2006-10-09 - 2:31 p.m.
Hullo, sure seems like I haven�t written in here for a while, but that�s only because they haven�t perfected the �from the mind to the Internet� transcribing machine yet. It seems that so often I am �thinking� in Diaryland entries, and yet thinking them and getting them written are two different things.
I went to visit my father last weekend (the cusp of September-October, which made it exactly a month since I saw him last) and we had a surprisingly GREAT visit. A month ago, he had been given �from minutes to days� left to live by his doctor�ha ha ha�I love it when people fool their doctors! A month later, Dad seems to be doing better than he has since Mom died last spring.
I had been having some great phone conversations with him; for one thing, great, I suppose, in that they are able to exist at all. But beyond that, he sounds almost like the great old Dad that we know and love, and with a good attitude. I am one person in the family who hasn�t oriented myself around a point of view of Dad �being terminal�, which, I think, is only one millimeter away from thinking that he SHOULD be dead, as in �get it over with already�. But I have been utterly unable to think and feel that way, but, instead, have had my mind on his getting better despite the doctor�s pronouncement that �there IS no hope.� If you ask me, there IS no hope only when DAD says there is no hope, but he�s certainly not sayin� it and I�m not going to be one to argue against that. Just as it was so clear to me that Mom was in charge of her death, so, too, is Dad in charge of his.
Not that he doesn�t understand that death is �imminent�, but so is my own death, for that matter. How long is �imminent� in spiritual �time�? (Ask the Pevensie children, are we measuring in Narnia time or England time?) And anyway, hell, he and Mom had made things nice for us for after their deaths several decades ago (putting all their money into trust for us, putting their house in OUR name, and so on�apparently, once Dad has died, we simply �take over,� no court, tax, will, or probate bullshit to deal with). So I can talk about all that stuff with him without counteracting my positive orientation toward his survival and further longevity, because none of it is time-based anyway.
For example, in one phone conversation, I asked him if among all the books he has in his office at home, are there any of his old textbooks.
�That's what they are,� he said, "mostly textbooks."
�Oh good,� I said, �you mean advanced mathematics, engineering, physics, that sort of thing?�
�Oh yes,� he said, �all that I studied at Rennsalaer and M.I.T.�
I figure those books would be pretty great to own (I have a great relationship with textbooks and am able to do about 90% of my learning from them), especially since they are in fields I feel I ought to know much more about. The fact that these books are quite old (in other words, from DAD�s student days) doesn�t matter, this stuff doesn�t change much. Math is math, and most of the physics we still use comes from Newton with perhaps a little Einstein thrown in. After all, we put men on the Moon with the works of Newton. And DAD was PART of that effort.
I�ve asked him if in some way his heart didn�t break somewhere around the end of the sixties when the whole space industry was killed in our country. He was definitely a child of the aerospace era, hired right out of M.I.T. by Lockheed in the mid-fifties along with all the other rocket scientists to come to the great land of futuristic promise, California, to take part in great and wonderful doings. Dad expected us to have space station hotels and colonies on the moon before the start of the milleneum (these things were already completely planned and feasible). And look at it all now, gone into the shreds of history. That�s what relying on government will do for you.
To say that it broke his heart is an understatement. For a generation like his to participate in the immense American success of World War II in their latter youth and then to start their marriages and family lives on the heels of that grandeur and sail into what our country achieved in the next couple of decades, only to now find ourselves fighting for the very survival of our way of life against ALL comers (not to mention the greatest enemy of all which is within our very own society) is indeed enough to kill the hopes of almost anybody.
But Dad is proud of his children (although sometimes I�m not QUITE sure why, but I do feel that we are destined for great things and maybe someday will find that promise coming to some kind of fruition) and that is still one remaining shining hope for him.
I told him I wanted to have those textbooks if nobody else wanted them�I was being needlessly polite, because he knows as well as I do that nobody else wants them or would even have any idea what to do with them. But he was VERY happy to hear that I wanted them and he said that for sure they are MINE. He did say that I might be unhappy to see that he wrote a lot in them, clarification of formulas and the like, but I told him that in my view, that would enhance those books� value and usefulness.
