Dad's Been on my Mind

I don't know why it hit me so hard- Dad's death. I should've known it was coming, but somehow I didn't. He'd been sick- first with emphysema- and then lung cancer. At 17, I must have still been naive enough to believe that doctors could cure anything, but reallly, they were all about experimenting on live guinea pigs like my father. In 1973, chemotherapy was not in wide use, but cobalt treatments were. For several days each month, Mom drove Dad from Abilene to Wilford Hall Medical Center in San Antonio. My sister had already married, so I was left at home to make sure my brothers got to school and to "hold down the home fort" as my mother used to say. The cancer specialists in San Antonio, at some point before the treatments began, operated, removing about half of Dad's left lung. For a short time he stopped smoking, but I think he realized his hope of a normal life was already gone, and he soon began sneaking cigarettes. Mom got angry at first, but eventually I think she came to the conclusion that he might as well die happy. Cigarettes gave Dad a pleasure I never understood.

I don't remember either of my parents ever saying that Dad was dying. I wonder if they thought because they knew, that we kids must have known, too, but even when a girl has a father she doesn't particularly like much of the time, she still imagines him as invincible- maybe even more so because she's been afraid of him for most of her life.

The night before he died, Dad and I were home alone. He practically lived on the sofa bed by this time. Next to him was a small end table with various bottles of medicine and water. I sat in a chair, and together we watched television. He loved MASH and a few other shows, and it didn't matter if he'd already seen them or not. At some point that night, Dad tried to get up and couldn't. The look on his face was terror, and I asked him what was wrong. He said he had to go to the bathroom, but he couldn't get there on his own. With Mom gone, it was up to me to take him. I tried to act like it was no big deal as I helped him up. I didn't realize until that moment how fragile he was. His bones showed through his skin-I recalled the pictures of the starving children in Africa as I put my arm around his waist which was smaller than my own. He weighed under 90 pounds, and I weighed about 100. I walked with him holding on to me the few feet to the bathroom, one step and then another- painfully slow going. I thought once we got there, he'd be all right, but he wasn't. He couldn't stand in front of the toilet without falling down, and there was nothing close enough for him to hold onto, so I had to stay with him. I turned my face away after helping him with his pants, but I could feel a shiver go through his body. His embarrassment was palpable. Afterwards, I helped him back to the couch, and before long, he slept.

The next day, I got the call at school to meet Mom at the hospital. She told me that he said to her, "The day that my own daughter has to be with me while I take a piss, is the day I go to the hospital to die." When I arrived at the base hospital, Mom was in the room with Dad, and I was told to wait outside. It wasn't long before Mom came out, obviously very upset. Dad was gone. Mom told me she expected him to just slip away, but this wasn't a movie with an easy ending for any of us. She said that as she sat with him, he suddenly panicked, "I can't breathe," he said, and he grabbed her hand and squeezed it so hard she thought it would break. She pushed the call button, but by the time the nurse got there, he was dead. That image of him gasping for breath haunts me still.

After that, everything happened very quickly. We were taking him back to New Jersey to be buried. My sister was called home, and we flew into Philadelphia, where relatives picked us up. We went to stay with my grandparents- my mother's parents. At the funeral home, I didn't want to look at him all laid out in his casket. It was my first funeral. Dad's five sisters and one of his two brothers were there. A sister made a remark about how "good he looked," but when I finally saw him, I saw a plastic cast of my father and not a very good one. The sisters went up to his casket, each of them kissing him on the cheek, making Mom feel like she should do the same. She said later that he didn't feel real but rather like a statue, cold and too smooth to be real. Back at my grandparents house, everyone gathered. My cousin, Tom, with whom I'd always been close, made a funny remark about Dad and his dad reaching through the ground to shake hands and catch up on old times. Dad was to be buried in the same plot as Uncle Charles, Tom's father. We laughed about it, and then I felt ashamed for laughing so soon after my father's death. But I heard my grandfather say Dad would want us to laugh- he'd want us to party and drink a beer as we sent him off to wherever it was he'd be going. My mixed emotions about this man, my father, wrapped around one another and tears came-angry tears, sad tears, tears for what could have, should have been. I cried for the years we'd lost, knowing we couldn't get them back or change the past. I cried for the grandchildren he'd never know because grandchildren give us all a second chance, and he sure could've used that second chance.

I tried focusing on the good times we'd had, though I initially struggled to remember them. I have to give him credit for doing the best he could under the circumstances he was dealt. He left me many lessons. I don't drink because of Dad. I love with all my heart because of Dad. I work hard and play hard, and I am a person he helped create. I hope he's found his peace, and I hope he forgives me for not loving him like a daughter should love her father. I understand him now, and maybe he understands me, too.