My father turned 70 on May 2 of this year. After a long, trying period my parents had finally gotten to a point where they could move near us and we celebrated his birthday a month after he got here. It was supposed to be the first of many, a fresh beginning after a few years of seemingly endless pain and suffering from various things. And it was a great beginning, celebrating the twilight of his life and the dawn of Julia’s at the same time as she turned 2 only three days later.

That beginning would have to serve as the end as well, though we didn’t know it at the time. My father died this past Sunday, December 18th at around 9 in the evening, losing a long and painful battle with prostate cancer that was apparently not to be denied. This post is more for me than for any of you, though you’re welcome to read it.

My father, Christmas 2001

A soldier

My father, to me, was always larger than life. He was always a large man — though earlier in my life he wasn’t obese, merely trim and imposing — and got larger as the years went on. He had a large, deep voice and a larger anger streak. He was not a man to be crossed, even by a child. I spent a lot of my childhood afraid of my father, mostly of arousing his anger and hence did a lot of tiptoeing even if it did no good. Sometimes it didn’t much matter what I did as whatever it was would be enough to bring out the anger.

I have a feeling this came from a deep-seated bitterness that anyone who really knew him could sense. I didn’t when I was a kid, of course, I just thought he was mad a lot. Later though, when I could step back and take a detached view of him, it was there to see. I don’t know where it came from, whether it was his two tours of Vietnam or his valiant but fruitless attempts to break out of the pattern of the lower-middle class or something else entirely.

Vietnam wasn’t easy on him to hear my mother tell it though he was reticent with details. The first tour when things were just getting started was okay and he even enjoyed it. He was a crew chief in a helicopter, operating the door guns and acting as a mechanic on the ground. He once received a commendation — I believe it was the Navy Commendation for Meritorious Service — for replacing the engine of a helicopter under fire behind enemy lines. He kept up with some of his ‘Nam buddies to the end, and the most excited I think I’d seen him recently was after he met many of them for a reunion a few years ago.

The second tour was different. This time he was a supply clerk of some kind. This was also when the public began to take notice of the happenings in Vietnam and when support for the troops waned. Part of his duty was patrolling the encampments at night making sure that the enlisted men — he was a staff sergeant — didn’t toss grenades at the officers. According to my mother, he was a different man when he came back. He wouldn’t talk about Vietnam at all, except in bits and pieces, but almost never about that second tour. He finally came home when I was about 2.

Getting to hold his granddaughter for the first time, June 2003

A husband and father

My father was a strange dichotomy. I’ve already mentioned his prolific temper, but he could be surprisingly kind as well. He was loathe to apologize, ever. He would let you know in other ways that he was sorry normally by overcompensating in some other way. He was a rather private person but in social situations he would meander and engage people in conversation like a consummate host.

I’ll never forget going to Canada for Julia’s christening. My parents flew up with us and we had a small gathering at a restaurant following the ceremony. My dad was practically the life of the party, walking up to people he’d never even met, introducing himself and talking with just about everyone there. I’d never seen him in that kind of environment before and it was touching to see.

He was not an easy man with whom to live. I have always been amazed that my mother never left him during their 37 years of marriage due to more things than I can truly remember. I would get so mad at his criticism of my mother’s cooking daily. She’d be in the kitchen for an hour working to feed us and in an eyeblink he’d spoil the evening with a poorly timed criticism. I could see my mother’s face change when he said it and I’d just want to rage at him.

There were times that I could have taken a swing at him. There were times when I think he wanted me to. In high school I was relatively tall at 6′ but skinny as a rail at 145 pounds. My father, in contrast, was about my height but had me outweighed by about 70 pounds. Suffice it to say I never hit him.

The dynamic changed over the years as we both got older. In my twenties and thirties I reached a point where in my brain I knew I could take my father. That’s an odd realization. This man who has always been big, bigger than me and stronger than me suddenly… wasn’t. And he wasn’t so scary. His temper never left him, but it didn’t strike the same fear in me that it used to. It had a different effect on me than I expected as well. I could try to reason with him from a position of strength. I used that to various degrees of effectiveness over the years, a few quiet words if I noticed he was being particularly harsh on my mother, a somewhat heated conversation once on what were and weren’t appropriate points of discussion in front of my new wife, and others in a similar vein. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.

Growing up

During the warmer months we would go outside and throw the baseball almost every day. I rarely had to ask twice. He’d be out in a heartbeat throwing with me. We’d have “burnout” contests to see who could throw harder. For many years up until I was about 13 he threw harder. I’ll never forget his “burnout” windup. He had a slow, deliberate, tricky little windup that would suddenly accelerate on release. When we first started throwing I couldn’t imagine anyone ever throwing faster than my dad. It scared me trying to catch his hardest throws, but it got me accustomed to catching faster balls rather than the slower throws of my teammates. As such, no one ever caught me off guard with the speed of their throws.

One day he knelt down and pretended to be a catcher so I went into a faux windup like I’d seen on TV and pitched it to him. We kept that up for a while and I got decent at pitching. At baseball practice one day our pitcher was having trouble — this was still little league, so I was maybe 10 or 11 — my coach asked if anyone knew how to pitch and I sheepishly raised my hand. The coach stuck me on the mound and 7 straight strikes in a row later I was the newest pitcher on my team. That would begin a pitching career that would take me through to high school, all because my father decided to kneel down and catch for me on a whim.

