Words

R.I.P., Pop

I got the call at work, right on deadline. Everyone was in the middle of packing up. My boss, Dan, came up to me and held out his hand, a mock gesture of formality at the end of the night. I stared up at him speechless. That's when I broke down.

My father's health has been going down for the past 4 years. Bad heart. When Mom told me hospice was involved, and that liquid morphine was being administered to "calm"� Dad's anxiety, I knew he was dying. Not slowly like he had been for the past 4 years, but that he had only a matter of months left in him. Unbeknownst to everyone, he only had a month.

I left that night on a 3:15 AM train and, after transferring in Penn Station in NYC, I arrived in Syracuse at around 1 PM, where my sister, her husband, John, and their 4 year old son, Thomas Charles, picked me up.

I was a little nervous about the 3 hour trip from Syracuse to Potsdam with them, since my sister and I rarely talk and I always got the distinct feeling I irritated John in the past. But the trip went well. I sat in the back with Thomas and he and I had long talks about his 4 year old life. It's amazing how exciting a 4 year old's life is. When he slept I talked with Ann and John about politics. We also played games like "I Spy"� when L'il Tom was awake. He's a pretty loquacious kid with a very sweet disposition. He is an only child so he's suave with adults, though he's excellent at playing with other children his own age (we learned this quickly when my brother Frank had his 3 year old daughter with him at the wake).

When we approached the house I had butterflies in my stomach. I thought back to when my brother Tom died. Walking into that house was excruciating. When I went upstairs I could still smell him and see his shavings in the sink. My parents were constantly sobbing. I couldn't hold myself together. The devastation that reverberated throughout my family was unbearable. Everyone had a different way of grieving; no one knew how to comfort one another. It was incredibly stressful. My parents became an untouchable unit for over a year, finding solace only in each other. My father became obsessed with his own grief, crying whenever Tom was mentioned, and if no one mentioned him, he would bring him up. It was horrible. It's like they had forgotten that they still had 5 children very much alive. My father, already pretty old at that point, suddenly seemed ancient and vacant.

When I walked into the house I was fearful I would have similar feelings as I did when I was home for my mom's knee operation last June, otherwise known as "The Cat Incident."

My mom went into the hospital June 5th of last year for knee replacement surgery. It's a serious operation without really being a serious operation. Dad, almost 84 then, was left by himself to take care of the cats and the house while Mom was gone. I called him everyday, checking up on him. Unbeknownst to me, my brother Jerry was also calling him everyday, while my sister called every few days. And my brother Dennis (bless than man's soul) visited Dad every single day. We were more worried about my dad being alone than my mom's surgery.

My father mentioned to me that he wasn't able to find Sugar. Sugar was the one of our two Siamese cats. They were brother and sister and had been together for almost 19 years. We got them when I was 11. I told my dad not to worry about it, that she was probably pouting over mom's absence and would come out of hiding in a few hours or perhaps even a few days.

I called my mom the following afternoon, one day out of surgery. Her speech was slightly slurred from the morphine but she was very coherent.
"Did you hear about Sugar?" she asked me.
I told her dad had mentioned it and to not worry.
Sugar and my mom were practically attached at the hip. Sugar has always been my mom's cat. Spice was a bit sluttier with his attentions and pleasures, but Sugar remained exclusively loyal to my mom.
"You don't know?" my mom said, alarmed.
"Know what? Did she get outside?" I asked her.
I assured my mom she would come back. She always did in the past.
"She's dead!" my mom said, "Your father killed her!"
I gave no reply. She told me the details. After Sugar's sudden disappearance, and upon Dad's request, Dennis went around the house searching for her, and, on his hands and knees, pulled her out from under the bed. She was in rough shape. Dennis rushed her to the vet. When her blood was analyzed they knew happened. Her blood sugar level was at 16. Our cat Spice is diabetic and has been getting shots of insulin the past few years. My father confused the cats and gave Sugar the shot instead of Spice. Sugar is a feather of a cat--around 6 lbs. Even a small dose of insulin sent to her into convulsions and shock. I'm not sure whether she died right there or they just put her down the moment they found out. It really doesn't matter.

