Dealing with Death, PA German Style

As I posted before, my father is dying of cancer, mesothelioma to be precise. He entered home hospice care less than a week ago, for which we are very grateful. Hospice has been a Godsend even for me, the healthcare professional in the family. The hospital bed was delivered on Wednesday. On Thursday, I came down to my parents' home in South Jersey. Somehow, Mom and I managed to get Dad, using his walker and with support from both of us, into the bedroom at bedtime. I realized as we were walking him in there that it probably wouldn't be possible again. I knew the hospice nurse was coming on Friday morning and could help Mom get Dad back to the living room, which she did, but I'm certain he won't be going in to bed anymore.

We celebrated my birthday today, two days early. I wanted to make sure we did it while Dad was still present. He had a great time. It might just have been my best birthday party ever! He watched us light the candles (the coolest candles I've ever seen...all connected by a paper string at the wick...light one and the spark travels along the fuse, lighting all of them along the way. It was like a birthday and the Fourth of July all in one!) I blew all the candles out in one puff (okay, there were only ten) but did not make a wish. What would I wish for? Less pain may be the ony thing I want right now. Less pain for my Dad. Less pain for all of us. Or, perhaps, less pain for Dad and an allowance, an embracing of the pain for the rest of the family.

My parents are both Pennsylvania Dutch Germans, commonly called Pennsylvania Dutch, though there's nothing of the Dutchman in us. There is a geneology site on the web dedicated to the study of PA Deutsch, or German, heritage. They are even conducting a study of the DNA of people of PA German ancestry. That would be me, although I don't think my pedigree is quite up to their standard.

My Dad is 100% PA German; my Mom is the mongrel at 50%. So, my father was raised fully in the PA German tradition and with their customs. He even used some of their colloquialisms, such as, "Outten the light." Though my mother was only 50%, the influence of my PA German maternal grandfather was much stronger than his Scots-Irish wife and her family. My grandfather's family is traced back to Hanover, Germany, from which his ancestor (great-grandfather, maybe) emigrated in 1853. I'm sure my Irish grandmother's family came over in the same time frame, given the potato bight in Ireland during that period and the emigration it spurred. I don't know how long my father's family lived in the eastern Pennsylvania coal country. I might, someday, attempt to find that out.

PA Germans are stoics. We are (the "good" ones among us) not complainers. We stuff things and we do not talk about them, especially if they are related to deep emotions. We are taught to keep our emotional distance. Frankly, it's a wonder we haven't died out as a race. We are often not very satisfied with our lives.

My father and I are kindred spirits. He must have been an oddity in his staunch PA German hometown as a child. He probably broke the rules against feeling too deeply, or allowing feelings at all. My father was a poet at heart. I am his daughter, through and through. I am my father intensified by my Piscean nature. I am Dad, distilled.

My maternal grandfather, who died a few years ago at the age of 92, was raised by a terribly abusive father. Perhaps he didn't seem so abusive compared to the standard of the day. Didn't all parents in the first two or three decades of the 20th century feel it was their right and their duty to inflict corporal punishment on their children? It might have been no more than what was going on in every house on the block back then.

I think I'll have to leave you hanging for now. Sure hope the thoughts remain around until the morning. Remind me to tell you the story of my Dad's $100 bill and how he woke me up for school in the morning. Until tomorrow...