DEATH AND DENIAL
— Barbara Abercrombie —
“What’s to be afraid of?” Al says. “I don’t remember where I came from, and I’m just going back to the same place.” He seems quite cheerful about this.
We’re having lunch at the Belmont Brewery, overlooking the beach on a beautiful Southern California day, and he’s drinking a beer. Usually we’re talking about politics, but today we’re discussing death.
“And remember, no funeral. I have it all planned.” He takes out his wallet and pulls a card from it. “Neptune Society. They take care of the whole thing. See the number on it? It’s a pre-plan.”
I look at the card. Frankly, I find it a little creepy. My father did the same thing. He visited the local East Hampton funeral home and had a long discussion with the director about how exactly he wanted them to handle it all when he died.
“And I’ve paid to have my ashes taken to sea,” Al says.
“I’ll go on the boat,” I say.
“Oh, no, you won’t.”
“Of course I will. We’ll have a service. The whole family.” I can envision grandchildren tossing flowers into the water, the grown-ups telling loving and funny anecdotes about Al, perhaps holding flutes of champagne.
“There will be no service.” He pats my hand. “I’m Jewish, but not religious.”
“We’ll call it a memorial.”
“No, nothing. Gone is gone. Nobody’s going on the boat.”
“Maybe I really want to go.”
“Nope.” He offers me a sip of his beer. “No tubes, remember that. No machines.”
Finally I promise, no tubes, no machines, and no memorial at sea.
When my mother first moved into The Breakers, a retirement hotel in Long Beach, California, I read about Al in the hotel newsletter; his wife had just died, and he didn’t want any visitors or anyone trying to talk to him. A few weeks later he resurfaced, appearing at meals and, to my utter shock, my mother—a widow who had been married to my father for fifty-five years—was giving him the eye.
“He’s attractive, isn’t he?” she said as we had lunch one day and he strode into the dining room wearing tennis clothes. He was attractive—he was in his late seventies then, five years younger than she was, tall, lean, and athletic. But this was my mother. She already had another guy courting her that she barely tolerated because he was a Republican and too conservative. Then one day, Al (who turned out to be a liberal Democrat) heard my mother playing the piano—something by Mozart—in the lobby of The Breakers, and next thing I knew they were a couple. “I thought my life was over,” he would tell me later. “But there she was, so beautiful and playing the piano!”
Al also played the piano, old tunes from the forties by ear. My mother began to give him piano lessons, teaching him to read music. They took long walks, held hands, laughed a lot, read the paper together every morning, and had martinis together every night. Then a year or so after moving into The Breakers, my mother suddenly decided she was too young to be living in a retirement hotel—my mother, the queen of denial. She was in her mid-eighties and had heart problems, but in spite of myself, I admired her determination as she packed up everything, including her piano, and moved ten miles north into her own apartment in Palos Verdes. Al drove up for lunch a few times a week, and she’d cook elaborate meals for him. Did he spend the night? I wondered but never asked.
She eventually realized she really couldn’t live on her own any longer, so a few months later everything got packed up again, and she and her piano returned to The Breakers. This time she moved into an apartment right down the hall from Al. In spite of her health, she practiced the piano constantly (up to six hours a day), gave recitals, and loved her new apartment. This was really the happiest I’d ever seen my mother. She was mellowing in old age. Al adored her. He gave her the diamond rings that had belonged to his wife.
He wanted to marry her, but she thought she was too old to get married again. “Darling,” she said to me one night at dinner, “if I were in my seventies, I might consider it, but good God, I’ll be ninety in four years.” However, she kept advising me to remarry. She wanted my boyfriend for a son-in-law; I wanted hers for a stepfather.
Al’s marriage, childless, had been a long and happy one. He and his wife had both worked. He had been in the army and then for years drove a cab in San Francisco, a job he had loved. He also loved to tell stories of those days—being held at gunpoint, the vast array of characters he’d had as fares—and his very favorite story, the time he drove Edward Kennedy to the San Francisco airport. His only living blood relative now was his cousin George, a professor at Berkeley. “The smart one in the family,” Al would say, laughing.
