by John Grogan
“Dad got us out of a lot of jams over the years,” Tim said as we drove through the mountains of central Pennsylvania.
I couldn’t talk about Dad and cars without telling the story of the time I walked into the house during a weekend visit home from college and breathlessly described the beautiful woman I had encountered minutes earlier: “So I pull up to the red light and in the car next to me is this total fox.”
“A fox?” my guileless father said in astonishment. “A fox?
Right there in the car? Alive? A live fox?” Somehow he had managed to turn my moment of roadside lust into a Wild Kingdom episode.
Not even Mom was that clueless. “Oh, Richard,” she scolded, shaking her head.
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• • •
Just as the sun set, we pulled onto Erie Drive. Elizabeth and Michael greeted us at the door, and we all ate dinner with Mom, who seemed listless and detached despite our best efforts to keep the conversation upbeat. She appeared only marginally aware that her husband was hospitalized, and even less aware for what reason, but she was definitely not herself, and I wondered if she missed him on a more primal level. The man she had spent the past fifty-seven years with was suddenly not in her bed at night, not at the breakfast table in the morning. The man who had cared for her every need over the past decade had disappeared.
After dinner, Mike volunteered to do the dishes, and Elizabeth, Tim, and I headed to Saint Joseph Mercy Hospital for the 8:30 to 10 P.M. visiting hours—one of three times during the day family members were allowed in. When we arrived in the ICU, a nurse directed us to place masks over our mouths and noses. Dad was in a respiratory infectious containment room, and the masks were to protect him from our germs and us from his. Once we were masked, she opened the door to his room, and there he lay amid a warren of machines, pumps, wires, tubes, and monitors.
A heavy plastic mask with a rubber gasket was clamped over his nose and mouth, connected by a hose to an external respirator that rhythmically pumped powerful bursts of oxygen into his lungs. Needles and tubes poked into his bruised, puffy arms. I swallowed hard.
“Hi, Dad,” I said and squeezed his knee through the blanket.
“Hey, Dad,” Tim said and touched his shoulder.
He smiled apologetically through the mask, and I could tell he was embarrassed by all the fuss being made over him. I knew what this eternally humble man was thinking: wouldn’t all these fancy machines and medicines and experts be better used on someone who really needed them?
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“How was the trip?” His voice came muffled through the heavy mask in between breaths, and it was difficult to hear him over the whir of the machines. “The trip,” he repeated. “How was it?”
Tim and I filled the room with happy chatter, telling him about the drive, the gasoline prices, the weather, and our disdain for the Ohio Turnpike. I filled him in on the kids and work and the antics of our new dog, Gracie. We talked about anything we could think of to keep the conversation afloat. Each burst of monologue was followed by an awkward silence. We made vague, optimistic comments about Dad’s prognosis and the high hopes for the latest antibiotic cocktail. “Once that kicks in, we’re going to see a big difference, I bet,” I volunteered.
Dad seemed distracted, like he was not quite paying attention. Then he blurted out what was on his mind. Through the mask, muffled and cottony, came the words “What do you think we should do about Mother?”
Tim and I exchanged glances. “Mom?” I asked.
Dad through the mask, each phrase separated by a deep forced breath: “If I get out of here . . . it’s going to take months
. . . to get back on my feet . . . Elizabeth can’t stay forever . . .
she needs to be home with her husband . . . Mike can’t handle it alone.” He waited for a breath to pass and added: “We need to talk about Mom. What’s best.”
“Lourdes,” I said. I knew it was where he wanted her to end up if the day came when he could no longer care for her. “They’d take good care of her. And you, too, as you recover and get your strength back.”
“Lourdes,” Dad said, pausing to summon his most emphatic voice, “is the best.” It was an important declaration for Tim and Elizabeth to hear. In the Philippines, where Elizabeth grew up, sending an aged parent to a nursing home was unheard of, and Elizabeth was lobbying to bring Mom back to New Jersey to stay with them, even though they lived up a steep staircase with no elevator and had only one small bedroom. Marijo, too, was trying
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to figure out how she could care for Mom around her job as a social worker. I even considered our house, despite knowing that the strain on our marriage would be devastating.
My father seemed intent on heading off all these well-intentioned, misguided plans. He knew firsthand the hours and level of commitment her care required. “She belongs at Lourdes,” he said. “She won’t like it at first. She’ll be angry, but she’ll get over it. She’ll forget and be okay. Lourdes is the best.”
Tim and I looked at each other and nodded. We promised to make an appointment to talk to the administrator about getting them both in there after Dad was released from the hospital. Dad nodded his approval, and with the topic settled he visibly relaxed.
Even here in the ICU, my father was mentally running through his to-do list, taking care of business. He always was a detail man.
He reminded us that the lawn mower and snowblower needed to be winterized and the hoses drained before they froze.
The conversation dwindled, and eventually we sat in silence by his side, listening to the breathing machine do its work. The nurse ducked her head in the door and gave us the five-minute warning.
“I guess it’s time to go, Dad,” I said.
“We’ll be back in the morning, okay?” Tim added.
Dad nodded and we began to slip into our coats. That’s when Elizabeth, in her broken English, offered, “Daddy, you like we say prayer?”