What did matter was my father managed to kill one of our cats after taking care of them for 2 days. He couldn't see very well, he became easily confused when it came to small tasks (yet he could go on for hours about books or politics and tell ridiculous puns), and, well, he was old. He hobbled, wobbled, cocked his head in the wrong direction at a noise or a voice, and I found him clinging roughly to things as he moved, his eyes darting and his knuckles white. This isn't an exaggeration. Granted, my father was 55 when he had me, so he's always been old, but he was so active and he taught linguistics until he was 72. Afterwards, he taught seniors Shakespear in a continuing education program for free.

"You have to come home," my mom decided. "I don't want your father near me. I don't want him taking care of me. He'll kill me for sure."

I felt incredibly bad for my father. He royally screwed up. His intentions, though, had been good ones and it was an honest mistake. I can imagine my dad being so proud of himself when he was puttering unstably through the house, cooking his own dinner and taking care of the cats, feeding them, changing their litter, giving Spice his insulin. In many ways he did things not because he actually cared, but because he wanted to please my mom---and her approval meant everything to him at that stage of his life.

Although my mom may sound harsh, I agreed with her. My father was in no condition to care for her. He could easily compromise her health or even kill her if he screwed up her medication (he screwed up his own medication more times than any of us care to remember). None of these things had ever crossed my mind. I never thought of my father in any way as incompetent--I mean, he's my dad. Of course, thinking back I realize my father screwed up quite a lot, though quietly, and my mother, just as quietly, cleaned up after his messes, usually taking the responsibility, and, at times, the blame. My father never took responsibility or blame for anything.

Well, until he killed Sugar. He admitted his guilt so quickly I was stunned. Perhaps he readily confessed because it was such an understandable mistake. There were valid reasons as to how it happened: he was woken up early by the phone, still groggy he decided to give Spice his shot, he grabbed whom he thought was Spice, and then Sugar just disappeared, only to be found dying underneath my mother and father's bed hours later.

I can understand my mom's disgust. She’d been with him for over 46 years…when he hurt her, even if it was unintentional and completely without malice, it brought up a bitter stew of memories: his sloppiness, his laziness, his inattention to detail with things she cared about...on a larger scale it brings up his mortality, his vulnerable state, his old man confusion, his inability to care for anyone or anything, even if he wanted to.

She refused to talk to him. This was a bad idea on many levels. One, my father had a terrible heart--he took Nitro like it was candy and stress really screwed him up. He'd had two heart attacks--both stress induced. Killing Sugar sent his blood sugar levels out of control to begin with, but not being able to talk with my mom sent him into a complete panic.

"I keep trying to call Lu and I can't get her. They keep saying she's busy. I've tried her a dozen times," he told me. He was talking too fast and his voice was high.

I told him to not worry about it, that she just got out of surgery and she was in pain and also on a lot of meds. And, I reminded him, Sugar was dead, and that she was going to need some time to get over the initial shock of that.

"I'm going to keep trying to get her," he said helplessly, but his voice was all shaky and I could feel a lump edging its way into my own throat. I hated hearing my father on the brink of tears. It scared the shit out of me. My father had no idea what to do with himself. He was terrified of being alone.

I told him to stop calling, that I had already spoken to her and that maybe it would be best if he just waited until the next day to call her.

When he realized she and I had talked, he knew it was personal. He sounded dejected and resigned.

"Are you going to be alright, Pop? You want me to come home?" I asked him. I was getting really concerned. If my father died because my mom wouldn't talk to him because he killed the cat by mistake...Jesus...I didn't even want to think about it.

"I just want Louise to be here," he whispered quickly. He sounded so desperate and so small.

"Dad, if you want me to come home, I will," I told him again softly, but he wasn't listening. He just wanted my mom.

I went into Dan's office shaking my head and laughing but when I spoke my voice broke and my eyes stung with tears. It came on suddenly. It took me a few seconds to regain my composure. Dan glanced at me and then looked away. I trained my eyes on the horizon of the wall and ceiling. It was a quick and awkward conversation. He said that I could take off to go home at any point; it was family, he understood.