My mother’s heart got weaker. Then she had to have a walker, and visiting nurses came every morning. When her breathing became difficult, Al would spend the night in the chair next to her bed, watching over her. One day when I arrived and a nurse was there, my mother whispered for me to get Al’s diamond rings out of her jewelry box.
When I got them for her, she slipped them on her fingers. “I don’t want them to think I’m easy,” she said.
“Who?” I asked.
“The nurses—they know he spends the night.”
A few months later, when she was dying, Al walked the hospital hallways with me, holding my hand. He was with her when she died one early dawn, just before my brother and I got to the hospital.
My mother had never mentioned death; she could not, would not discuss it. She refused to acknowledge that she would ever die. So there was not only grief that morning, but also confusion. “Now what?” said my brother.
I hadn’t a clue; she’d conned us all into thinking she’d live forever. How do you prepare for this? Does everyone, if they haven’t been given clear instructions, get caught in the middle of shock, loss, and grief, trying to figure out the practical details? I thought of my father at the funeral home making arrangements, and Al with his prepaid plan—oh, not creepy at all, but thoughtful! But no, not my mother. I was suddenly furious at her. Always in denial, right up to the end.
I told my brother that cremation certainly seemed the simpler, more practical option. Thinking we were going to have to go coffin shopping, he breathed a sigh of relief. We looked up cremation services in the Yellow Pages at the nurse’s station, found a company, and went to their nearby office that morning.
The woman in the office annoyed me right off the bat. Her hair was sprayed and teased, she was wearing a suit, and she assumed my brother was in complete charge and directed her entire speech to him. When she got to the part about the “cremains” being ready by the end of the week, I made little humming sounds so I wouldn’t break into hysterical hoots of laughter. Her euphemism sounded like something horrible that could go wrong with a damp basement. Ashes was such a fine, straightforward word; why couldn’t she just say that the fucking ashes would be ready to pick up in three days? (How good it felt to be so angry! It filled me up, left no room for grief.)
I thought of my father leaving instructions not only with the funeral home but also for distributing his ashes. “Find someone with a fishing boat, and take my ashes out to sea,” he’d told me once as he drank a large bourbon on the rocks and pointed to the ocean—which is exactly what my brother and I did, grateful for such clear directions. It would be eight years before I finally figured out what to do with my mother’s cremains.
In the months after my mother’s death, I’d visit Al, he’d play the piano for me, and I’d cry. He wouldn’t say anything or attempt to make me feel better. He’d just play those old tunes from the forties and let me sit there and cry.
He had become an integral part of my family by then, and when I finally married my boyfriend and my family grew even larger, this man who had never had children of his own now had, in addition to my two daughters and their husbands, my three stepchildren and their spouses and partners. With the arrival of my grandchildren, Al became a great-grandfather. For a decade we v
isited regularly.
I loved talking to him about my mother; he gave me a side of her I didn’t really know. Though sometimes it went beyond what I wanted to know. “She was a passionate woman,” he said once. I covered my ears, and he laughed.
When he gave up his car, I’d drive down to see him and we’d have our lunches sitting in the sun overlooking the beach, always at the same restaurant. Eventually he began to grow frail in spite of his vigorous exercise program; he was almost ninety before he gave up biking and using a rowing machine, but his mind stayed sharp and involved in the news and the stock market.
I’d been traveling a lot one summer. When I got home, I called Al to confirm a long-standing lunch date we had, and he sounded distant. He didn’t feel up to going out, he told me. I made another date for the following week and he said, “Sure.”
“I’ll call you and confirm,” I said.
“Sure,” he repeated.
My feelings were hurt. I thought he’d be happy to have me back. Was I being intrusive? Did he want to be alone?
A few days later, I got a call from the nurse at The Breakers. Al was dizzy and had fallen on the street. His arm was bleeding and he needed to go to the VA hospital. I told her I’d be right down and jumped in my car.
