Read Online Exit Laughing by Victoria Zackheim - Free Book Online Page B

Cleave told us he was ready to die.”
    “Yes, he was,” said a woman who was standing next to the nurse.
    “I mean, he’d been suffering this damn cancer long enough, and he knew it was his time, and he had made his peace.”
    “Amen,” said someone softly.
    “Yeah, I made the best deal I could get, I suppose,” said Cleavon in his crackly voice.
    “He said goodbye to each one of us, and we hugged him and kissed him and told him how much we loved him. We were all sitting around on the bed by then. And he said that he was going to close his eyes and let the Lord take him, and we all nodded.”
    Cleavon closed his eyes as the story was rolling out, so as to give us the proper visual.
    “So, his eyes were closed and we each did our individual thing. Some of us, I know, were praying.”
    “And some of us were crying,” said the woman standing beside the nurse. “As quiet as we could be.”
    “It went on for a long time,” said the actor. “I mean, a real long time. Hours, it seemed. None of us wanted to say anything or do anything, ’cause we didn’t want to break the spell, y’know?”
    “I kept peeking over at the nurse,” said another friend, “but she just shook her head. ‘Not yet,’ she was saying.”
    The nurse nodded, confirming this part of the story.
    “And just when I thought I would burst from all the tension and the quiet and the waiting, I saw this one big eye popopen. Just one. You know, that hairy eyeball thing that Cleavon likes to do, all suspicious and surprised and scared, all at the same time? Like he’s saying, ‘What you doin’, boy?’ ”
    “And this big old eye flicked to the right and then it flicked to the left and it took us all in, one at a time. I was the first to go. I couldn’t help myself. I started laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe, I swear to God. Then everybody went. The nurse, Cleavon, everybody. It came in waves. We couldn’t stop it for the life of us. And in between the waves, we tried to catch our breath and hold our aching sides. And then it came again. I can’t tell you how long we laughed.”
    Two nights later, Cleavon passed, leaving all of us with the memory of his bringing down the house one last time.

INTO THE LIGHT
— Barbara Lodge —
    My father died first.
    When he tripped and fell in a parking lot, I figured he needed new shoes, so we got black Reeboks with extra tread. He wore them to work daily with his gray pinstriped suits, white button-down shirts, and black knit ties. “Trendsetting,” he would say, “stylish
and
comfortable.” He proceeded to buy them by the dozens to give to friends and family.
    Two months later, while wearing his new black Reeboks with that extra tread, he fell again. This time, he suffered lacerations on his face, warranting dozens of stitches.
    Several doctors’ appointments later, he was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. There was no cure. Victims usually die of respiratory failure within two years. Paralyzed. Unable to eat, speak, or move.
    Soon after his diagnosis, he invited me to breakfast; I loved having breakfast with my father. We sat on the same metal chairs with the same lemon needlepoint pillows, at the same Formica table, in the same sunny yellow breakfast room where we had eaten my entire life. It was a Saturday morning, my mother was out playing bridge at the club, and he was wearing his navy wool robe, flannel pajamas, and leather slippers. On this day, this usually dapper man looked disheveled. Aswe ate our eggs, he said, “I’ve been thinking: my work here is done.” I had to breathe and stay steady and calm, so I took his hand. Muscle spasms bumped up under his skin; tiny electric shocks signaling nothing good. His nerves were firing at random intervals, similar to the engine of a car sputtering before it wears out.
    He’d made up his mind.
    “Where I’m going is a happy place,” he said.
    “No,” I said. “It’s not time. You’re only eighty-three!”
    He assured me