Daddy Don't Hit Me - May 11, 2007

By BC Woods

by bc woodsThe evolution of our species has been driven by constant war. As our ancestors entered the deadly game of competition that demanded the weak die and the strong survive, little by little the form of man emerged from chaos. Our simian ancestors, swinging from branch to branch endowed us with an appreciation of three-dimensional space. Half-human creatures lost in the fossil record, working with tools and communicating by sound gave us the precursors of logic and reason. A billion years of evolution, struggle, and upheaval has only recently given rise to a being with the ability to understand it and appreciate it all. My aunt Cynthia assures me that the sole purpose of evolving this sense of logic and reason is so that mankind can practice the extreme virtue of refusing to use it.

I was sixteen when we found out that my Grandfather was going to die. The man I had once described as a "lightning bolt made of human skulls" was running out of power, becoming a victim of ever-pervasive entropy. Cancer had worked its way into a few cells in his liver and had then gone on to consume the entire organ in its mad hunger for flesh. I had been at the side of his hospital bed for over twenty-four hours when my aunt Cynthia arrived. Dressed in a shawl she held a few crystals in her hand and had an ungodly amount of make-up on her face. She posited that she would succeed where "so-called" medicine had failed. Drawing upon some hitherto undefined "vibrations" emerging from the heart of the cosmos she would channel some similarly undefined "energy" to scour the cancer from my Grandfather's body. Such was the conviction and assurance with which she spoke that my Grandfather was actually compelled to temporarily look at her in between turning the pages of the sports section.

As machine blips and EKG spikes produced by over two-hundred years of rational thought monitored my Grandfather's vital signs, my aunt Cynthia placed her hands upon his body and began to hum. She was a student of the ancient Japanese art of "Reiki," which by the virtue of being ancient and Japanese was sure-fire cure to any disease.

"Knock it off Cynthia, I'm trying to read the paper," my Grandfather muttered.

"Dad, it doesn't look good. Your aura is turquoise." Cynthia bit her tongue in between her teeth, and hummed louder, no doubt shattering the psychic walls that lay between her and complete success by increasing the volume.

"Your aura is retarded," my Grandfather muttered, just loud enough for me to hear. I made sure to put a muffin in my mouth to choke the sound of laughter. My Grandfather turned to me and winked just as I swallowed. I hastily reached out to grab a pitcher of water, as I began to choke on a malevolent piece of blueberry.

As I coughed and pounded my chest in the background, my aunt Cynthia began to explain the exact rigors of the spiritual battle within.

"I've done all I can. The energy just isn't right. I have some crystals I want to leave with you."

"Diamonds and emeralds no doubt," my grandfather murmured, while positioning his glasses toward the tip of his nose to read a piece of fine print that had otherwise eluded him. Cynthia began to empty a set of small multi-colored quartz crystals on his hospital bed, explaining how each one would, again in some mysterious manner, "vibrate" the cancer right out of him. "What do you think, Dad?"

"Oil prices are going to rise, and they're going to keep rising for a long time," he flipped down the top of a page about world affairs and displayed a picture of an oil barge, in the open sea.

"About your illness, Dad," Cynthia put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips in agitation.

"I think I've got about three months." He folded the paper into his lap, and turned to me just as I was fully recovering from my forced Heimlich maneuver. "Hand me one of those muffins, BC. They look good."

As his aged canines and incisors mashed the foam-like structure of breads and sugars into smaller, more digestible bits, to be absorbed by the tissues of his dying body, aunt Cynthia railed against such filth. The food was "processed" and not "organic," which due to her inflection took on something of the characterizations of "evil" and "good." She explained, to our mutual horror, that the muffins we were eating even contained "chemicals." In fact, cigarettes also contained "chemicals" and since cigarettes were unhealthy and they contained chemicals, anything else containing chemicals must be similarly detrimental to an individual's health, by feat of a syllogism beyond the power of a mere human mind to understand. My Grandfather and I decided to spare her the knowledge that she was, in fact, composed entirely of chemicals, because we felt such a revelation might have compelled her to commit suicide.

In the end, my Grandfather went home, and spent the last few months of his life in the backroom, surrounded by hospice nurses, and crystals my aunt Cynthia had placed around him when he lost the ability to remove them. When I could, I sat by him and read a few books. Occasionally, I would see some sign that he was aware of my presence, and that was all I needed for an excuse to say. He had been there for me. I would be there for him. Every now and again, aunt Cynthia's faint hums of silent battles with magical forces provided a bit of music to interrupt the monotony of the dying.

In the end, despite the assistance a hundred cosmic vibrations, a thousand exchanges of "energy," and a million wishes that counted for nothing in the eyes of the universe, the torch of consciousness passed down to my Grandfather by a thousand generations of ancestors, back to the emergence of mankind itself, finally surrendered its last few embers and went dark. Aunt Cynthia continues to hum. The End.