In the month I’d been gone, Al had transformed into a fragile old man, fearful and forgetful. He seemed to recognize me, though, and smiled. I got him in the car, and he asked me where we were going. “The VA hospital,” I said. “You’re going to see a doctor.”
“Good.” He gazed out the window. A minute later he asked, “Where are we going?” For the whole drive to the hospital he asked that question over and over, and I’d answer over and over.
To make the hospital paperwork easier, I told the VA that I was his stepdaughter. As we waited to be seen in the emergency room, he began to relax and grow less frightened; he finally realized he was indeed at the hospital. We went in to see the doctor. Though Al had a deep gash on his arm, there were no broken bones, and his sense of humor was still intact. When the doctor asked him how old he was, Al said, “106.”
“Stop bragging,” I said.
“I’m not 106?” He looked at me, genuinely surprised.
“You’re 92,” I said, realizing that he really didn’t remember how old he was.
“Well, what do you know,” he laughed, and then the doctor and I laughed too.
We drove back to The Breakers, Al once again his cheerful self. “Are you sure I’m not 106?” he asked me.
“Positive,” I said.
“Well, I sure feel 106.”
In the following year he would have times of clarity, but our lunches together changed. His hearing, always bad, became worse. Finally, we had lunches in the dining room of The Breakers instead of at the Belmont Brewery by the beach. Because he was always losing his hearing aids, I’d write him notes: “YOU HAVE A DOCTOR’S APPOINTMENT NEXT WEEK!” “DO YOU NEED A NEW BELT?” “YOU’RE LOSING WEIGHT!” All in caps, like shouted messages. His eyesight was failing, and his glasses were getting to be a problem, too.
I began to find his meticulously kept apartment in disorder—piles of clothes in the living room, plates not picked up. “They just leave my clothes everywhere,” Al said. I stormed down to the manager’s office to complain. “We try,” said the manager. “Al pulls his clothes out of drawers and the closet and dumps them on the floor. He won’t let us take the dishes. He’s still drinking martinis. We don’t know what to do.”
And neither did I. I was in constant contact now with his cousin George, sending him Al’s mail and bills, and every few months George would fly down to visit him and we’d have dinner. There was talk of whether Al should have a hernia operation; the nurse said his hernia was the worst she had ever seen. But he was getting weaker, too weak for an operation. We called hospice.
Lunches together were now in his room on a tray, and there was no conversation, spoken or written. But I wanted to be there, and I wanted the people at The Breakers and the hospice nurses to know he was loved and had a family. The martinis were still a problem; one night he drank an unknown number of them and went down to the lobby and left The Breakers. He had to be chased down the street.
Months went by. He didn’t die, so hospice left.
My husband and I have a trip planned in April: “WE’RE GOING TO FRANCE!” I write on a card. And Al nods. “France!” he says.
Just before we return from our trip, I get an email from George saying that hospice has returned and the nurse just called him to say that Al is close to the end. He’s flying down to Long Beach as soon as he can get on a flight.
My husband and I return late that night, and early the next morning I get on the freeway, praying I won’t be too late. George is on a flight that arrives early afternoon.
The hospice nurse lets me into his apartment and Al is in bed with his eyes closed, unconscious, but he looks like he’s sleeping. The nurse, a new one I don’t know, says it’s very close to the end, he’s probably been waiting for me to return. I hold his hand, all bones and bruised skin, and talk to him. Can he hear me? I’ve read that hearing is the last sense to go, so I believe that he does know I’m here.
Sun pours into his little apartment, the radio is playing music, and as I sit next to his bed, I explain to the nurse who everybody is in the family photographs—my mother celebrating New Year’s Eve with him, my brother, my husband, our children, and all the grandchildren. I tell her the story of Al and my mother’s romance, the piano playing, the handholding. He’s no longer her anonymous dying patient; he’s a man who has had a wonderful romance in old age with a beautiful woman, a man with a large family who loves him dearly.
