Pain - Roberto A Robles (best books to read for self improvement .txt) 📗

pain, and to the discomfiture of everyone present, he tried to be game and have a little food, but he couldn’t keep anything down. Sitting at the head of the dining room table, minutes into the dinner, not being able to keep his food down, and not being able to move from his chair, he threw up on himself. Then, mortified, he began to weep silently.
Alarmed, Mrs. Dobbs stood up fast, so fast her left foot got caught with the table’s leg and she fell on her face, between her chair and her husband’s, just as Trenton sprang from his chair and ran to the bathroom to get paper towels from the kitchen, but then stopped and started to bend down to help his mother.
“Go,” I said to him, already on my feet. “I’ll help your mother.”
“Marion!” Mr. Dobbs exclaimed, and heaved some more food onto his lap.
“Mom!” cried Ginny at the same time, “are you alright?” She had managed to get up from her chair after disentangling her legs, since she sat in the same posture as her mother, left leg under her right; apparently not the most recommendable position if you need to stand up in a hurry.
“Let me help you, ma’am,” I said, taking her arm and bringing her up from a half kneeling position.
“Thank you, Daniel,” she never called me Priest. Turning to her husband, she said, “I’ll help you clean up, Jackson. Forgive me, I shouldn’t have insisted that you try the food.”
Looking green and miserable, Mr. Dobbs said, “Nothing to forgive,” and there wasn’t really. We strive for normalcy even in our darkest times, stubbornly denying fate a chance to assert itself, but it does, and we can’t beat it, no matter how hard or how assiduously we try.
Trenton came back with a roll of paper towels, cut a few pieces and was about to clean his father’s chin with them, when his mother said, “I’ll do it. Ginny, please bring a mop, perhaps Daniel will help you carry a bucket full of water?”
“Right away, Mrs. Dobbs,” I said, and left the dining room with Ginny leading the way.
“Trenton,” Mrs. Dobbs said, “fetch a clean pajamas for your father, please.” She was back in control and everyone was calming down, as people usually did under her directions, normally issued with an unperturbed air of dignity, even in the toughest of crises.
Some time later, after Mrs. Dobbs had helped Mr. Dobbs into a fresh pajama top, both Trenton and I assisted Mr. Dobbs up the stairs, and we soon understood the sacrifice he’d made for his wife and family, climbing down those thirty-something stair steps. Even bringing his legs up to get them to the next step made him tremble. Both of us hooking an arm under him, we could feel his body racked with tremors due to the pain standing on his legs caused him. His brow was covered with sweat, and I feared he would soon lose consciousness.
“We got to carry him,” I said to Trenton.
“I’ll do it,” he said, “hold him while I lift him.” Speaking to his father, he said, “Dad, I’m going to carry you upstairs, okay? Just a little longer and we’ll reach your room.”
Mr. Dobbs couldn’t answer, every muscle in his body was a string in an archer’s bow. His mouth was open, as if in a silent scream. The veins in his neck and forehead stood out as if that archer bow’s string was wound tight around his throat. Trenton lifted him up, and then the scream did come. I’d never heard anyone scream like that outside the movies. His scream filled me with dread and compassion. That a bull of a man as strong as he had always been, so solid, so resilient, should be reduced to such racking expressions of pain in front of his family, was unnerving, and an unnecessary reminder of our own human frailty.
For an instant, I was afraid Trenton would drop him, surprised by his father’s screams, but he held on to him, daintily carrying him upstairs. I admired his courage and determination. It mustn’t have been easy, disregarding his father’s plaintiff pleas to be put down, and not lose his step up the stairs, knowing that his father’s best chances of relief were in his reaching his father’s bed as quickly as possible.
As Trenton carefully laid his father on his bed and arranged his pillow, Mr. Dobbs spoke out loud, in a clear voice, full of misery and anger, “When am I going to die? When will I be rid of this pain?”
I stepped out of the room and went downstairs, leaving father and son alone.
Mrs. Dobbs was sitting at the kitchen table, elbows on the table, covering her face with her hands, crying in silence. She made no noise. I only knew she was crying because of the movement of her shoulders. Ginny was standing behind her, silently crying as well, running her hand down her mother’s head, attempting to soothe her. When she heard me enter the kitchen, she looked up. “How is he?” she asked me.
“I think he will sleep, now,” I said.
“What am I going to do without him, Daniel?” The fact that she was asking me told me all I needed to know about her desperation and feelings of helplessness. I took her hand in mine and kept silent.
“We’ve tried everything there was to try,” she said mostly to herself. “After the operation, as soon as we saw the result hadn’t been as positive as that incompetent doctor had promised, we tried radiotherapy, acupuncture, even Reiki healing, for Christ’s sakes!” I didn’t know that, but I wasn’t surprised. Just another shot at beating fate that went sour.
“Now, I don’t know if I want him to hang on,” she went on sobbing harder than before, “or if it’s better for him to just stop suffering and… go!” Then she broke down completely. I didn’t know for sure, but I thought this might be the first time she had done more than mourn quietly, discreetly, in the solitude of her kitchen.
I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to Mr. Dobbs. I went to his room before I left his house. Standing by his bed, I promised I would come to visit in a few days, as I didn’t want to intrude any more than I already had. I can’t know if he heard me, but I urged him to hang on, to have faith.
I embraced Mrs. Dobbs and I couldn’t say anything, so I just hugged her and stepped back. She wished me a good night.
Following an impulse, not aware I meant to do it, I kissed Ginny’s lips, and miraculously, she kissed me back. We said nothing.
Trenton walked me to the car and we said goodbye. I promised I’d call the following morning to check on them. I asked him to call if… there was news. He said he would. I left.
The last time I saw my friend alive was through the rearview mirror; he was standing on the sidewalk watching me drive away. Marion and Ginny Dobbs were standing outside their door waving goodbye, while Mr. Dobbs fought to escape death, or strove to embrace it. Who knows for sure?

