Inside a certain hospital waiting room is a large fish tank.  In this tank, water bubbles around gently waving plants while a dozen or so neon-colored fish drift in pristine water.  Each morning an attendant drops exactly the same amount of food into the water.  For a minute or so, a frantic flurry of activity follows the arrival of the food.

Pictures of flowers decorate the walls of this room while soothing music flows in from somewhere overhead.  Dog-eared travel and hunting magazines are stuffed in a rack.  Pamphlets in perfect condition with the titles “Going Toward the Light” and “The Other Side,” remain untouched on a table.

Four times in two years I sat in this room with Dad while he waited to begin a round of radiation therapy.  The first time we came, dad walked in, annoyed at the interruption in his life.  The last time, he sat passively in a wheelchair as I wheeled him own the hall.  That last morning, we heard friendly chatter coming from the room even before we entered.  As we crossed the threshold, the people inside fell silent.  The patients ahead of us were first timers.  Living ahead of their disease, they were still hopeful.  My father in his wheelchair was the specter of who they might become if they, too, had to return to this room for repeated rounds of radiation.  After a minute or two, one middle-aged man resumed talking about his plans to go to Florida in the next few months.  His voice rose, a little too loud, while he made sweeping gestures with his hands.

People disappeared into the room with the machine until only an elderly couple waited ahead of us.  The man sat next to the fish tank, and he began taking roasted peanuts from his jacket pocket.  One by one, he cracked the hulls and ate the contents.  My father’s eyes focused on this man’s hands.  Dad had little appetite and I doubted he wanted anything to eat.  Instead, I wondered if he remembered, as I did, a certain apple-crisp autumn afternoon deep in the Appalachian Mountains ten years earlier.  We had been sitting there together on a plank bench while we listened to Bluegrass music.  That day, Dad had eaten roasted peanuts one by one until the hulls made a circle about his feet.

In heaven, beyond all the magnificent choirs of monks singing Gregorian chants, beyond all the banks of angels shouting Hosannas, there must be a grove of ancient pecan trees with plank benches and a wooden stage.  And there, those of us who are so inclined can listen to fiddles, banjos and dulcimers while we eat peanuts until we are satisfied.  Until that day comes, like the fish in the tank, we must keep swimming.