Jim O’Brien offered to help paint his son Francis’s house. As they walked together, brushes in hand, wide-brimmed hats shielding their eyes from the morning sun, a phantom bear stepped on Jim’s chest, squeezing the breath out of him.

“Dad, you look awful, what’s up?”

“Don’t know, but I feel like I’m breathing through a straw, and the pains in my chest… . Look, son, this isn’t my way of weaseling out of helping you paint your house, but I think we’d better get to the hospital.”

Though the emergency room was crowded, Jim was whisked into the sterile white room with crash cart, IV poles and bright lights. Nervously, Francis chided his father. “Okay, forget the heart attack, I’ll do the ladder work.” And as Jim was about to reply, his heart stopped.

The room instantly filled with hospital staff. Francis dropped to his knees beside his father, while those around him struggled to coax another beat from his heart.

Francis’s lips almost touched the still, white lobe of his father’s ear, as if, like the enchanting song of the Sirens, he could lure his father back.

“Dad, I love you.”
“Dad, don’t go, stay here, we need you.”
“Daddy, please stay, please come back, please.”

Francis pleaded with his father to return as the room filled with other sounds: the mattress heaving under chest compressions, feet shuffling, orders barked, life-giving oxygen squeezed from the Ambu bag. Rhythmic, factory sounds.

“Back away,” the cardiologist shouted.

Francis stood, as his father convulsed under the defibrillator paddles. But then he was right back at his father’s ear, this time with song. Neil Young’s Old Man, but remastered.

Dad take a look at my life
I’m a lot like you
I need someone to love me
the whole day through

Ah, one look in my eyes
and you can tell that’s true.

Words from a son to a father, just as the son had heard from his father. Long ago. Songs, lullabies, made up stories.

“Dad, I love you, you know I love you, mom loves you. You’re helping paint my house, remember? Platinum gray with the red shutters. You come back and I’ll do the ladder work. I promise.”

I’ve been first and last
Look at how the time goes past.

But Jim wasn’t coming back. Francis felt the rhythm around him slow, voices reduced to murmurs, the sounds of this factory closing.

With his arms extended, hands touching his father’s face, Francis dropped his head between his elbows and cried.

But I’m all alone at last.