Elevation

Hah hah hah uhhha uhha haaaaaah.

The sound spells like laughter but it rakes through the old man's throat like cold air through a crack in the window. 

I listen for that sound the way I used to listen for silence when my kids were teacup-sized: Instinctively, hoping to avert trouble.

"Breathe through your nose."

If my voice sounds harsh, it's because I've said these four words at least forty times today and the knowledge that I will lose count of future repetitions is heavy.

Catching myself, I stop and try to practice a little of what I've been preaching. Letting a long stream of air soften my frustration, I start again:

"Dad, take long, slow, deep breaths through your nose. The machine is making the good oxygen you need. The room air isn't enough."

My father is attached to a machine that concentrates the oxygen from the air and feeds it to him from a lasso of translucent tubing. It irritates his nose and goes against every instinct he has to open a window and take long drinks of fast-moving air.

This is the new normal.

He doesn't live with me, but he's staying here while he ... convalesces.

We have no reason to believe there is a different word we should be using.

Still, it is not where any of us want to be. Complicated medical situations tend to send you on an unpleasant rollercoaster of emotions, going up and down, taking corners at jarring speed. It can be disorienting.

Everyone dies, of course. But we don't really get to choose the hill, let alone how close we'll get to the summit when that time comes. 

We don't know ... or even care to know ... how long that will be. Of course, we hope he stays for as long as necessary, but we will take as long as possible and count ourselves fortunate.

We have been fortunate.

"I'm the luckiest guy in the world," Dad tells his doctors as they help him struggle through the permanent effects of surviving lung cancer. "They found it when they could still cure it."

We knew that "cure" would come with caveats and complications that malinger: muddled thoughts, neuropathy, organ damage ... and other things that seem to come out of nowhere. 

I feel especially blessed he's so good-natured about the situation. Amazed, quite frankly, about how the darkest places make him focus harder on the tiny flickers of light. 

He's not angry at my frustration, nor is he deflated by the predicament of his child speaking to him in a parental tone. He just complies until his oxygen saturation returns and he is breathing more easily.

I relax when the panic in his voice is replaced by a story I've already heard a million times followed by a random question.

He's not a child, and my haranguing doesn't make me his parent. If anything feels familiar between caring for an elderly parent and caring for a child it;s how little confidence you have in either pursuit when you're just starting out.

"Don't get old," he tells me.

"I'd much rather that than the alternative," I sass back.

"Hey, do you have a rubber band anywhere?"