Only one breed of pain is easy to bear, and that is pain born by others.
The International Association for the Study of Pain, IASP, defines pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience.
They got that right. Pain is an experience, and it is certainly unpleasant.
Anesthesiologists who course graduate studies in algology are usually in charge of terminal patients stricken by diseases inherently accompanied by acute or chronic pain. They are commonly referred to as pain specialists, even if this evokes images of a minute Chinese beauty, skimpily dressed in leather, whipping a bound man wearing nothing but his socks. Not precisely the most appropriate scenario should your loved one lay prostrate in bed whimpering because of severe pain. Fortunately, however, pain specialists are affable looking men and women, usually attired in white lab coats and carrying a typical black doctor’s case, which may or may not be made of leather, containing miraculous concoctions designed to bring urgently needed relief.
Yet, just as physical pain is suffered by the victims of disease, and temporarily abated through the use of drugs, emotional and psychological pain afflicts family members without remission, whose only solace is found when their loved one’s pain is assuaged.
The Dobbs went with little food, almost no rest, and certainly without consolation for three days and their long, long nights, checking on their father and husband around the clock, running to his side, usually with a syringe full of morphine, whenever he cried in pain. Wishing for a miracle, in full denial mode, they hoped for the best, not knowing what the best was any longer.
Then, on his last evening on Earth, Mr. Dobbs asked for food. He felt no pain, assisted by the powerful drug in his system, and he felt he could take a little soup.

“I love you, Marion,” he said to his wife, “and my only regret is in leaving you.”
“I love you, too,” she said to her husband, leaning closer to kiss his lips. “But, you’re not leaving any time soon. Look at yourself, you’re feeling better!”
“Don’t lie to yourself, woman,” he said to her. “Not now.”
“I’ll stand on my hope,” she said, “until the end.”
Mr. Dobbs smiled, “What would my life have been like without your hard head?”
“You know it,” Mrs. Dobbs bravely played along.
“You have to stand up for your mother,” he said addressing Trenton. “You have to learn to live with your sister.”
“I will, dad,” said Trenton.
“Princess,” he said to Ginny, who smiled as she heard that endearment she hadn’t heard from him in at least five years, “whether it was your choice or not, you’re responsible for a life, now, one that will take my place in the family.” Ginny started to cry. “I don’t blame you and I never judged you,” he told her, “rely on your mother, she’ll never lead you wrong.”
“I know, dad,” Ginny said. “I will.”
“We had some good times,” he finished. “I won’t ask you not to cry, but I’d like to think you’ll find a way to cherish those moments. That’s what remains. That’s what counts.”
I wasn’t there, but I knew my friend’s family as well as I know my own. I’m sure those were not his exact words, but I’m also sure his message ran along those lines.
Then came the night.

“I’ll go up to see if your father wants a little more soup,” Marion Dobbs told her children, standing up from the chair where she’d been sitting in the kitchen, waiting with Trenton and Ginny for whatever came next. “He may be hungry, and now that his stomach has managed to keep some food down, he may feel like eating a little more, gain back some strength.”
“Okay, mom,” Ginny said, standing to heat up some of the chicken broth his mother had served him before.
“You shouldn’t encourage her,” Trenton told his sister as he heard his mother start to climb the stairs.
“Encourage her how?” Ginny asked. The warmth in her voice always dropped a few degrees whenever she needed to address her brother.
“Give her false hope,” Trenton said.
“How do you know it is false hope, m’lord?” Ginny mocked her brother.
“Get real, Ginny,” he said forcefully, “father’s dying.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” she asked in the same tone her brother had used.
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m heating up soup!” she said. “What does it look like I’m doing?”
“You know what I