Here’s something I’ve never told anyone because it sounds so farfetched, so odd, but it’s true: on the radio, Tony Bennett is singing that he left his heart in San Francisco. The soundtrack for Al’s death. Can Al hear it? I hope so.
His breathing begins to change and there’s a sigh, then silence, and he’s gone. In his own bed, with no tubes, no machines.
His wallet is on his dresser. I take out the Neptune card, grateful for his planning to make it easier for us to handle, for not being in denial about dying someday. I call and give Neptune his prepaid number and they say they’ll be there in an hour or so. The help at The Breakers—the housekeepers, the cooks, the repairmen who have helped care for Al this past year—all come in to pay their last respects, crying and telling me what a good man he was. His cousin George arrives. The hospice nurse leaves for lunch. George goes to check into his hotel.
I’m alone with Al’s body in the apartment. I’m sure he’d have had a fit over this. Gone is gone. He’d have told me to leave, go home, this isn’t part of the plan. But I don’t want to leave him alone.
Finally, the Neptune guys show up, polite and dignified in their shiny black suits, and I hand them Al’s prepaid card and go over the paperwork with them. Then they both go into Al’s bedroom with their stretcher and I can hear the rustling of the body bag and I remember what Al had said about death and how unafraid he was. It doesn’t feel like Al going into that bag, it’s like an old suit being collected that he left behind.
And suddenly I realize I can have the real Al again. Not the confused and frightened old man who had dumped piles of clothes on the floor, whose mind became muddled, but the guy my mother fell in love with, who had given her diamond rings and made her happier than she’d ever been, and who loved playing the piano as much as she did. The real Al who has simply gone back to where he came from.
SUBURBAN ANIMATION
— Joshua Braff —
The Zenith my parents bought in 1978 had five channels and weighed about as much as an economy sized Buick. It took seven minutes to produce a picture, which began as a Tinkerbell-sized dot in the center of the screen. When school ended each day, I’d tear off for home, pluck the circular on/off button, and make myself an Ellio’s frozen pizza, which would be finished a few minutes after Tinkerbell morphed into the
Road Runner. The premise of this program was biblical: coyote chases fast bird, but fast bird is more desert-savvy than coyote, so food chain theory gets turned on its head, and hilarity ensues.
In hindsight, I see that I cherished this particular cartoon because I, in fact, was the Road Runner. With no voice whatsoever, save for a “beep-beep” here and there, and using only his remarkable speed and quiet intellect, he outwits his tenacious nemesis and is free to run. No one in my life in 1978 wanted to eat me. But elementary school was my coyote, and I couldn’t get away fast enough.
On this particular Tuesday afternoon, the Zenith came to life just as the coyote was plummeting off a cliff and his body was about to smack the earth in a small mushroom cloud of brown smoke. I’d missed the setup as I had tried to cool my pizza and was distracted by the sound of a vacuum cleaner just outside the den. It was Janice, a woman who was once employed as a nurse in her native Haiti, but was now a housecleaner, our babysitter, and an American citizen. I knew she missed the life she once had, and it always made me sad for her. She said that being a nurse gave her “purpose in life,” and it was hard for me to look at her and not think about these words.
The vacuum bumped the edges of the wall in a lonely and graceless drone. To and fro, repeat, to and fro, and it drowned out my show, leaving the TV screen snowy with static. I got closer, turned up the volume even louder and began, as I often did, to envy the ease of being animated, the utter freedom to scatter and smash, to chase and fly. BOING! ZOINK! ZOWIE!
I took a bite of my pizza, but it was too soon, way too soon. The cheese slid off, and the sauce underneath was hotter than lava, capable of burning a hole through German steel. Auuuugh! The skin was burned off the roof of my mouth, riddled to raw by the magma-hot sauce. I touched it with my tongue, knowing I’d be feeling it all night, and tomorrow in school, while my teacher clicked her chalk against the board in a cloud of endless monotony.
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