I looked over the school calendar and realized that there is generally at least one three-day weekend, if not a longer holiday, each month, and so I should go up to see him on each one of them. �Which holiday is it?� he asked me when I called him to ask him if I could come see him, and I said �Yom Kippur.� He didn�t know what it was for, either (somebody I read said that ALL the Jewish holidays are celebrating their slaughtering of Gentiles, but I haven�t confirmed the truth of that), but if it gave me a day off, then great.
He kind of tried to talk me out of it by saying that it was such a long trip and surely I had other things I wanted to do, that it would be wonderful for HIM, but he didn�t want to be selfish and take me away from other useful activities. Given my positive orientation, I really couldn�t say �How many more opportunities will we have?�, but he gave me my excuse by saying, �But sure, if you want to get out of L.A. for a while, I�d love to have you come up.�
�I want to get out of L.A. for a while.�
That was no lie!
It�s actually quite a wonderful and pretty easy trip (if I leave right after work on Friday, I will arrive in Petaluma by midnight) and I am so disappointed at myself at never having appreciated it as much before. I regret to say that for the past ten years or so, I only went up there for Thanksgiving and Christmas, having �too many other things� in my life to do here at home. Now that my mother is gone, I miss all the opportunities for visits I could have had. But we DID talk on the phone for hours every Saturday, so it�s not as if I ignored her.
If anything would have prevented my going up there, it was accepting what I was told by my other siblings about �Dad�s schedule��that he gets up for breakfast (so you can see him while he eats), and then he goes to bed and sleeps again until late afternoon (then you maybe can see him until a little after dinner). My brother said, �Be sure to bring lots of work to do on your own, because he will be asleep most of the time you are there.� Well, I can sure do work on my own (I was sure to bring my laptop and several books), but this IS an inefficient use of one�s time�fourteen or more hours of driving, spending several hundred dollars for the motel and gasoline to only have a few hours of visit, but I figured it would be worth it and I can do more in a motel than I can accomplish at home. (For those who wonder why I don�t fly, that costs more and is a greater hassle. I�d MUCH rather drive any day.)
But the drive up there and back is ALWAYS such a pleasure. Every time I do it, I marvel over the comfort and power of my car. Whenever anyone starts ragging against oil companies or air pollution or the evils of our industrial/technological society, all it takes is one trip up Interstate 5 from Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay Area and back in a full-size Cadillac with immense V-8 engine and cruise control set to 70 miles per hour to make me want to dump into a wetlands ditch all the socialist environmentalists and cover them in tree frogs and hoot owls. I bring with me a box of CDs and I spend the whole time in joyful singing as the car effortlessly and unrelentlessly powers me as smooth as a Zephyr train. It clears the mind and heart and renews me and inspires me. Fuck these people. We all COULD actually be flying around in DeLorean Harrier Jets by now if it weren�t for visionless people like that, but instead, they want us back chilling in the stone age. (They want US back chilling in the stone age�this isn�t really in their plans for THEMSELVES.)
I like the motel where I say, which happens to be in a marvelous little high-quality-of-life-town of Novato on the very northern edge of Marin County (probably California�s most mystical and fantastical county), nine miles away from my father�s house on the very southern edge of Sonoma County. My father likes this too, as I am his only child to actually stay in a motel when I visit him. Others presume that they can simply stay in Dad�s house, which they do without asking and basically impose themselves on him (Ginger, though, sleeps in her RV which she has parked in his driveway; she is always a completely welcome sight). This "presumption" isn't such a great fault, because we all stayed in the house when Mom was alive, Mom insisted on it (she relished a house full of her children), but I know Dad always hated it because HE was the one who had to wash all the sheets and make all the beds prior to our arrival. Despite all the care he was willing to give to Mom, being the housemaid to his grown children was not something he appreciated. But if Mom wanted it, he would put up with it. But I understood. Now that she is gone, Dad doesn�t DO sheets. When they get done, they get done by Annie, the wonderful woman Mom hired to take care of Dad, but Annie�s job is NOT to be a maid (for Dad, or for anybody), she�s more like a nurse, and Dad certainly doesn�t want Annie burdened, even though she DOES do it because that�s the kind of person she is. But I learned a long time ago that if you want to get in Dad�s good graces when you come for a visit, be one of the first to wash all the dishes, and now that there are hardly any dishes to wash, to not impose on Dad�s hospitality is an exceedingly prudent idea.