His eyes brightened and he nodded up and down.
We all bowed our heads and began the Lord’s Prayer together.
“Our Father who art in heaven . . .” But there was a problem. Tim and I no longer remembered the words that had been drilled into us thousands of times. It had been years since we had recited the prayer on our own, and whenever we were in a family gathering, we simply took our cues from Dad, mumbling along and blending in. But on this night, Dad’s voice was buried inside the breathing mask, nearly impossible to understand. Elizabeth’s English
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was too broken to help. We were adrift and couldn’t even fake it:
“. . . hallowed be thy name; thy blah-blah blah, thy blah be blah-blah . . . On blub-blub as it blah-blah mumble.”
The prayer stretched on forever as we stumbled along. We might as well have been trying to recite Beowulf from memory.
There was no hiding our rustiness. I looked at Dad and his eyes were closed as he prayed aloud. Then I made the mistake of looking at Tim. As soon as our eyes met, he let out the slightest giggle.
That triggered my urge to giggle, too. I felt a laugh pushing its way up from my chest and took a gulp to try to hold it in. My shoulders began to shake. The situation was awful; beyond awkward. But something about it was unbearably funny, too. Little honks of air escaped from my nose. Tears welled in my eyes. I stared hard at my knees, trying to think unfunny thoughts. The more I tried to be serious, the worse it got—exactly like when Father Stanislaw, the old Polish priest from the seminary, would sing off-key at the solemn Good Friday service when we were kids. The more you knew you should not laugh, the more hilarious everything seemed.
From across the bed, I heard a piglike snort and glanced up to see Tim shaking, his eyes squeezed shut, as he plowed blindly ahead: “. . . give us blah blub, our blah-blah blub . . .” I joined back in: “and de- blah-blah us from mumble, for- blah
-blub and blub-blah. Amen.” We both said the “Amen” in loud, ringing voices.
We had that part down. Tim and I wiped our eyes and tried to pretend the prayer had gone off like clockwork. Dad just looked at us with tired, resigned eyes.
In the doorway, with Tim and Elizabeth already down the hall, I turned back to look at him. He was staring up at the ceiling, each forced breath pushing his chin up and his head back into the pillow. The doctors had told him to work at inhaling deeply; the oxygen infusion into his lungs was part of the cure. Breath was life, and he concentrated on pulling each one deep inside him.
“Good night, Dad,” I whispered and raised two fingers to my lips, throwing him a kiss.
Chapter 33
o
As the days to Christmas ticked down, we settled into a routine. I took the morning visitation, Tim and Elizabeth took the afternoon slot, and Mike and I returned together for the final visit of the night. Marijo shuttled back and forth from her home and office an hour away to join us whenever she could. When we weren’t with Dad, we mostly sat with Mom, telling old stories, massaging her shoulders, keeping her company.
That afternoon, as a gray, dreary dusk fell, I sat alone in the living room with Mom. Tim and Elizabeth were at the hospital; Mike was out running errands. Elizabeth had draped a few strings of holiday lights over the long-silent piano and through the houseplants on the windowsill in a valiant effort to give the place a hint of holiday cheer. But the decorations just made the house seem all the more forlorn, a vestige of its former holiday self, when the fireplace had roared and the air was filled with children’s joyous shrieks and the scent of pine boughs. Sitting there, I could not resist the lure of memories from long ago when
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my parents were in their prime and committed to sinking endless energy into making Christmas magical.
Every other family I knew as a kid simply went to the store and bought Christmas lights for their trees. Not ours. Dad spent hours hand-wiring his own lights of a special design, guaranteed to never cause a spark because they ran in series on a single wire.
What that meant was that if one bulb went out, they all went out. Part of our family ritual every year was unscrewing bulb after bulb and testing each one to find the culprit. Some years we would work late into Christmas Eve trying to get those crazy lights figured out. Then we’d all race out into the cold to make it to Our Lady of Refuge for midnight Mass, which, with its giant nativity scene, banks of red poinsettias, and curfew-busting mys-tique, seemed magical indeed.
The house had never seemed so silent.
“Just you and me, Ruthie,” I said as we sat in the growing gloom.
“Just me and my number three son,” she said.
“Are you hungry? Can I make you something?”
“Maybe a little, sure,” she said. I helped her to the kitchen table, my hands under her armpits in case she stumbled, and warmed a plate of leftovers in the microwave.
“You were hungry!” I exclaimed when she finished. “You cleaned your plate.” I felt the familiar swell of satisfaction as when my own kids ate everything put before them. She was more like them now than I would ever have imagined. My mother had come full circle. She had stopped worrying about her children, stopped fretting about our life choices and spiritual well-being, stopped trying to bend us to her will. All the flashpoints that had seemed so important and consumed so much of her emotional energy had washed away like flotsam on an outgoing tide. We had to hide candy from her now, pester her to eat her vegetables and drink enough water, remind her to brush her teeth, and bribe her with treats to take her medicines.
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Back in the living room, I steered her to her favorite chair, and we sat in the glow of the colored lights, the house so quiet I could hear the whisper of air rising from the heating vents.
