Over five years have past since my dad died. I miss him every day and I can’t even tell you what the pain in my heart feels like when I think about him, or an event that he *should* be at happens. I will admit that the frequency of me bursting out into tears when I think of him have lessened but when they do happen, they are as ferocious as they were five years ago.
When he died, both the during and the aftermath weren’t pretty. He was living with his girlfriend of a few years (who was around 30 years his junior, and well, not so bright,) and I was living in Massachusetts. I am the oldest of my immediate brother and sister, but I’m my dad’s middle child, having 2 half siblings who are considerably older than me. He’d disowned both of them, but after he started getting sick, he had a closer connection with his oldest daughter. He’d been battling stomach cancer for about a year. He went into the hospital complaining of stomach pains on July 4 of 2002. That was the last day he would see conciousness, and the outside world. He lived on machines for over a month, which was terribly hard to see knowing that that’s not a choice he would have made for himself, but I was not the primary decision maker in the situation, his girlfriend was. And my older sister made it clear that she was next in command. Still, I made as frequent visits to NJ as my job allowed. I set my schedule so I’d have 3 days off to make the visit, just to see him.
On August 10, in the middle of the afternoon while I was at work, I got a phone call from his primary doctor at the hospital. In a very casual voice she told me that my dad had developed some severe blood clots in his legs (they’d inserted screens in his veins the week before) and that they’d like to amputate his leg. And I asked “What about L? She’s the decision maker here?” And the doctor told me that after trying for the entire day to reach either her or my older sister, she’d called me as I was third on the list and a decision had to be made immediately. And I knew that if I told the doctor to cut off my fathers leg that IF he ever woke up he’d kick my ass so hard with his remaining leg that his foot would probably exit my mouth. I asked her what his chances were if I told her to go forward with the surgery. She told me that he’d basically live another day, but it wouldn’t increase his chances of ever waking up. So I told the doctor that I would call her right back.
I hung up the phone, cried for a minute, tried to reach both my dad’s gf and my older sister to no avail. And then I made a decision. I called my younger brother and sister and asked them both if it would be ok if we stopped his suffering. And they said, “ok.” I called the doctor and asked that she take him off all machines, and to only give him pain medications for that moment. I hopped in my car, drove to NJ, picked up my sister, and we went and said goodbye. He made it through the night, and we visited him again in the morning, to say goodbye once more. We left for the 5 minute drive home, and as we pulled into the driveway I got a call from his nurse telling us that he had died.
My older sister turned up that day and while she didn’t say anything to me about having made the decision, I think she was grateful that I’d done it. We planned his funeral together. Dad’s gf was nowhere to be seen until the funeral day. The aftermath was dirty. For whatever reason she didn’t let us into his apartment, and she disappeared days after the funeral. Last I’d heard she was in Wyoming, with another elderly boyfriend. My brother was given my fathers pocket watch, which was his fathers, at the funeral, but outside of that the only things of his that we had were one sock, his eyeglasses, a decaying rose-petal snow globe with Mary in it, and a old cowboy hat.
It saddens me that we don’t have any of his “stuff,” if only for a more tangible connection to him. My sister and I would call his voice mail a few times a week just to hear is voice. I can’t tell you the amount of tears we shed the day that his service was turned off.
It would please me greatly to have been able to get a few pieces of artwork that I particularly liked, or even more importantly, I would have loved to have one of the many duplicate pairs of white sneakers that he would buy whenever they were on sale and in his size. He even wore two different white sneakers to my college graduation party. It was pricelessly hysterical.
But if I close my eyes I can see him, and If I shut off the outside world I can hear him talking and laughing, and I can even hear how he would yell my name, elongating all three syllables, when I had done something especially bad. And I can smell him.
My father, for as long as I can remember, wore Canoe. As he got older and his senses dulled a bit he wore a lot of it. I forever associate the smell of it with him, and well, old men in general, but mostly with getting big, encompassing hugs from him and inhaling it off of his sweater. After he died, I’d spray some of it whenever I saw it – yes, it would reduce me to tears but oh, how I loved the moment of remembrance.
But, as old men die off, their colognes do so as well, and honestly, not too many places carry Canoe anymore. Not even the cheap drugstores (at least not here.)Â Imagine my surprise when we were at a local drugstore a few days after Christmas, and there, tossed in with the discount High School Musical and Drakkar Noir, was one lonely bottle of Canoe. It was $25. Best money I ever spent.
I sprayed it on my hand and kept smelling it for hours, never mind that the stuff actually kind of gives me a headache. I got back to the house and told my mom to smell it and she did, and smiled, and said that, “when we were together he didn’t wear that cheap shit.” But smiled, and I could see the tears in the corner of her eye. And my sister- instant tears, and the request to not use it all so that we could just smell “him” from time to time.
As much as I wish we didn’t have to have “from time to time,” instead of the real thing, I don’t know if words can express how grateful and happy I am to have one more tangible thing that reminds me of my father.