Of course, he continues to be surprised (yet obviously pleased) that I am in a motel and not expecting to sleep in the house�but he WILL invite me to stay anyway, and on my final night, I will �relent� and sleep in �my� bed (which is a hospital bed that Mom had in the living room to use whenever we were all in there) and on Christmas visits, etc., that was always where I was placed to sleep. So Dad says there are no sheets anybody has to change, as I am the only one who sleeps there. Still, Dad is the master of the house and I honor that, so my presumption is �motel� until he insists otherwise. The pattern for three-day weekends now seems to be established, Friday and Saturday nights in the motel and Sunday night in the house for a Monday morning return down to L.A.
I had kind of a funny experience when I first went over there this time. It was about 10:00 in the morning, as I walked up to the front door, a car filled with vaguely foreign-looking young men arrived in the driveway. I took a backward glance at them and assumed they had to be the gardeners or something (they drove in with such assurance, it was as if they were used to it). I really didn�t want to fool with them, whoever they were, they were very low priority in my mind, because there is always the slight fear of WHAT I will find when I go into the house (namely, Dad lying dead on the floor or something like that). If these were the gardeners, then they would simply get to work without hassle, and if not, presumably they would ring the doorbell.
The front door was unlocked�Dad must have unlocked it in expectation of me. I was glad of that, but still, it also vaguely bothered me to see the front door unlocked with strangers coming into our driveway. I worry about Dad being helpless and alone in the house during the times that Annie isn�t there (Annie is there only 8 A.M. to Noon on weekdays). I went inside and called to Dad, who said he was in the bedroom, that he had just finished breakfast and had gotten back into bed.
�Oh, I came too late,� I said, �you must be ready to go back to sleep, now.� But he said �no,� not at all, that he was just in bed because it was comfortable, but with me there, he had no intention of going to sleep!
Just then, the doorbell rang, and I said to Dad that I would find out what it was. Well, it was four Boy Scouts and also a second car with two men getting out, all dressed in �Scout Master� uniforms (or what, at least, looked like it). (These Boy Scouts were all either Mexican or Asian.) My immediate presumption was that they were selling something and all I was going to do was get rid of them as quickly as possible.
The �leader� boy was a tall, athletically built Mexican-type who when he talked sounded like a Marine or an Army recruit. He had that same �country, slow, kind of dumb, simple, but good-hearted, do-his-duty� manner of speaking. Still, none of that was going to cut it with me, I wasn�t buying whatever he was selling.
He was saying something about smoke alarms and I cut him off by saying that the house was FULL of smoke alarms (the damned things were always going off whenever the turkey was being cooked for Thanksgiving dinner), we sure didn�t need any.
But he continued that he wasn�t selling anything, they were there only to CHECK our smoke alarms out. To me, this was still part and parcel to a sales pitch, that their CHECKING them out would reveal that we needed MORE, or whatever, so still I insisted that we weren�t interested, thank you very much, good-bye. The fact that it was becoming difficult to get rid of these guys was beginning to bother me a lot, and I began to think that this was some kind of scam, because they kept insisting that they were here to go into the house and check out all our smoke alarms and I was insisting that they absolutely were NOT going to do any such thing. I kept thinking of the helpless 90-year-old-man back in the bedroom and the front door unlocked, etc., and a gang of four alien youths and two suspicious adults hanging back behind them.
There was still no getting rid of that guy, who told me in no uncertain terms that somebody at that address had asked for them to come inside and check out all the smoke alarms, and by now I figured I had to use my bigger guns. I told him that what he was saying was out of the question and completely insane, that NOBODY ever asked for such a thing, and WOULD NOT, and I didn�t know what kind of a scam they were trying to pull here, but it wasn�t going to work and they had to get off our property right now and that if they were to ask my opinion, their particular organization was just about the last organization on the face of the Earth that I would ever use for ANYTHING. (This good ol� boy southern-sounding Marine type claiming to be part of an organization that I know had gone all the way to the Supreme Court to receive permission to continue to discriminate against homosexuals who, according to them, can�t be scouts because they are immoral and can�t be scout masters because they are putative child molestors, was really getting on my nerves.)