My father saved my life once and he didn’t remember it. We were on vacation somewhere that had a swimming pool. I was very young, maybe 7. I got a little too far from the edge and started floundering and would have gone under if my dad hadn’t gotten there and easily lifted me up and sat me on the edge again. I can imagine every detail of it to this day, but neither he nor my mom remember it.

One thing that I realized I haven’t mentioned so far is laughter. My father had one of the most infectious laughs you’ve ever heard. I can remember so many occasions when we’d get laughing about something and my father would laugh so hard he’d be crying and I couldn’t stop laughing because his laugh would just slay me. And he loved to laugh, he’d try to crack me up as one of his favorite pasttimes. I think the reason I neglected to mention it is because it’s been so long since I’ve heard him laugh since there’s been so little to laugh about. That’s a true loss.

Holding Julia during rehabilitation in Pensacola, March 2004

2 years of hell

In November of 2003 my parent’s life took an unexpected downward turn. He had been driving tanker trucks in his retirement, trying to earn a bit of money so they could move near us faster. During a trip transporting anhydrous ammonia, his truck overturned and almost killed him. He got pulled out of the cab by some incredibly brave people — one of which, as it turned out, is currently suing the trucking company and my father — where he otherwise would certainly have died from inhalation of the ammonia.

His hip was crushed in the crash and subsequently pieced together by doctors in a sequence of surgeries that would keep him in various hospitals and rehabilitation wards for about 5 months. He finally got to go home with a right leg that measured about 2 inches shorter than the left and a new constant companion in his walker. They adjusted but it wasn’t an easy time for either him or my mother who had to take care of him.

Earlier this year they finally got enough scratch to move up here, finding a house that fit their needs about 25 minutes from ours. That was a Good Thing, finally. But it wouldn’t be long before the prostate cancer that he first acquired in 1998 would make a reappearance. He began complaining of pain in his rectum that no one could really explain until a CAT scan showed a tumor growing where his prostate used to be. I talked about all this before so I won’t go through all the same stuff again.

Julia providing comfort to Grandpa recently

The cancer and all of his other ailments combined to create what I like to refer to as a Perfect Storm of suffering. Most diseases leave the sufferer with something they can do. While cancer is typically a horrendous disease, usually sufferers can at least spend time with friends and family, or perhaps travel up until the very end. Even my friend Mike who suffers from ALS can enjoy sitting and looking at birds or reading.

My father’s combined ailments left him restricted to his recliner, day in and day out. He couldn’t sit up for any period of time due to the pain that the tumor and the pressure of sitting caused. He couldn’t walk very well at the best of times with the hip problems, but the weakness caused by the cancer made it even worse. And they couldn’t operate on the cancer because they don’t operate after radiation therapy for whatever reason and even if they could, no one was likely to touch him with a twenty meter cattle prod due to the MRSA infection he acquired during his hip surgeries. So, he couldn’t go anywhere and couldn’t do anything aside from watch TV and get hugs from his granddaughter.

My last “interaction” with my father, a card game 3 weeks ago

We tried to visit my parents as often as possible, Cat and Julia spending most of their time there during the final weeks. Julia seemed to know that grandpa needed some extra love as she would run over to him every 10 minutes or so and throw her arms around him in a hug. He’d have bad days and better days, better meaning that he was relatively coherent, bad meaning he hallucinated and had phantom conversations.

Sometimes things seem to work out a little too neatly to completely disregard the possibility of a “higher power.” Last Wednesday we all went to visit. That day hospice came to deliver a hospital bed as my father was getting weaker and weaker by the day. It started getting late but I decided to hang around a bit just to make sure Mom didn’t need any help getting my father to bed. We raised his lift chair just like we had done every day for two years, but that day he couldn’t stand. His legs started slipping out from under him so I quickly got under him and stabilized him while lowering the chair again. We called a neighbor over who helped me manhandle him into his electric wheelchair and then from the chair into his hospital bed… for the last time, as it happens.

It was very hard to see him like that. He was so very confused and obviously unaware of what was happening. This strong man who I had feared in some way for most of my life was now too weak to stand and had to wear diapers. When talking to him now you were more likely to get nonsense answers as anything else.

So Sunday when we went to visit we knew that the end was on the way. Catherine and I had recently experienced someone dying of cancer when her step-father’s girlfriend passed away due to a brain tumor. My father was following almost precisely in her footsteps, his breathing pattern slowing and his body beginning to shut down. I had already decided to spend the night over there that evening because I just knew he wasn’t going to make it through the night.

He didn’t. He simply faded away, only a few minutes after my mother went in to check on him the final time. We all went in there and looked at this person who was a part of our lives for so long and in so many ways. I don’t think I’ve come completely to terms with it even now, but I am relieved that he’s not in pain any more. I’m unbelievably sad that he won’t get to witness any more of his granddaughter’s life than he did and that she won’t have him around, but I’m profoundly relieved that his suffering is at an end.

His wish was to be cremated and we obeyed that wish with the people coming to pick him up at about midnight that night. Due to the configuration of their house we had to carry him out of his room before placing him on the stretcher. I was the one holding most of his weight as I carried him one last time. It wasn’t really real until they pulled the sheet over his face. Actually, it still isn’t real. I don’t know when it will be.

Please rest in peace, Pop. You were a good man, a strong man, and a good father.

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