I was going to come home that Friday and spend the weekend with my dad alone, just the two of us, before my mom came home the following Tuesday. 4 hours before I was to leave, my father told me my mom would not be out of physical rehab until the following Thursday. I called her and she told me not to come home.

"I think I should for Dad," I told her.

"You're coming home to take care of ME, not your father. You'll have used up a week of your vacation before I even get home." she said. She was being selfish but, well, I WAS going home to take care of her, not Dad.

The death of Sugar made me nervous, though. I wanted to go home to make sure Dad was all right.

I called my brother Dennis to ask him what he thought about Dad's mental and physical state since he saw him everyday. He called me back and said Dad seemed all right, about the same as usual, and that I should just come home when Mom came home. His detached calmness was a welcome relief to me. He's 56, and he's been through so many of these dramas between my parents throughout his adolescence and early adulthood that he's unrattled by almost anything. My father's whimpering voice and badly working heart didn't alarm him at all.

"He'll be fine." Dennis said, "Just make sure you're here when Mom gets home."

I ended up going home for a week and half. My mother's recovery was pretty incredible. Although she was given painkillers, she ended up going off of them within 3 days which is basically unheard of.

I spent a good deal of my time reading and cooking for my parents and trying out some new recipes that I wouldn't have gotten the chance to in DC. It was both a relaxing and stressful visit. Relaxing because it was nice to slack off and read and cook for a week and a half. Stressful because of some unexpected feelings upon returning home.

Home has always been a refuge to me. It's one of the only places I truly feel safe. And I can also hide out there undisturbed by any reality for a while. But when I got home this time, when I went inside, the house was cold and dark and distant. My father was by himself in the little TV room watching the news.

The house was a mess. Millions of magazines, newspapers, books, papers, clippings, piled everywhere in the TV room, completely covering the dining room table, the living room. Instead of feeling a warm hug by the thousands of books and papers surrounding me, I felt a sudden sense of panic, like I was being buried alive.

What the fuck are we going to do with all these books and magazines when my dad dies? Or when my mom dies? You could start a library with the amount of books in our house. It's unbelievable how many there are--double, sometimes triple stacked in bookshelves that go from floor to ceiling.

Going upstairs was also depressing. My old room, which is now used for a guest bedroom for my sister, Ann, and her husband, John, when they visit (I no longer sleep upstairs, I, by choice, only sleep on the couch in the living room) is the only usable room upstairs, aside from the bathroom. My late brother Tom's room is nothing but storage now, as is Ann's room at the end of the hallway. It's been like this for years, but for some reason it depressed me more than ever while I was home. And that's when it struck me: my parent's house was completely alien to me. This wasn't my home anymore. And then I realized, Holy fuck, I don't have a home anywhere... I suddenly felt terribly disconnected, completely lost.

Although my parents were still my parents, we still talked and laughed and shared as we'd always done, they did seem older and frailer. I kept thinking, Am I capable of actually taking care of them? Am I in any way, because of my nature and lifestyle, capable of taking care of anyone at all? Will I ever be responsible? If something really big happened, like my mom really needed me, would I be able to be there for her? I suddenly wished my parents were younger.

When my father died, I didn't want to go home. I didn't want to see my grieving mother or siblings. I didn't want to see my father in a casket or attend his funeral.

When I walked into the house expecting to slip into stunned grief, something bizarre happened: nothing. No heart palpitations, no tears, no butterflies in my stomach, no lump in my throat. I actually felt a general feeling of relief. I moved around the house, staring at my father's linguistic books, venturing into his office, going in the TV room and sitting his chair. Nothing. No urge to cry, no feeling of dizziness, nothing. And I wasn't the only one who felt that way. My sister, my mother, my brothers Dennis, Jerry, and Frank--¦we all had that feeling of relief.