“Just five days till Christmas, Ma,” I said.
“Will Dad be home for Christmas?” she asked.
“I don’t know, Mom,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
We sat for a long time, listening to the heat.
“No snow yet,” she said eventually, looking out into the twi-light.
“Maybe by Christmas,” I said.
That’s when she began to sing. Soft and reedy, her weak voice carrying a certain warble, as if coming from a tiny bird or a little girl.
“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas . . .”
I marveled at my mother’s mind. From what part of her faraway memory had the song surfaced? I had not heard her sing
“White Christmas” in decades.
My choices were to sit and listen to that plaintively lonely voice, or join in. Together we sang through the verse, conjuring images of snowcapped evergreens and children awaiting Santa’s arrival.
Neither of us knew more than the first verse, and so we sang it over again. Over and over. When she had sung all she wanted, she stopped and sighed.
“That Bing Crosby, heavens how he could sing,” she said, and then she was asleep in her chair, the silence again enveloping us.
The next morning, Tuesday, I arrived at the hospital at 10 A.M. to find Dad propped up and breathing comfortably through a light plastic mask that rested loosely over his nose and mouth.
The big suction mask with the forced air pressure sat idle in the corner. “My blood oxygen has been pretty good,” he said, “so they thought they’d give me a break.” Through the light mask, I could hear him perfectly.
“That’s great, Dad,” I said. “You’re making progress.”
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“I’m not so sure, John,” he said. “I don’t know anymore.” He looked searchingly at me. “What do you think? Do you think I can beat this?”
On this matter of utmost significance, he had not before asked my opinion. I hesitated. My honest response was that my optimism soared and plunged on an hourly basis. One moment I saw the possibility of a full recovery and a continuation of the lifestyle for which my parents had worked so hard. The next moment I realized their days of independence were over. Even in a best-case scenario, my parents would need to live in a facility with nursing care. There would be no more driving or lawn cutting or grocery shopping. And the moment after that I was all but certain Dad’s worst fear would come true, and he would never be leaving the ICU. The doctors were running out of options. The pneumonia and leukemia were in a race to the finish, and neither showed signs of slowing. I had no clue whether he could beat this thing.
With each day it seemed less likely. I was trying to be realistic. I didn’t want to patronize him.
“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. “We just need to keep fighting. We need to keep pushing.”
“And praying,” he added.
“And praying, Dad. You can’t give up.”
He nodded in agreement. “I just want to get better so I can be there for Mother,” he said. “I want to take care of her for however long she has left.” He remained hopelessly devoted to her. She was his everything, and it seemed his only wish was to outlive her by one day. I lifted the mask up and held the straw from his water glass to his lips so he could sip.
“One day at a time, Dad,” I said.
“You know I’ve been fretting about Christmas.”
“You mean you haven’t gotten out to buy my gift yet?” I dead-panned.
“I don’t want to spoil Christmas for everyone.”
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“Oh, Dad, you’re not.”
“You should be home with Jenny and the kids,” he said. “We both know that.”
“I’m playing it by ear,” I said. “I may fly home on Christmas Eve. We’ll see.”
I had already spoken with Jenny about the possibility of missing the holiday, and she had told me she and the kids would be fine. “You need to be there right now,” she had said.
I changed topics. “Mike and I went to Lourdes yesterday and
talked to the administrator,” I said. “She was great. Told us how much they all admire you and appreciate all you’ve done for them over the years.”
Dad’s eyes widened with expectation. “And?”
“And they have a long waiting list, but she said they’ll do whatever it takes to find a spot for you and Mom,” I said. “We got to peek at the suite near the chapel, the one for a couple. It has two bedrooms and a sitting room; it would be perfect for you and Mom. The paperwork’s done.”
“That’s good,” Dad said. “It’s good you took care of that.”
I didn’t tell him the suite would soon be available, nor why: the current occupant, an aged priest, was days from death. Nursing homes were a lot like the ICU that way, the last station on the stagecoach ride of life.
We sat quietly for a few minutes.
“Say,” he began, and I could tell from the way he was wetting his lips that he was about to say something he had been rehearsing. “This is a good time to talk to you about something.” He held out his hand for me to take. I slipped my fingers through his and sat beside him on the bed.
“Sure,” I said.
“What are you doing about the kids’ religion?”
My heart sank. Our taboo topic was back on the table. We both knew the answer to his question, and it was nothing. “Dad,”
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I said in almost a whisper, letting his name hang on the air. “I’m doing my best. I know it’s not how you did it, or how you want me to do it, but I’m trying to raise them right.”
“You are raising them right, John,” he said, and he squeezed my hand. “You’re a good father. I just worry about them growing up without religion and prayer in their lives. Prayer, especially, is so important.”
I wanted to give him assurances, to tell him what I knew he longed to hear, that his grandchildren would receive the sacraments and attend Mass every week and be raised as good Catholics. I knew I couldn’t say that and be true to myself—or honest to him. I owed him my honesty. I respected him too much to give him any less. Besides, he was an intelligent man; over the years, I had gradually come to realize that all my sugarcoated half-truths had not fooled him for a moment. Mom maybe, but not Dad.