By Barry Herzog

Watch the VidLit: Eulogy

I am in the room where my father died.

The room is in the basement of a hospital. It could be the boiler room of an ocean liner. Naked water pipes swirl across walls of unadorned gray concrete. Fluorescent lights glare down from the ceiling. The door is thick, brown, and clicks shut when it closes.

My father lies face up in bed. He sports a mustache. The bed has rails but they are down. He grimaces and sighs. His eyelids flutter. He mumbles nonsense, frowns and smiles. He wears blue pajamas my mother brought from home when it became clear that he would not wake up and deserved to wear pajamas consistent with mortality.

My mother keeps his glasses in her purse. She has his wedding band in there, his watch, his college graduation ring, and a partial bridge taken out before the surgery.

I sit on a metal chair along a wall. I watch my father’s death from there, see his facial tics, hear his garbled words, his random sentences.