Fear Nothing

impossible for me to choose depression, despair, and a reclusive existence.
        My mother died suddenly. Although I know that she understood the profound depth of my feeling for her, I wish that I had been able to express it to her adequately on that last day of her life.
        Sometimes, out in the night, on the dark beach, when the sky is clear and the vault of stars makes me feel simultaneously mortal and invincible, when the wind is still and even the sea is hushed as it breaks upon the shore, I tell my mother what she meant to me. But I don't know that she hears.
        Now my father - still with me, if only tenuously - did not hear me when I said, “You gave me life.” And I was afraid that he would take his leave before I could tell him all the things that I'd been given no last chance to tell my mother.
        His hand remained cool and limp. I held it anyway, as if to anchor him to this world until I could say good-bye properly.
        

    * * *
        
        At the edges of the Venetian blinds, the window frames and casings smoldered from orange to fiery red as the sun met the sea.
        There is only one circumstance under which I will ever sunset directly. If I should develop cancer of the eyes, then before I succumb to it or go blind, I will one late afternoon go down to the sea and stand facing those distant Asian empires where I will never walk. On the brink of dusk, I'll remove my sunglasses and watch the dying of the light.
        I'll have to squint. Bright light pains my eyes. Its effect is so total and swift that I can virtually feel the developing burn.
        As the blood-red light at the periphery of the blinds deepened to purple, my father's hand tightened on mine.
        I looked down, saw that his eyes were open, and tried to tell him all that was in my heart.
        “I know,” he whispered.
        When I was unable to stop saying what didn't need to be said, Dad found an unexpected reserve of strength and squeezed my hand so hard that I halted in my speech.
        Into my shaky silence, he said, “Remember…”
        I could barely hear him. I leaned over the bed railing to put my left ear close to his lips.
        Faintly, yet projecting a resolve that resonated with anger and defiance, he gave me his final words of guidance: “Fear nothing, Chris. Fear nothing.”
        Then he was gone. The luminous tracery of the electrocardiogram skipped, skipped again, and went flatline.
        The only moving lights were the candle flames, dancing on the black wicks.
        I could not immediately let go of his slack hand. I kissed his forehead, his rough cheek.
        No light any longer leaked past the edges of the blinds. The world had rotated into the darkness that welcomed me.
        The door opened. Again, they had extinguished the nearest banks of fluorescent panels, and the only light came from the corridor from other rooms along its length.
        Nearly as tall as the doorway, Dr. Cleveland entered the room and came gravely to the foot of the bed.
        With sandpiper-quicksteps, Angela Ferryman followed him, one sharp-knuckled fist held to her breast. Her shoulders were hunched, her posture defensive, as if her patient's death were a physical blow.
        The ECG machine beside the bed was equipped with a telemetry device that sent Dad's heartbeat to a monitor at the nurses' station down the hall. They had known the moment that he slipped away.
        They didn't come with syringes full of epinephrine or with a portable defibrillator to shock his heart back into action. As Dad had wanted, there would be no heroic measures.
        Dr. Cleveland's features were not designed for solemn occasions. He resembled a beardless Santa Claus with merry eyes and plump rosy cheeks. He strove for a dour expression of grief and sympathy, but he managed only to look puzzled.
        His feelings were evident, however, in his soft voice. “Are you okay, Chris?”
        “Hanging in there,” I said.

----

    4
        
        From the hospital room, I telephoned Sandy Kirk at Kirk's Funeral Home, with whom my father himself had made arrangements weeks ago. In accordance with Dad's wishes, he was to be cremated.
        Two orderlies, young men with chopped hair and feeble mustaches, arrived to move the body to a cold-holding room in the basement.
        They asked if I wanted to wait down there with it until the mortician's van arrived. I