Spice, the surviving cat after The Cat Incident, was also gone. My Mom had put him to sleep 3 hours before we arrived home. My sister described him as "walking death,"� and I remember the last time I saw him I hoped he would die soon. My mother feared if she put him to sleep before my dad died it would have caused emotional anguish for my dad, perhaps weakening his will to live further. Spice and my father were quite close, similar to how my mother and Sugar has been. My mother thought Spice's death would be too hard on my Dad.

Spice had lost all control of his bowels at that point and was forced to live in the kitchen where we have a linoleum floor. He was nothing but skin and bones at the end, and for a 19 year old cat, it was shocking he was still alive.

I agreed with my mom's decision to put Spice to sleep. I think my mom was exhausted from taking care of my father and taking care of Spice. There had been a long struggle after Spice became older and weaker and diabetic. Sometimes he was given too much insulin, or didn't eat enough when he was given it, which caused him to seizure. My Mom, rarely fazed by any emergency, was always quick to save Spice's life. She would get some honey and quickly get it in his mouth, waiting for his seizures to subside before trying. When this happened the first time my father was so alarmed he started crying, a tid bit of information my Mom told me at the funeral. This fact surprised me, since my father always struck me as quite stoic with occasional, though terrifying, bursts of anger. But just as I had seen during The Cat Incident, my father really was quite vulnerable, physically and emotionally.

Spice's quality of life was low, he was too old to stagger around the kitchen, yowling with his half broken vocal cords, leaving a trail of shit and piss. I thought I would miss Spice when I came in.

I didn't.

Looking around the house didn't strike me as depressing or stifling. My father was dead. We could finally begin to clear the cobwebs of his life out. My father was a packrat. The house had become a tomblike museum.

Although Dad's death was sad, it didn't seem, well, painful or traumatic. And because the last funeral that I went to of someone in my immediate family--my brother Tom's 6 years ago from a car accident, my father's death was expected and understood. He was 84 years old. He lived a great life.

His decline was rapid. It only took about a month for his mind to become as weak as his body. He spent long periods of time with his head in his hands. My sister saw him doing that in his study, an image that pains me to think about because it was the start of his mental demise, and it must have been an ugly scene for my sister to come upon. It also must have been terrible for my Dad to realize his mind no longer was sound. He would go to the study day in and out, though, and spend hours doing nothing, trying to write but being unable to, trying to figure out the bills but not knowing how to, trying to add numbers but miserably failing. None of this was found out until weeks later, when my Mom looked at the money books. My father's scribblings made no sense. None of the bills had been paid. My sister was there when my Mom looked through them and my mom just broke down.

He told my mom he would wake up in the mornings sometimes and not know where he was, everything was off, nothing seemed "right"� to him when it came to his surroundings. He spent more and more time sleeping, he stopped eating meat (when my mom told me Dad suddenly became a "vegetarian" I knew it was the beginning of the end), then stopped eating pretty much altogether. He began to act strange, could no longer insert his own catheter, take a bath, take his medication. The confusion inside his head began to show in his words (telling my sister he wanted parsley instead of water, drinking his denture water instead of the glass of real water right beside it), he shut his eyes hard a lot and wouldn't open them. He stopped talking in general. When he did he didn't make sense, saying he couldn't open his eyes because "he would get in trouble."� When my sister would ask him to explain that, he would no longer speak.

He would sometimes have moments of lucidity, but they were brief, never lasting more than a few minutes.

"Your father used to be excellent company," my mom told me one night over the phone, "but now he's not good company at all."� She was crying. The last 10 or 12 years my father and mother spent a tremendous amount of time together reading, talking, traveling, watching TV, and cooking. For such a difficult marriage, I'll admit, they were a great pair at the end. They really were a joy to be around. Having my father's mind go seemed to help my Mom process his death better. If he had been of sound mind and had died, his death would have struck her much harder.

I made plans to go home and see my father one last time. I knew he was dying and although I thought he likely had a few more months, when his decline started, it seemed more serious than I would have expected in such short period of time.

