t so bad. You could do for a few more days like this. I know I could.”
My words were left to his subconscious perception, however, because his eyes are closed and he is now fast asleep, snoozing off the turmoil of the day with words of comfort fresh in his mind.
I sit there, watching him sleep for some time until the droll of his amplified, oxygen-supported breathing overcomes me as well. I fall into a solid slumber, my head lolling against the headrest of the chair, my hand still in his.
I lie there awhile, seemingly sinking more and more into the cushioned seat of the reclining chair I’ve accommodated myself on. Soon though, the sounds of my grandfather’s breathing fade away, and I am left only with my own. I stretch out further and further on the reclining chair, so much so that after a while I am completely sprawled out, on my back. Coming out of my dreaming state, I squeeze my fingers tight into my own hand, yet feel nothing in it. I feel a weight building up on top of me, an overpowering warmth returning to my body. I squirm against the two quilts I find myself under. Rolling over once again onto my back, my hands make their way up from under the covers to rub my face. I open my eyes, the faint dawn light is pouring through my curtains. I sit up in bed, removing the blankets. The nighttime cold has since retreated in the hazy sunlight of the morning. I swing my legs out from under the covers and plant them on the floor, looking out the window next to my bed. Cozy beams of sunlight filter in, laying strands of light across the floor.
I make my way over to the window. A more perfect day one could not find. I press my head against the pane, gazing upward into the clear sky through which the sun is making its ascent. “Cherish every day He gives you,” I think to myself. “Let us eat, drink, and be merry; for tomorrow, we die.”
1 Corinthians 15:32