Finally the crew turned to leave and I closed the door and went back to my father�s bedroom.
�Who was at the door?� Dad asked.
�Oh, some guys claiming to be Boy Scouts, wanting to come inside to check all your smoke alarms or something, don�t worry, I got rid of them.�
Dad sat up straight and said, �What? I�ve been WAITING for them, I ASKED them to come here.�
�What, what for?� I asked, incredulous.
�To check my smoke alarms,� he said, �I can�t hear when the batteries go dead and they provide a valuable service, they come every year to check out all the alarms and make sure they are working right, can you go stop them from leaving?�
Good Lord, I had to run out into the street and flag them down and apologize and tell them that my father definitely DID want them to check his smoke alarms, I was wrong, etc., and to their credit, they were very nice about it and simply came back and went to work. They climbed ladders and tested alarms and replaced batteries and generally did the modern-day version of helping a little old lady across the street. How very Norman Rockwell this town of Petaluma ends up being, with Boy Scouts going into the houses of the elderly to help them, etc., I NEVER in a million years would have ever thought of such a thing. Boy have I been polluted by life in Los Angeles, where I am pretty sure such a thing would simply never happen. But in small town America, this kind of thing apparently is still alive.
Dad kind of joked with them in a friendly way, �This is my son, just up for a visit from Los Angeles,� and he said. �The Boy Scouts have been having a tough time lately, but when I was boy, if you weren�t a Boy Scout, you weren�t anybody.�
�Yes sir,� said the athletically-built Mexican Boy Scout, who explained to us that he was working to become an Eagle Scout.
�Well I�m all for you,� said Dad, while I just sat there and smiled at the guy warmly, our previous confrontation seemingly swept under the carpet.
So that�s how my visit with my father began this time.
Dad and I just talked and talked and talked. We talked about any and everything under the sun�my work, his health, politics, spirituality, events from the past, hopes for the future. We talked about Mom�s death, and he said this was the first time he felt emotionally secure enough to discuss it. He could talk about how wonderful life had been with her and how much he misses her now, but we could also laugh about her many foibles. He had been feeling guilty about how he hadn�t awakened the night she died and woke up the next morning to find her lying there dead with one eye open, cocked over in his direction, the �evil eye�, he calls it, demonstrating her anger at him for not helping her.
I told him that we all interpreted his not waking up as a sign that she died peacefully, and that eye cocked over his direction was a sign that for her last glance, she wanted to see him.
He agreed, finally now, that he hadn�t done anything wrong that night, saying, �For whatever reason, forces wanted me asleep that night,� so his not waking up to �help� her was part of a larger plan. �We talked about her dying,� he said, �we knew it was soon and necessary. And there was nothing I could have done for her, anyway.�
So thank goodness for that part of it.
But he still insisted that the eye was an �evil eye� admonishing him.
�But you can�t make an interpretation of a facial expression of a person who had just died,� I said, but he said that I hadn�t see it and if I had, I would think it was an evil eye, too.
So suddenly I laughed, and said, �Well, you know Mom was the most impatient person in the world. She could say to you, �Bod, will you give me that pencil,� pointing to a pencil that fell on the floor underneath her bed, and you would say, �Huh?�, and she would say, �Give me that God-damned fucking pencil�!�
Well, this made HIM laugh, because it was so true, she would jump from quiet and peaceful to full-on stormy anger in one second and, actually, that instant passion was one of the things he loved about her. It turned him on.