Though going home suddenly seemed like a daunting task. My mother told me the man I was going to see was not the man that raised me. I also planned to go with Will, my boyfriend, who talked about how he really wanted to meet my parents. I figured it would be the last time he would see my father alive. Of course, in the condition my mother described him to be in, would having Will see Dad be wise? I was conflicted about the trip suddenly, wondering if maybe having Will see my father like that would be humiliating to my dad, and if it was even appropriate to have Will see Dad at all. For Will to see a broken shell of a man who had been sharp, witty and funny seemed almost an insult to my dad's life. Should someone who is not immediate family witness a man's process of dying? I wasn't sure.

I would not find out. 3 days before Will and I were to go to Potsdam by car, my father passed away. In hindsight it would have been an absolutely horrible time for Will to meet my father. My mother was depressed, stressed out, taking care of my father 24 hours a day along with Hospice visiting multiple times a day. Seeing my father like that would have been considerably difficult for me, and having Will there may have actually caused more stress, not less.

Will drove up to Potsdam on Wednesday, the day of the wake. It was a 9 hour trip that he started at around 4:30 in the morning. He missed the first wake because he got into around the same time it was started and we agreed he should take a long nap and come to the viewing from 7-9 PM, instead of 2-4 PM.

The wake was easier than I ever could have expected, and I spent most of the time catching up with my brother Frank and Dennis and talking with my nephew Alex and playing with L'il Thomas. The wake, both times, went by fast, as did the funeral the next day.

As far as funerals go, it was a good one. We all seemed at peace with how Dad left the world, and none of us seemed to have "coulda woulda shouldas"� regrets when it came to our relationships with him.

Still, though, I am trying to wrap my head around my father's death and my lack of apparent grief. My friend Adam seemed shocked and concerned (perhaps even mildly disgusted) with how well I seemed to take his death. Am I in denial? Or was I really ready for my father's death? I talked to my Mom and conversations about my feelings towards my dad's life and their marriage are extremely conflicted. My father in many ways was a good father--he provided for us, he had some absolutely terrific sides to him--unwavering patience and support for our interests and endeavors, completely helpful, paternal, very active, quite fun to talk to, etc, but my parents' marriage was very far from perfect. And I still am not sure I've completely come to terms with all that. None of my siblings understand why my mom stayed with my dad. Her love for him was both incredibly inspiring but also somewhat tragic.

I was thankful that Will took for 5, unpaid days of work to attend the funeral with me, and I was also thankful he was able to meet my entire family. He's pretty incredible as a person and as a boyfriend. And my family loved him, which was good. Everyone was in a warm mood and things were oddly upbeat throughout the time we were in Potsdam.

Will and I left Saturday morning around 11:30 am from Potsdam and made the 9-hour trip to NYC where we spent the next day and a half independently hanging out with old friends. I used the day and a half to see old friends I hadn't seen in years: Brian and Walter who I met the summer I graduated from RIT and stayed in town to work at Moto Photo (blush). I spent the first night there with Brian, Walter, and their roommate Nicole, a very cool chick who does sustainable design and packaging. She's really proactive about recycling and creating packaging tat will be biodegradable and/or recyclable. Plus, she educates the masses on how to recycle.

The next day Will, his friend Rob, and I went to brunch at a pretty awesome place called Kate's Joint. It's basically a diner with greasy, fried, cheesy food for vegans and vegetarians. And the combination of foods was intriguing to me: I had a dish that had sweet potato hash, collard greens, with scrambled tofu and a layering of (dairy) cheddar cheese on top. It was excellent.

Then Will, Rob and I walked around in the pouring rain while I went on my chocolate hunt. I wanted to get some chocolate at Kee's Chocolates since I enjoyed them so much last time. The woman who owns the shop sells homemade chocolates and orchids, and has, within the last year of so, expanded her menu of fine truffles. I've been waiting to try her new ones for the past two years or so. And for homemade truffles, each costing $1.75 is incredibly reasonable. Sadly, only a few flavors really stood out. Her flavoring was too subtle, causing many of the truffles to become bland and homogenous in taste.

I also stopped into Vosges (pronounced "Voe"�) chocolates for some hot white chocolate. I had years ago when Livie and I ran around the city going to the best chocolate shops we could find. That stuff is incredible, but, unfortunately, their truffles are only mediocre. Their chocolate bars and hot chocolate are delicious, however, so I visit them whenever I am in NYC (which, as you know, is not that often.)

