My Potato Chip Buddy

Today i walked past a room suddenly disheveled and in the process of packing. My heart dropped through my feet and i stood frozen. Staring at the balled up sheets mounded on the recliner. Staring at the boxes of personal items. Staring at the bare mattress. I felt the lump in my throat and the bottomless canyon of space where my stomach had been. I stood and stared for a while, knowing the answer. I turned and walked down the hall, looking for the nurse’s aid. When i found her, i asked, knowing the answer. Balled up top sheet means laundry. Balled up bottom sheet and boxes means death. She answered, “Oh honey he passed yesterday. Real bad way to go in the end too. He just couldn’t breathe baby. He got really hot too. Asked me to take his clothes off for him. He just couldn’t breathe and couldnt get comfortable. He was just really in a bad way these past couple days. And then yesterday he finally went.” I knew what had happened. My little quirky buddy, the only person i knew who was shorter than me…who for the life of him could not remember to lock his walker brakes and was always having to repeat the transfer safety course in the therapy gym, my little buddy who had his own unique language born of a stutter, excitement, and no teeth, my quirky little buddy who was always either watching westerns in his reclining rocking chair or sneaking to the vending machine to obtain his contraband potato chips when he thought the nurses were occupied or the therapists had gone home…my quirky little buddy wasn’t supposed to have chips. He was on a pureed diet due to swallowing issues. All those contraband chips were going straight into his lungs. He had pneumonia several times but try as we might, we couldnt break him of his potato chip habit. For him, life was just not worth living without his chips. For as long as ive known him he’s always had a freezer bag of potato chips by his side in any chair. His beloved chips finally did him in. He suffocated with lungs full of potato chips. It made me sad to think i’d never see or hear him again. I went and stood at the back of the hall, past the patients’ rooms. I leaned against the wall and tried to gather myself. You never get to say goodbye to your favorites. You just come in to work one day and they’re gone. Their stuff is all boxed or bagged up and the photos are pulled down from the wall.

My little buddy is in heaven where they have all the potato chips he could dream of, flat and ridged, and he is swimming in a vat of them and has all of his original teeth and no difficulties swallowing.