An Empty Glass

It sits waiting for him.  The favorite glass for water, tea, milk, or whiskey.  Just on the same shelf.  In the same place, day after dreary day.  Always the first glass he reached for when needing to quench a special thirst.  His glass.

He liked lots of ice in the tea.  No ice in the water.  No way to have milk with ice unless it was sweetened with sugar and some vanilla.  That combination was almost like an ice cream shake.  Depending on the type of day he had at work whiskey was sometimes straight.  A good day at work?  He would add a few cubes of ice and maybe a smokey curl of orange rind.  

How did that glass become his favorite?  Was it the shape, size, or the fact his daughter gave it to him?  His initials were etched into the smooth surface.  His glass and the daughter that gave it to him were both so special to him.  He always liked to comment about the sparkle in her eyes being like the sparkle of that favorite glass.

The night the car left the pavement and slammed into the tree shattered more than the glass of the windshield.  It shattered the life of his beloved daughter.  Paramedics revived her from a state of death.  Doctors put her on feeding tubes and catheters.  That is how she lived for over seven years.  He visited her daily.  After each of the visits, he pulled down that favorite glass.  Gradually it was filled with less water, tea, or milk.  More often it was filled with whiskey.  

She was not braindead the doctors told him.  She was in a vegetative state.  Would she improve?  The doctors did not know.  She just laid there.  Unable to talk, respond, eat, drink, move.  Just lays there.  That is not the sparkly-eyed girl of his.  She always said she would never want to live like that as that was not living.  

Four years after the accident, he wanted to release his sparkling daughter from the living hell.  The state said no.  First one judge and another said no.  The state courts all said yes.  The Right to Life folks took the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.  The high justices said yes, the parents have the right to remove the feeding tube.  After still more court dates to confirm she did not want to live this way, the feeding tube was removed.  Twelve days passed and she was finally released to once again be dead.  Just as the paramedics had found her in that ditch.  The protestors that had stood vigil for four years outside the rehab center finally left.

Over the next six years, his hands held the glass.  Once more there was water, tea, milk, and occasionally whiskey.  When he looked at the glass he did not always see her sparkling eyes.  More often he saw the feeding tube being removed.  He saw the coffin being lowered into that awful hole.  Like the hole in his heart.  His living hell ended at the end of a rope.

The glass is dusty now.  I haven't touched it since I found him in the carport.  At the end of the rope.  Out of his living hell.  Today the test results came.  Cancer.  Why does God continue to punish me?  I gave birth to her, loved and helped her.  Those men decided she should not be dead and revived her into a living hell.  I am tired.  No treatments.  Let me just take this glass, remove the dust and enjoy a nice glass of tea.  I'll see her sparkling eyes soon.  And bring him his favorite glass.

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This is a fictional retake of a real-life situation that occurred in the area where we lived in the '80s and '90s.  Nancy Cruzan was the young lady in an auto wreck.  Her parents Joe and Joyce fought all the way to the US Supreme Court to allow her to be released from her living hell.  Tough choices.   

Stay safe,

Janice