I also had dinner with Jim Fausto (my first love--we dated 10 years ago), who I hadn't seen in about two years. We ate a vegetarian restaurant in Union Square called Zen Palate. We shared steamed vegetable dumplings and I ordered the Mango Halo, which had fresh mangos, cherry tomatoes, Ginko nuts, snow peas and soy nuggets (flavored and texturized to taste a bit like velvety chicken, which was quite good but also strange since making tofu taste or feel like meat is kind of like making steak taste like pork. What's the point? It's tofu. It should taste like tofu). I rarely eat tofu that is masqueraded as something else, so it was a treat for me.

I also hung out with another old friend, Aron, the last night I was there, meeting him in Park Slope after having dinner with Jim, jogging 5 blocks in the pouring rain and then hopping into a cab to fill in the remaining 20 to finally meet him. I completely miscalculated the subway stop. Will arrived later and Aron offered us his bed for the night, which was absolutely terrific of him.

Before leaving NYC Will and I had brunch at a place called Yuca Bar in Manhatten near Topkins Square Park. The brunch there was AMAZING.

I had the Yuca Benedictos: Poached eggs w/shrimp and avocado on yuca hash browns topped w/cilantro hollandaise.

Will got the Arepas Benedictos: Poached eggs on white corn cakes topped w/hollandaise sauce & with smoked salmon or Serrano ham.

I couldn't eat more than half of it, but that was one of the best brunches I have ever had with a terrific Tex Mex spin to it. Next time I am in NYC I am making my way back there. It does smell a little raunchy because on the weekends it seems first and foremost a bar, but the food is just terrific. I gotta find me a place with a brunch as good as that in DC. There are quite a few Spanish/Mexican/TexMex restaurants in DC. I should check out their menus.

Will and I left the next day and made our way back to DC, where I took the next day off from work just to get my head together.

When I came back to work it was awkward. No one said hello and no one looked at me. It suddenly became apparent that Dan didn't tell anyone. He sent me an email in the middle of the day admitting as much, saying he wasn't sure if I wanted anyone to know. Considering my father's obituary was in the NY Times, it was hardly a secret. And what shame, what taboo, is there to have a parent die? I was shocked Dan didn't mention it or make it public. I mean, if I had been raped or something like that, yes, keep it on the DL, but a parent dying?

There was no card, only a few people ventured to give their condolences. Minch came up to me later and shared his condolences, saying he kept wondering why nothing was done: no card, no email, nothing. He said he found that especially surprising considering when Dan's dog died he was given a card for his loss, but when it came to my dad, it was suddenly this awkward hush hush topic because Dan didn't mention it. Maureen, when she found out, left a card on my desk, another woman, Jen, also gave her condolences. Swen did, also, as well as Greg. But everyone else didn't say anything. It was never mentioned. And after having my brother die and having the washingtonpost.com know how to handle it (make it public, have a card, emails, flowers, etc. when I came back), Dan not even having it acknowledged was incredibly disappointing. It made me realize he's never dealt with death before. Like, at all. The biggest loss in his life was his dog. He honestly had no idea what to do when my father died.

My friend Stace warned me that even though I seemed okay with everything, death has a funny way of sneaking up on you. I knew this from my brother's death, but his was unexpected and traumatic. He was also 31 year old. I knew my father's death was coming for years. I felt like I was far more prepared for it.

Last week I started having trouble at work. Forgetfulness, first, then suddenly becoming incredibly emotional while listening to music.

I cry at my desk during work pretty much everyday--if I listen to music and my mind starts to wander, I get these moments of terrible sadness, but not about anything in particular. I'm not thinking of my father when I have them, I just get teary eyed and a huge lump in my throat and I discreetly wipe them away with my shirtsleeve. My sex drive has gone down quite a bit. I want to spend more time alone (which is kinda hard, since Will and I , for all intents and purposes, live together). Pot suddenly seems incredibly enticing.

It's hard to share grief with people because, well, you can't share it. Which really sucks..