“Growing up in a small hamlet of 150 people feels like being on the moon in the middle of New York City. Both isolating and immensely exposing, childhood was going to already be interesting as a closet queer kid. However, when my narcissistic father got his first cancer when I was 12, my world existed through a broken telephone operated by the town gossips.
Finding a strange combination of support and judgement, my work is an examination of the long death of my father as well as a protest of existing in a falsified Norman Rockwell painting, such as Freedom From Want (1943) and Meeting of the Minds (Cellist and Little Girl Dancing) (1923). ‘Father Dearest’ combines my first love of theatre with the dark comedy of hospice care in a hamlet that knows both too much and not enough as I grapple with life two years later.”
A family eats dinner in a dining room. There are stiff family portraits hung on dark, ox-blood walls, old spiderwebs creating small connectors between them. A clock on the wall, dented on the edge, reads 7:33 pm. In the corner of the room is a blue armchair, stained with red wine, and a wary white dog nestled as far under the chair as possible, facing towards the center of the room. The dog breaks the fourth wall as she stares down the camera. The staring contest ends when JANE, 60s and exhausted, her posture defeated, enters holding a plate of food.
Here’s more, but you have to chew properly this time.
Mom . . .
Isn’t he actively dying? Why is he eating?
They won’t take him off the steroids.
Why?
He says he’s not dying.
What?
He’s too lucid. He still has control over his care.
That’s bullshit.
I tried.
Can’t hospice take him?
Didn’t you hear, he’s not dying.
But he can’t walk; he can barely sit up! He looks like a fucking snake.
I know.
Is home-care going to come more often then?
They can’t.
Silence as the situation washes over them.
The moment is interrupted by FATHER, still half asleep, loudly coughing and struggling. The family looks at one another, but no one moves, each waiting for someone else to instead. The choking continues. FATHER starts to wake up and, seeing this, the family rushes to help him.
LEX is sitting in an armchair, reading Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Beside her is a large, almost garish lamp that is casting a yellow-white light on her. There is a dent in the lampshade from a prior punch to it. The rest of the room is dark, aside from a matching lamp on the other side of the room.
Shuffling and banging, as well as FATHER’s angry voice, can be heard from the tv room where FATHER’s hospice bed is set up. LEX stops and looks up but returns to her book as it quiets. JANE walks past the room, heading to the upstairs of the house. She is obviously distressed.
Mom?
JANE waves her off, holding back tears. There is a red mark on her arm, which she holds close to her body. She hurries away. LEX sets the book on the side table and gets up, but the entrance of CADE stops her.
What happened?
Let’s go for a walk.
LEX and CADE are walking outdoors side by side. They’re in coats, their hands shoved in their pockets. Streetlights dot the sidewalk, casting variations of yellow and white light on the duo. Houses, spaced apart and sitting back on large front lawns, are dark. Their lawns are neat and clean, unlike JANE’s, which is overgrown.
The town clock, awkwardly sitting near the small town hall in the centre of the hamlet, reads 11 pm. CADE goes to sit on the town hall steps, while LEX stands, facing him.
Did he brag at her again?
CADE nods.
She can’t keep doing this.
Hospice can’t take him yet.
That’s bullshit.
I know.
She doesn’t deserve this.
I know.
He’s never going to go on his own.
No.
Why can’t we just . . .
Do it?
I know it’s a terrible thing to say—
No, it’s not.
Did you see Sasha?
I saw him hit her. With his wheelchair. She was looking cute in the kitchen and I just tried to take a photo and he got . . . jealous.
Fuck.
He hits mom too. Runs into the back of her feet on purpose.
He kept yelling at her for trying to help him into bed. And when she turned off the tv . . .
Shithead.
Abusive shithead.
He’ll die eventually.
Maybe.
He looks like a lizard.
Or a dried-up baby bird.
No no, like one of those flattened frogs Sasha always eats.
Hope your father’s still hanging on.
Thank you.
We’re all rooting for him. Good man.
Thank you.
CADE is sitting in bed, scrolling through Grindr on his phone. His phone reads 12 am.
He is in his modified childhood bedroom. There are hospital supplies piled around the room. Boxes labeled “OSTOMY” and “bandages.” Pamphlets for Fentanyl patches and orange prescription bottles sit on top of any flat surface in the room. An old walker stands alone in the corner by the door.
His phone dings with a Grindr notification, and he quickly turns down the volume. Down the hallway, a door opens and quietly closes. Footsteps pad down the hall. CADE sits up.