So I said, �You can imagine how it was that night, suddenly she is having a heart attack and she gently calls for you, �Bod, Bod,� but she can hardly make a sound and you are asleep, so she jumps to �God-damned fucker wake up!� and that�s how she was when she died.�
Dad nearly busted a gut over that one, it was just so true, that�s exactly how she was and somehow this whole exchange humanized her even in the moment of her death (no mystical mumbo-jumbo about her floating gently up into the glowing light, etc.) and I loved the fact that we could LAUGH about her and that HE could and in an instant get rid of a guilt that had been gnawing at him this whole time.
If we can be as human in our deaths as we were in our lives, then we can accept it all as part of one sensible continuum.
And he talked candidly about his own death, outlining for me his observations of what has been going on in his body.
�They�ve tried five different ways to kill me,� he said, �I�ve counted them, and I have watched them move from one organ to another, but so far they haven�t succeeded. Right now, I am watching the two kidneys battle it out. First it was the right one, it swelled with a kind of a tumor and my right leg blew up like a balloon with fluid, but then it normalized and moved over to the left. Right now, they�re both quiet. I�m kind of worried what might be next up the line, my heart, maybe, and I�ve been feeling a slight pain in my left shoulder, the �heart attack� shoulder, but I think that one is maybe lessening, now, too.�
Basically, he explained to that if he is to die, he is okay with it, and if he is to not die, he is okay with it. �All I want is to not be in pain, but as for the rest, I�m just watching it to see what it does.� It�s as if there is some force beyond the �him� that we know (whether it be his higher self, or his soul, or his spirit, or God, or some other controlling entity, he just doesn�t know) trying things out, making little experiments.
I am making a little conclusion based on my conversation with him that the �best� attitude regarding death is to neither fear it nor yearn for it, and that is what has kept him alive more than a month past the �minutes or days� he was supposed to have left. He seems completely resigned to the reality of whatever happens and believes it to be for �the best� whatever will happen.
This made ME feel very much more comfortable with the whole thing, too.
And he�s loaded with surprises. For example, my brother and his wife treat Dad as if he were with one foot right across that threshold right now. It was Dave and Carol who made the arrangement with Hospice. I don�t think I would have done it, because so far I won�t do anything without Dad being in charge and I don�t think Dad wanted Hospice, or went along with it. He complained to me that the Hospice nurse wanted to be the only one talking, that when Dad wanted to talk, she shut him up. This means that she felt that SHE was in charge, when who should be in charge should be DAD. So Dave and Carol basically did an intervention on Dad in order to put this in place. Dad pretty much knows (even if Dave and Carol aren�t quite so sure on this score) that that ONE phone call to Hospice is to be the last. For one thing, Hospice is a government program (it�s part of Medicare)�yes, it�s �free�, but it�s �free� just in the same way the Metro Tow Service on the L.A. freeways is �free�. You know how that works? You car is disabled on the freeway and you call AAA (if you have it). But while you are waiting for AAA to show up, the Metro Tow Truck may arrive first. AAA or not, Metro will start to hook up your car and you will discover (if you don�t already know) that they aren�t there for YOU, they are there to get your car off the freeway. They won�t take you where you want to be taken, they are only to deposit you in any convenient location, convenient to them.
Hospice is kind of like that. You may think they are there to be a kind of free, on-call Emergency Room, but really, they are there to facilitate getting you out of the way. After all, they supply your house with a bottle of morphine. Yes, if you are in terrible pain, this morphine will stop it, thank goodness, but it stops everything. The formula is this�terrible pain, IV of morphine, pain goes away, you die of a blissful OD. So your phone call to Hospice is either to administer the charitable coupe de grace, or to summon the Coroner.
The doctor, my brother, and my brother�s wife all thought Dad was ready for that. But Dad did not.
And Dad, for sure, knows what is going on. He told me, �They took my bullets away.� Hospice requires that there be no loaded weapons in the house, so Dave emptied Dad�s gun and hid away the bullets without telling him. After having done so, he asked me if I agreed with his doing this behind Dad�s back. I told him that if he told Dad, Dad would NOT allow it, so if he wanted Hospice, he had to do it this way. Dave did this whole thing before I even got there last time, but I am not counteracting it or saying that what he did was wrong. I am only saying that I wouldn�t have done it, i.e., I would have told Dad about the bullets and if Dad refused, then I would have told Hospice that I guess we couldn�t have them. I do NOT want to violate Dad�s sovereignty. But I do not know enough to say that what Dave did is really WRONG. Maybe in a day or so, Dad might suddenly be in excruciating pain and the only way out would be that call to Hospice, in which case, I will be glad Dave got the Hospice. (Anyway, Dave did what he felt was needed and none of us has the ultimate knowledge.)
