October 7
I can see that I’m not holding up real well, and I make an appointment with a new doctor. When I get to his office, I see a friend of my parents, which is just what I wanted to avoid. I’m trying to stay calm, and each time I run into someone who knows and cares, I have to face the terrible truth all over again.
Finally my name is called and I proceed into the designated room and sit in the designated chair. I’m really fighting for control, but I’m mired in emotional quicksand. The doctor comes in perusing my chart. (Oh, Lord, another young one. It suddenly hits me that half the population is under 40, and I’m not part of it.)
The doctor reads that I have come to request a prescription for a tranquilizer. He wants to know if I have ever taken them before, and I shake my head. So far, so good. I can handle the “yes” or “no” questions without having to say anything. He fires a few more background questions at me, and I nod or shake my head in response. Finally he puts the chart aside and peers at me.
“Now, what’s the cause of this stress you’re under?” he asks.
What happens now is that I will have to say the words, “My father is dying.” I have never actually said these words before, and it’s unbelievably difficult, because once I’ve said them, I can never take them back. It will be final and forever. I’m pretty sure that physically, I just can’t do it. I try to get a running start and think about something else, but it’s like the comedy where the man says, “I l-l-l-. . .” but he can’t make himself say, “I love you.” I can do nothing but stare stupidly at the doctor and try to control my trembling. He stares back patiently, arms folded across his chest, and makes it clear that he’s capable of waiting all day if that’s what it takes.
I shift in my chair, recross my legs, and spit out the first word, “My.” It hangs in the air, all alone, relevant to nothing, an incomplete sentence with a period at the end of it. A surrealistic scene develops, a bizarre twist on a parlor game (second word, first syllable). Only the doctor, who is supposed to be my partner in this charade, isn’t giving me any help. I shift again, focus on a far corner of the room, and say, very fast, “Father-is-dying.” God knows, I don’t want those words in my mouth.
October 9
Even in the face of death, Dad has never lost his sense of humor. Once, during a brief period of consciousness, he wanted to sit up, but he was too weak to raise himself, so we got on either side and lifted him. Somehow he hit his head on the hand bars over the hospital bed, and although he wasn’t hurt, he shook his head from side to side, waggling his jowls and spinning his eyes around like a cartoon character. Another time Mom offered his some M&M’s, and he playfully warned her that she’d better not give him any green ones. But by Sunday night he has lost consciousness for the last time, so he won’t get to share in the comedy that is about to unfold on his behalf.
We still have not made contact with Mom and Dad’s Catholic parish. The priest is out of town, and nobody seems to be in charge. My Episcopal priest has been out to say the Prayers for the Dead, which was fine with Dad, because he figured there’s more than one way for a good man to get into Heaven.
But our good friend Lou, the Greek doctor, comes out to check on all of us around 9 p.m., as he has done every night since Dad came home. When he learns that Dad hasn’t received the last rites of his own church, he insists that we must spare no inconvenience and find him a Roman Catholic priest. So, mostly to placate him, Mom gets on the phone and locates one in a town about 12 miles away.
Lou feels that Dad has very little time left, and he is becoming very agitated. I am assigned the job of going to pick up the priest who Dad won’t know is there anyway, and Lou kindly volunteers to go along. “In fact,” he says, “I’ll drive!” This is not exactly good news, because the doctor is notoriously accident prone, but at this hour there shouldn’t be much traffic, so the odds are probably in my favor. As Lou charges out the door, car keys in hand, I turn to Joan and Rita, wink, and make the sign of the cross.
We get right off to a bad start when Lou turns north instead of south out of the driveway, but I tactfully point out his mistake, and he executes a flying U-turn in the middle of the road, and we’re off! We arrive about 10 minutes later in a town so small you couldn’t possibly miss the Catholic Church, only neither one of us can figure out where it is. We drive around and around the town square, and after passing it three or four times, we finally figure out that that was it back there, only we can’t see where the rectory is, and the priest is supposed to be waiting for us with the porch light on.
We do manage to locate the police station, but by now I am a haggard, pale, red-eyed, middle-aged woman in desperate need of a shampoo and set, and I’m being closely followed by a short Greek with a heavy accent and a pronounced limp. We are the ultimate odd couple, and I am so tongue-tied in my grief, and Lou is so loose-lipped in his agitation, that our story sounds decidedly suspicious.
