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Moses
by
Pamela Tyree Griffin
Moses just HAS to answer the door himself, oxygen tank and all. His wife is in a
back bedroom likely shaking her head. She never comes to the door and so I have
learned to wait for as long as it takes.
I'm used to waiting. Moses is my friend though we've met solely due to his
infirmity. I'm a volunteer at the "Peaceful Bridge" Hospice.
After about ten minutes, the door opens. There he stands smiling in his
toothless, glad to see me fashion. Our visit may last ten minutes or it may last
all afternoon. Moses, a man dying, decides.
Today is a good day because he has taken out his weathered deck of cards saying.
"Girl you ready to get beat?"
"Yeah Right," is my reply.
" By my calculations, "he wheezes," you owe me close to $222,000.Lucky for you
I'll be long gone before you can pay!"
We laugh. He's not uneasy about his cancer and never has been. When I first met
him, he told me that I shouldn't worry about him-that everybody dies just not
everybody knows when. In fact, he's lasted longer than predicted. One more month
he'll have to be removed from Hospice. If you haven't passed away in six months-
you gotta' go.
Moses sits on his recliner with a colorful assortment of pillows supporting his
back. He's got to rest a minute.
He's a big man although not as big as he used to be, judging by the pictures
around the room. I don't know if he has some dentures lying around somewhere
which don't fit his shrinking gums. In his pictures he's a big, teddy bear of a
man with arms like logs and a wide white grin.
Moses has a little multi purpose folding tray in front of him. The tray does a
bunch things: holds his food and medicines, his tv guide and sometimes his comb
and brush. Once I came here and he had one swollen, dry foot up on the tray. Now
though, everything is cleared except the single picture of him, his wife Pearl
and their baby.
It's a studio portrait. It's never far from sight. Moses looks to be in his
twenties wearing a seersucker suit. Pearl, who seems to be using all of her
strength to hold the baby, is a handsome woman. Her straw hat partially hides
her face but her eyes are shining.
That's the closest I've come to seeing Pearl. When I visit she is either out or
in one the back bedrooms. She has never once opened the door. If I want
anything, I get it myself. Not that I mind- it's just that I feel like an
intruder, a trespasser in their domain.
"She thinks you is death itself girl," Moses said to me once. " Like seein' you
is bad luck or somethin'"
I have never seen their son either.
Rested, Moses shuffles his cards so we can play 21. I think the deck is fixed
because I've never once won and he always insists on dealing.
We play for an hour or two. Throughout Moses likes to watch videos, usually
westerns starring Jack Palance or John Wayne. He's already won several hands and
is finally tired of playing with a fool girl like me. Usually he falls asleep
right about now and I leave.
Today though, he's wide awake and is standing. "You wait here while I make a
deposit, girl." The first time he said this to me I thought he was going to the
bank. In reality he was going to the bathroom but just didn't want to say it.
The toilet flushes, the door opens and then there is that horrible crash.
I'm not supposed to lift Moses, instead I put a pillow under his head and call
911. He's breathing okay and talking fine-making perfect sense. In his ramblings
he has told me about Little Moe, who I thought was a grown man somewhere.
As it turns out, his baby son died the same day the portrait was made. As they
left the studio, he broke free of his mother's hand and ran ahead of his parents
on his fast three year old legs towards God knows what. He tumbled off the
sidewalk and landed under the wheels of an old, green Chevrolet which mashed his
head. Pearl has not spoken one word since that day. Not one.
My friend Moses died during the night in the hospital.
Some weeks later I received a box in the mail. The return address label said
Pearl and Moses Dawn. I didn't open it right away, preferring to look at the
name Moses Dawn for a while.
When I finally did open the package, I found wrapped in tissue paper, Mosses'
deck of cards and his favorite picture of his little family. No note. Nothing.
Pearl had decided to speak to me after all. Moses would have liked that.
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