My dad died 4 days after my 49th birthday, 10 days before my son and daughter-in-law's 2nd wedding anniversary and 6 weeks before his first great-grandchild is due. He died 10 months after he first began to feel ill with what we all thought was 'merely' emphysema, 10 weeks after the definitive diagnosis was delivered to my mother, less than two months following the start of treatment and only 11 days into home hospice care. Am I the only one who believes there's something about all this that just sucks?
We seem to have really come together as a family since all this began. My son has grown into manhood during these past months. My mother has touched her humanity, never something she does easily or without struggle. I hope I have been able to help her do that and that she continues along that path. I've rediscovered my uncle, Ed's, family...what a treasure chest of joys and wonders they are. There will be more to follow about my extended family once I get home and have the cable that connects my camera to my computer! How could I have forgotten that?
We pitched in and sent Dad off with the kind of celebration on Sunday that would have made him proud. It made me proud to see all the people who came, hear all the lovely thoughts expressed. My Uncle Ed's wife, Sue, stood up and read a short, prepared statement about how much she'd loved my dad and how he'd affected her. She could barely get through it, she teared up so much. God bless her...it was just what we needed, those of us closest to Dad...my mother's family and her brother's. And I learned a few things through Sue's eyes...that someone besides me really did see what a gem Dad was...about how very much he loved my mother...about what a romantic he was by nature. I'm glad others could see that in him as well, not only that he was an excellent electrician and talented craftsman, loyal friend and loving father.
My father was an alcoholic. That should probably be considered up front. I love my dad but the truth is the truth. Dad never accepted that he had a problem with alcohol. You understand he only drank beer; he seldom missed a day of work because of the drink. In his mind, he dealt with his drinking. In my mind, his drinking raised a multitude of issues in the family when we were young. I can't remember where I heard it but this has always been my favorite definition of alcoholism...if alcohol causes problems in your life, then you have a problem with alcohol. But we simply didn't face these things in my family.
Dad quit smoking and drinking cold turkey following a hospitalization in 1994 with a cardiac arrhythmia. He had smoked up to 3 packs a day for more than 40 years. My best estimate would be that he drank 4 to 6 cans of beer almost every evening. To the best of my knowledge, he only drank during his workweek. He didn't seem to drink (or at least to the point of being drunk) on the weekends. Still, that's considerable. Maybe not cirrhosis of the liver drinking but significant. A couple of years ago, I started therapy and almost immediately glommed onto my dad's drinking, because it was one of the most significant factors in shaping who I have become. Alcohol does that. I purchased The Complete ACOA Sourcebook by Janet Woititz. If there's anyone out there who struggles with being the adult child of an alcoholic, I highly recommend it!
My son, Michael, and I discovered the wonders of the world together as he was growing up. We would wander in the woods around home and find the most amazing stuff...small, brown snakes or, better yet, their skins after molting; a bleached box turtle shell; a strangely twisted twig or an unusual rock. We collected more shells and water-tumbled stones on the beach than you could count. Dad once found a mouse skeleton and brought it home for Mike. Treasures, all. I loved that Dad shared our sense of wonder in the simple things of the world. I look forward to seeing that wonder revitalized in my son as he and Jen become parents.
My father gave Michael an old cigar box to keep his trinkets in. Mike reverently hoarded every tiny marvel he came across...bits of brightly-colored plastic; a shiny, broken toy he found, a feather, a bottle cap. When Mike was quite young, four or five, His grandfather conceived the idea of making him a Treasure Box. I don't know what kind of wood it is but, knowing my father, it probably came from his stockpile in the basement. He was born in 1932 and raised during the Great Depression. He wasn't cheap but he didn't like to waste. He saved everything! He had piles and piles of wood...2x4's, plywood, strip molding. You could barely walk through the basement; it was so overloaded with this "junk," his treasures. His whole basement was my father's treasure box. He was far from stingy, my dad. In fact, he was generous to a fault at times. He just liked to use what was on hand. He loved to improvise. If you needed anything to create something or complete a project, it was probably on hand in Dad's basement.
Over the intervening years, Michael's Treasure Box became the stuff of family lore and jesting. Before the cancer struck my father last spring, my parents had begun to clean out and organize Dad's "treasure box," their basement. Fifty years of married life and over thirty years in the same home can lead to the accumulation of a lot of treasures, especially in a family of pack rats! So, the treasure box was unearthed, long after Mike had a genuine use for it, after he'd already gone off to college and out in the big, bad world. Its only use now was sentimental. Sentiment became much more important this winter.