The two people behind the desk keep sliding their eyes sideways to look at each other without turning their heads, no doubt for fear of making one false move, but they do point us in the direction of the rectory, and we race back outside like the Marx Brothers, jamming each other in the doorway in our rush to get to the car.
When we finally reach the rectory, there is no light burning on the porch and only one dim light on in the back of the house. By now Lou is afraid Dad may already have died, and I’m getting more upset by the minute. In total frustration, we pound on the door, which is eventually opened by a wizened old priest, and with both of us talking at once, we manage to explain our problem. The trouble is, this man never heard of us before, and he certainly hasn’t received any phone call from my mother, but 10 miles down the road, another priest is waiting with his porch light on, because we’re in the wrong town!
Fortunately, the old priest is experienced in late-night emergencies; he agrees to come with us if we’ll let him bring his brother along (for protection, I imagine). We arrive home in plenty of time for Dad to receive the last rites, and it comforts me to imagine him telling the story of our midnight ride around Heaven.
October 10
It must be around 4 in the morning when I realize that for a long time now, I have been listening to the sound of my father’s breathing. It doesn’t sound like breathing anymore. It’s a separate, distinct sound, a painful sound, the sound of death. Each breath is deep and labored and rattling, a tremendous effort. I count the seconds in between, thinking each time that it is finally over. I slip out of bed to sit on a stool in the dark beside him.
Up until this moment, as sick as he was, he was still my father living, but now I understand that he is my father dying. He will not be conscious again, will say no more I-love-you’s, offer no more reassurances. I take his hand in mine and remember the day, a week before Easter-it must be 30 years ago-when he appeared at the kitchen door looking stricken and holding in his big, dirt-begrimed hands an ugly old barn cat he had just run over with his tractor. She was nobody’s pet, and nobody would have missed her, but to him, she was a hurt, living thing.
He placed her injured body gently in a shoe box and set it beside the wood stove in the kitchen. And there she lay, not eating but refusing to die. Finally on Easter Sunday she got up and took a few steps, ate some table scraps, and began a long, slow recovery, a living monument to the healing power in my father’s loving hands.
It has been hours since he was last conscious, asking for water. I tiptoe to the kitchen and come back with a clean, damp wash cloth. I wet his lips and try to squeeze a few drops into his mouth. He’s past all caring, I know, but as long as he is alive (and even after, I will soon realize), there is a tremendous, aching need to do something helpful.
Finally, dawn breaks over the valley outside the bedroom window, and Mother rises numbly from the bed. The Ralph she has known and loved since she was a girl of 14 already has followed his light to whatever lies beyond this world. All that remain are the formalities of death. She has been through this vigil before, and she knows better than I what to expect. “You know, he could go on for days like this,” she warns me. She urges us to go home and get some rest, and I am too weary to resist.
Home at last, I sink into a huge tub full of fragrant soap bubbles and enjoy a blessed moment of release. An airplane buzzes low over the house, a nice, friendly sound to the daughter of a man who was a pilot for more than 40 years. Moments later the telephone rings. I pick up the receiver beside the bathtub. It’s Joan.
“Dad’s gone,” she says gently. I watch the soapsuds slide down the receiver that dangles from my hand to form a pool on the bathroom floor.
“I know,” I say to no one in particular. “I think I just heard him take off.”
The Spirit from the Light came to him and said, “What do you have to show me?”
And my father pointed to a tree house and a rope swing and two little granddaughters. He showed Him 30 years of corn crops and cattle grazing in green pastures and five abandoned puppies rescued from slow starvation. He showed Him bridges and roads that he helped to build and a hobo who found his way home on a bus ticket bought by a stranger. He showed Him the family he pulled from the burning wreckage of their car when no one else would approach it. He showed Him three daughters shaped and nurtured by his love and a little house in the woods with salt licks for the deer and birdhouses for the wrens and the wood ducks.
And finally he showed Him his childhood sweetheart, his first love, his best buddy, and maybe, just for a moment, he hesitated.
But then the Spirit asked him, “Are you finished?”
“I’m finished,” he said.
And the Spirit asked him, “Are you ready?”
And my father smiled his sweet smile, and he answered, “I’m ready.”