Mom?
Lex?
His phone dings again, and CADE slowly goes back to his phone.
JANE is lying in bed, asleep. Her room is messy, clothes thrown on the floor. Her own prescriptions are on her bedside table. Her bedside alarm clock reads 1:48 am. There are stacks of books around her, including books about grief, with the business card of the hospice placed on top of one stack. There are photos of CADE and LEX but none of FATHER. One photo has had FATHER cut out of it, the outline remaining.
Someone trips outside her door, and she startles awake. Footsteps bounce quietly down the stairs.
JANE gets up and opens her door, peeking around the door to look down the hallway. The other two bedroom doors are closed. She stares down the stairs. The dog is lying at the bottom of the stairs and stares back at her.
Come here, Sasha.
LEX is lying across her bed, staring at the ceiling. Her room is also a modified childhood room. An umbrella stand holding a variety of canes is by her door. A few of the canes have scrapes and paint scuffs; one is cracked. A couple of boxes of adult diapers are tucked into the closet. She picks up her phone. It’s 3:20 am.
She grabs an empty glass next to her bed, leaves the bedroom, and walks into the hallway to the bathroom. She refills the glass at the sink and sets the full glass on the counter near a tube of medicated ostomy cream. She opens the mirror cabinet in front of her.
The cabinet is filled with prescription painkillers and more ostomy supplies. A tiny corner of the cabinet, designated to JANE, holds an expired lipstick and a bottle of melatonin.
LEX grabs the melatonin, knocks a pill out, and pops it into her mouth. She turns and stares at the bathtub. There is a shower seat and handles on the wall of the bathtub at different heights. The bottom of the bathtub near the drain is heavily stained brown, and the drain has begun to rust. The stains have climbed up the bottom of the shower curtain.
She shuts the cabinet, grabs her glass and opens the door. Walking towards her room, she sees that CADE’s bedroom door is open. LEX stares at it for a moment. She debates going towards the room, taking a step, but changes her mind and walks back into her room.
Early morning light streams into the room. Heaps of dirty clothes overflow from a laundry hamper in the corner of the room. The clothing is heavily stained and has attracted flies. A clock by the tv reads 6:29 am.
The clock ticks to 6:30, and a phone alarm goes off. FATHER’s right hand clutches the phone, but he doesn’t move to turn off the alarm. Open pill bottles sit on the side of his hospice bed beside a glass of water. It is clear that the hospice bed dominates the room, the wall scuffed where the bed rests. The tv remote, damaged from blunt force, is by his side on the bed.
The alarm continues. JANE comes rushing in, still half-asleep and clutching her glasses in her hand.
Where’s the phone?
FATHER does not respond. JANE looks around before spotting it in his hand.
Peter, turn it off.
Sasha!
Peter!
FATHER’s mouth is a black abyss as it hangs open; he looks like a cheap Halloween decoration. His teeth are grey in places, subtly rotting. His neck is relaxed, and his head rests at an unnatural angle against the bed. His eyes are still slightly open but dull and unfocused. A funeral home worker zips up the black body bag, covering his face and shooing away a fly that has made his cheek its home.
The room is a bustle of activity. A doctor and a home-care nurse stand over FATHER’s zipped up dead body in the bed. They fill out paperwork and quietly chat. Two funeral home workers fumble with a gurney that refuses to unfold.
LEX, CADE, and JANE are sitting in the dining room, tea in front of them. They are quiet, still in their pajamas.
DOCTOR walks into the room, and the family looks up expectantly.
This happens. I know it’s not pleasant, but our estimates are just that: estimates.
He’s . . . dead?
DOCTOR nods and lets the knowledge sit in the air.
If you have the Expected Death at Home form, the funeral workers will be able to take him right away.
DOCTOR nods and lets the knowledge sit in the air.
If it’s any comfort, passing during sleep is the gentlest way to go.
DOCTOR squeezes JANE’s hand before walking the funeral home workers into FATHER’s room.
The family has not moved since that morning, except for spacing: they’re distanced from one another and playing Scrabble at the dinner table. There are bags of takeout stacked on the table next to them. The house is quiet, peaceful, soft light filling the room.
Every so often, someone looks up at the other two, scanning their faces. There is curiosity, wonder, but not fear of one another.
The dog is lying in the chair that she was previously hiding under, sleeping peacefully.
Photos of FATHER are in the small garbage bin on the front porch in the dark. His clothing sits in clear garbage bags, and the wheelchair sits next to the pile.