But Dave thought Dad would never know, and now I know that Dad figured that out immediately. (Dad probably checks his gun daily.)
However, I think maybe I made it okay. I said to Dad, �You know that Hospice wouldn�t come into the house if there were a loaded weapon on the premises. They required that Dave remove the bullets.�
�But I wouldn�t shoot anybody,� he said, �do they think I am a crazy man?�
�No, not YOU, nobody thinks you are a crazy man, but Hospice doesn�t know you at all, they only know what they have experienced in the past and people HAVE shot at them when they came into the house to help.�
�But I wouldn�t do that,� Dad insisted, �and I have to have a loaded gun for protection.�
�Of course you wouldn�t do that, but what about Pa [Dad�s father], what do you think HE would have done?�
�I don�t think he would have shot anybody.�
�No, but what happened with him and Ma [Dad�s mother]?�
�He didn�t recognize her and he tried to throw her down the stairs.�
End of argument.
Another area in which Dad surprised me was that he found a buyer for their RV! I admit that I was in complete agreement with Dave on this one�the RV was absolutely hopeless and we would have to simply have it towed to a junk yard. But Dad actually found somebody who wants to buy it and fix it up, even with ALL its major problems. That flabbergasts me. �You�re amazing,� I said to Dad, while Annie was serving him his breakfast.
�He got his van running, too,� she whispered to me. Oh my God, he got his VAN running again? That was another �Dave� lie. Dad asked Dave to get his van running for him (recharging the battery and making sure it would start), but Dave determined that Dad should NOT drive, so he worked on it a bit, told Dad it was running now, whereas he hadn�t worked on it at all.
So Dad must have checked it after Dave left and found out what he had done (or not done), and simply got it running himself! He hasn�t DRIVEN it, and I don�t think he ever expects to, but he wants to know he HAS it in case for some reason he really needs it. It�s like the loaded gun, nothing he has any expectation of ever needing to use, but it makes him feel secure knowing he�s got these things.
If this man is still able to fix his van or find a buyer for a broken-down RV, I, personally, think that news of his impending death is very premature.
Throughout my visit there, I kept periodically asking, �Are you tired, do you want to take a nap?� but no, he absolutely did not. He said that he had great company right now, somebody to talk to, why go to sleep? He wasn�t tired!
The next day, the neighbor across the cul-de-sac from Dad called and invited him over for a party. Without batting an eye (or going through any �oh gee, I may be too tired� routine), he accepted it without question. He went and took a shower and got all dressed and I said �Are you going to walk over there, I�ll walk with you.�
�Yes, you walk with me and they will invite you in, too.�
I wasn�t so sure I would be welcome, these people didn�t even know I existed, I was sure, but I didn�t mind being the arm Dad could hold onto. It was an intense walk, really, down Dad�s very steep driveway, across the cul-de-sac, and then up the neighbor�s very steep driveway, and then a flight of stairs after that. Dad was breathing really hard, but he made it. And he enjoyed the party (I was definitely invited in) and we both had a wonderful time. And boy did he EAT. I thought he had no appetite at all, but at that party, he almost ate more than I did, including one great big barbecued steak. It took him a long, careful while to cut it up into tiny little pieces, but whereas Mom was Mrs. Impatience in the flesh, Dad is the just the opposite (instead, he is Mr. Stubborn).
I think I learned about another side of Dad�s abilities, that all this so-called sleeping and lack of appetite and weakness and senility and whatever was all probably more grief, sadness, depression, loneliness, and boredom, plus people ACTING like he was on death�s door. Left to his own devices and time to heal, he seems to be doing much better. Of course, nobody knows what the future really holds, but I�m keeping my hope up. And I plan on visiting him next three-day weekend.
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