I presented Michael's Treasure Box to Dad after his affliction was confirmed to be mesothelioma. "I'd like you to work on this, Dad," I said at first. "It would mean a lot to me to know you made it and finished it. You could give it to Mike, finally, and he can give it to his son for his treasures. I'll bring up the things you tell me you need from the basement and set you up at the kitchen table or here, in the living room, on a tray table. You just tell me where the things are and I'll get them." Already, in mid-January, Dad was so affected by the cancer that he couldn't manage the basement stairs anymore. And, finding what he needed would not be an issue...as was pointed out at Dad's service, you could think a backhoe was buried under all that flotsam, but Dad could instantly go find anything you asked him to! Madness and method??
Mid-January became early February. There were trips to the oncologist, the pulmonologist, the cardiologist, the family doctor. There was a struggle to believe that it could happen, a fervent hope the drugs were working. There was the undeniable evidence, to me, that they were not. I tried to ignore that. I coped. By the second round of B-12 shots, Procrit and Neulasta, the offer had changed. "Tell me how you'd like to see this finished, Dad, and I'll do it. You can do your favorite thing and supervise me!" Truth be told, supervising was not my father's thing and we both knew it. Dad liked to roll up his sleeves and dive in. He liked to take charge in a hands-on manner. Dad liked to do. Now, Dad would have to do through me.
But the disease progressed so rapidly, even supervision was more than Dad could muster. The pain was distracting but not nearly as brutal as I've seen in others, thank God. Percocet handled it for a couple of weeks when Tyleonl no longer did. Morphine wasn't needed until hospice started. If I had to choose between quick or painful for my father, I'd choose quick every time. Very quickly, Dad was sapped of the energy to stay awake for longer than 15 or 30 minutes at a time. And his comprehension of things outside of loving you and feeling his pain became questionable. Then he got to a place where he was only awake when he needed to stool and was so upset that we couldn't help him out of bed to do that. It just wasn't possible...even in a wasted state, my father was more then my mother and I could easily manage and would surely have had more pain if we had gotten him up to the commode. Then we would clean him and tuck him in, tee-shirt pulled ll the way down in the back and pj bottoms stretched out over his long legs. Then it was Morphine and Ativan and sleep, blessed sleep.
Mike and Jen came to town the weekend before Dad died and the project fell to Mike and I. Thankfully, Mike was able to lead the way, because I just didn't have it in me to coordinate. Dad died before we could do anything more than find the hardware he's bought for the project (a real extravagance). In the week following Dad's death, we sanded and brushed on stain/polyurethane and sanded and examined and perfected. Mike put on the hinges and hasp lock since I couldn't seem to figure out how this simple mechanism should attach to the box. My ability left me and I didn't trust myself not to screw it up.
On Sunday, Michael's Treasure Box was the first thing in the display we created to commemorate Dad's life. I found a lovely, mulberry-colored chenille throw at Bed, Bath and Beyond which I draped over and fluffed up inside the fine wood box. Our family had a whole week to select the contents...a photo of the work Mike and I had done in the shed, that Dad never got to see because I couldn't transfer photos from my digital camera to my laptop; a beautiful copy of my sister, Lisa's, graduation picture; the Wawa coffee mug he used for work for years before he retired; old fishing lures; various tools; a penknife...my father was never without a penknife in his pocket. Snapshots of my father's life, his most precious "treasures" on display, to share with those who loved him, those who will miss him terribly and those who wished they'd known him better.
I started this post on Monday, the day after my dad's memorial service. It's now 10:40 PM on Tuesday. Time is fast ticking away...I go back to work on Friday, I promised myself I wouldn't stay up too late because I have a therapy session at noon...Yet I dawdle. I read and respond to e-mails, I surf the web, I decide now would be the ideal time to categorize my e-mails. A little avoidance, do you think? Surely not!
Since Sunday, the mulberry chenille throw that graced the Treasure Box has been as constant a companion as my laptop. Maybe that doesn't mean a lot to those who stumble onto my site...it hasn't seen a lot of activity the last few days. I am all about quality over quantity, in all aspects of my life, and I'm happy as a pig in slop about that! This throw is the softest, warmest thing I've ever wrapped myself in. It's just like the arms of my father are wrapped around me, just like the bear hugs of his aunt, in whose honor my lovely Sadie is named. It is all the loveliest, warmest memories spun into thread and softly woven just for me.
Oh, I wax poetic, meaning it must be time to take the dog out and head to bed. Therapy beckons on the morrow, joy of joys!
A sign attached to Michael's Treasure Box told the tale of its conception, creation and final preparation. It held a place of honor at the service, as it does in our hearts. It will become a family heirloom, like the pocket watch my father "picked out" for the baby from the bed on which he would breathe his last breath, like the child's rocking chair my dad's father crafted for him. The throw will remain mine, until it finally disintegrates in the washer. I hope that's not for many years. I have a lifetime of memories of my father to reminisce about and I want to be warm while I do that.
