Susana Moreira Marques - Now and at the Hour of Our Death

is he breathing?

I’ll spend hours like that. When the phone rings, I shudder. When it doesn’t ring, I just stare at it

it’s going to ring.

I’m fixated on things — it’s crazy. I think

I’m just here, relaxing, smoking my cigarette and drinking coffee, and right now my mom might be screaming by his side.

I’m scared of enjoying life while all this is happening. My mom knows to call me immediately. And I can’t stop planning the trip back. I’m obsessed with that moment. I’m both scared for it to happen and just waiting for it to happen. I tell my son

get everything ready, we might have to leave at any moment, pack your bags, grab some clothes, ’cause when I call you, no matter what time it is, even at night, I’m going to come pick you up.

I’m also drilling that sense of urgency into him to see if maybe he’ll realize he’s going to lose his grandfather. When I lost my grandparents, I didn’t even blink. I tell him to call his granddad, I tell him

watch out, ’cause the day you feel like calling him, he won’t be around anymore.

Like everyone, I think I love my father more than other people love theirs.

I love my dad so much I’d do anything for him. I’d give my life for him. But there’s nothing I can do. It’s horrible because I like fixing everything. I was never the kind to throw in the towel. I’ve always managed to find an answer to everything. But what’s that worth? He’s always had an answer for everything, but not for this. Neither do I. We think we control everything, but we don’t control anything at all.

‌Elisa

The nurses realized it was almost time, so they called my sister and me. We made it. We even got to spend a day and a half with him, except he was already unconscious — I mean, sedated. Everyone was ready for it to happen, everyone but me. I just sat there, acting like nothing was happening, cracking jokes. And when it happened, my mom and my sister started screaming. And I couldn’t react. It must have been two months before I cried. It’s really hard for me to cry. And now I’ve finally started crying, but only because I’ll get all worked up over something minor, and then I might cry a little out of frustration. But when it happened — and the atmosphere at our house was just so strange… It took me a long time to realize what was going on.

And those memories are so awful. The worst ones are from the last days. I’d almost rather not have seen anything. They’ve got nothing to do with him. It’s not the same person. I can’t erase them and I can’t deal with them either. I see my dad, sick and suffering — he’s stretching his fingers, wracked with pain, screaming. It was hard for me to believe it was that bad. It was always hard for me to believe he was in pain. These days, when I’m in pain, when my knee hurts, for example, I’ll feel that pain and then I’ll start imagining it being much more intense, and all over my body. I beat myself up a lot. I try to imagine how it feels… When I lie down, when I’m in bed, I wake up in the middle of the night and my body is half-asleep, still half sleeping, and right then, when my body’s like that, I start picturing what it must be like to feel that way for a full twenty-four hours, then another twenty-four hours and another twenty-four hours… I try to feel what he felt.

And what was going through his head?

It haunts me so, so much:

what does someone who’s dying think about?

does he believe he’s going to die?

does he believe it all the time?

is it a constant thought?

isn’t it?

does he try to kid himself?

what happens?

how does he see other people?

does he try picturing what everyone else’s life will be like?

does he think about what he’s going to lose?

I can’t really picture death, much less when it comes to my dad. But now I have that image of him lying there stretched out, white and cold and so different to what he was really like. And then they go pick up a coffin and they put your person in the coffin. And that’s so strange to me. All I wanted was to hit the man who took the coffin away. We’re so medieval about it. Death itself seems medieval. You put a person in a box. And he’s in there, all bunched up. Just there. And then the old women come see him and kiss him and pray and cry. I reacted very badly to having other people see my dad. I didn’t want anyone to be there. I saw all that mess… It happened at home, in that little room where his bed was, that was where… And the man, he brought in a coffin, but the first coffin was too small and so he was standing around there, with my dad… Then they went to get another coffin and they were just walking around like that! They went to pry him out of the first coffin and put him in another one. All I could do was watch them and think to myself, that’s a coffin and it’s small, and then they went and got another one. And then they set everything up, and they held what people call a wake. And my dad spent the whole night there. In my head, we all went to bed and my dad was sleeping, too, and everything was alright. I just couldn’t acknowledge it, even after everything I’d seen. But the worst part, the absolute worst, was when they came to pick him up. They came in and it felt as if they’d just stopped by to pick something up from a store. These are the images I live with. It’s the same day after day, they come by and say ‘it’s time,’ and they take him.

‘It’s time?’

When they came to take him away, my world collapsed. I saw the hearse outside and all those people on the street and it was just horrible… I had this urge to hold him, to hold my dad… And that’s when I realized what had happened. He made this sound… And the air inside him went into my mouth and I almost threw up. That’s when it clicked. Because I don’t really just accept things, I never have, like, my whole life. And at that moment, I got it.

They put up tripods in the cemetery to rest the coffin on. Since we’re not religious, we didn’t have a priest. Our friends spoke. It was really beautiful, more beautiful than anything any priest could’ve said — they never make any sense. First my dad’s friend spoke, then I did. I don’t know how, but I spoke loud, so everyone could hear me. From what I’ve been told, I was calm and I spoke well. I explained why there hadn’t been a mass and said something along the lines of: my dad’s religion was love and friendship and that’s all anyone needs to be happy.

My dad was put in a niche. I wasn’t about to let them put him in the ground. My dad — down in the ground like an animal? No. Niches, they’re nice and clean. They’re made of concrete and my dad really liked concrete. And they put the person at eye level. It’s clean. It’s still not a twenty-first century thing, but it’s halfway there. ’Cause something’s got to change. One day we’ll have to figure out a new solution.

In the next few days, I didn’t notice a thing, I did everything mechanically — I just went and dealt with everything

what needs doing?

what needs doing?

We needed to handle the paperwork and go to the funeral parlor and order letters to spell out his name on the niche and all those awful things you have to do. Clean the house. See who needs paying, check whether we owed the pharmacy any money, or anyone else. And then I went back to Ovar and my mom went with me. I went back to work. It was hard to go back to court, to face people. They’d come up to me and ask how I was and I’d tell them not to ask. He’d pop into my head from time to time, but I’d fight it. But after a while — that’s when it got really bad. I don’t know how long it took… The other day, I had to stop and ask myself when it had happened, because I couldn’t remember what day it had been. I know people normally memorize these dates, but I couldn’t remember the day — I couldn’t even remember the month