You see, this particular week was always a double hit for me. Not only do we contend with the annual patriarchal holiday but my father's birthday was June 20. A double whammy. Some years, it all happened on the same day. What's a son to do?
When I was younger, the commemoration was an easy one. I simply tried to stay out of his hair. I would avoid getting into trouble and sit quietly at our family gathering, perhaps listening to a Met doubleheader on a transistor radio.
When I was an adult, the celebration was different. I now had the wherewithal to pay for a meal. So I would troop Dad out to a restaurant dinner and that's a big deal for somebody who rarely liked to eat out in his later years. But I'd scope out an eatery with that one special requirement my dad always had.
A salad bar.
This was a new phenomenon to him. All the lettuce, beets, cole slaw, hot peppers, olives, potato salad, and onions you could eat. I remember the first time he experienced this at a place called the Victoria Station on Tuckahoe Road in Yonkers.
"I can go up for a second plate?"
Yes. And the sense of wonderment on my father's face stayed with me to this day. You can actually get unlimited food. Perhaps a difficult notion to swallow for a child of the Depression Years.
On those outings in the later stages of our life together, the routine would be the same. Whether it be for a Met game, a meal, or a doctor's visit. I would drive. And pick him up. A simple act. Just like he had done for me so many years ago when I needed to go someplace. But, now the situation was reversed. And so was the relationship.
And this happens for all of us at some point in our lives.
The child becomes the parent. And, wistfully, the parent becomes the child.
And so, too, did my father and I bow to the inevitable circle of life.
I think today of my dad's later years cut short at the age of 70. Indeed, when he was forced into retirement by his long term employer, the Mount Vernon Die Casting Company, at the age of 62, he should have immediately enjoyed the freedom. But, unfortunately, he never got that initial opportunity. The end of his work days coincided with my grandmother's broken hip and what would be the last year of her life. Because she wanted nothing to do with having any sort of caretaker in the house, my dad became the 24/7 lifeline. And lost one year of his life to this task.
Again...
The child becomes the parent. And, wistfully, the parents becomes the child.
Grandma's death led to more uncertainty with her house (and Dad's home) being sold. Packing up the remains of a household and an existence. Because he and my mom had amicably split due to that old bugaboo of the "empty nest syndrome," my father relocated to a Bronx apartment. All the boxes from the house went there. And sat in the corner, waiting to be unpacked for the next eight years.
I first noticed that Dad was having a health issue on September 17, 1986. How can I be that precise with a date years later? Well, we were both at Shea Stadium. The New York Mets' clinching of the Eastern Division that night. In the Loge, Section 6 seats of my pal, the Bibster. Amid all the joyful hysteria, I couldn't help but notice that my father had to go down to the bathroom every half inning.
Hmmmm.
I mentioned it several times in passing over the next month or so. My father belittled it all. To give it any level of consideration, he would have had to go to a doctor. And, yes, he did not go there.
By Christmas, his prostate problems were so pronounced that his kidneys and bladder were completely shutting down.
Son morphs into Dad overnight. I called the paramedics when he didn't answer the phone. And so began my father's soon-to-be-ongoing relationship with the nursing staff of Mount Vernon Hospital.
He was not happy.
"You put me in here!"
As if I just sentenced him to Attica State Prison.
The next few years were devoted to his recovery and the realization that he actually had an illness. As he would refer to it...
"I've got the C."
Not to be confused with the B or the P or the V.
The next few years were probably indicative of what he should have enjoyed in his retirement. He was never home. Hanging out with his cronies. Working in this one's yard or that one's basement. I'd call him twice a day, once in the afternoon and then again around 8PM every night. And I would do so regardless of whether I was out or not.
One Christmas week, I was visiting good friends on a snowy night all the way up in Rockland County. When I made the nightly check-in, there was no answer. At 8PM. Or 9PM. Or 10PM. My thoughts traveled to the usual dark side.
"I better go see what's wrong."
My friend drove me all the way down to the Bronx. I practiced in my mind how to dial the phone digits.
9-1-1. 9-1-1.
Surely, I would be calling.
As the apartment building elevator inched ever so slowly to the sixth floor, all we could hear was the theme song from M*A*S*H. The reruns played every night on WNEW Channel 5 at 11PM.
"Suicide is painless...."
Who the hell was playing their TV so freakin' loud?
When the elevator door opened in front of my dad's apartment, I knew.
"What the hell are you doing here? I'm watching M*A*S*H."
So we know. So does everybody in the tri-state area. Er, how come you didn't answer the phone, Dad?
"It never rang."
Oh, yes, it did. Except you couldn't hear it because your TV volume can be heard all the way to Fort Fucking Lee in New Jersey.
And so the familial circle had been completed. The slippery slope had begun.
Soon thereafter, Dad started to have problems walking. Did he check with a doctor about this? Of course not. He had fashioned his own diagnosis for the pain in his leg. He blamed it on some poor radiation technician who obviously had screwed up.
"When I was going for that machine, the guy messed up. The thing moved and burned a hole in my leg."
Yeah, whatever. The distress led to the leg breaking in two. Metastasized tumors as a result of a returning prostate cancer will tend to do that. He wound up in the hospital for three weeks after a metal rod was inserted. The healing process in Mount Vernon Hospital was a painful one. When you get off the elevator and can recognize a familiar screen from several halls away, you don't lose that memory easily.
My father lived with a walker for the rest of his time. Plus, since he insisted on living on his own, the insurance company requested that he get daily help in the apartment. They sent him a young Black kid who dutifully showed up every weekday. He was there to help out Dad, who wanted no help.
"What am I supposed to do with this colored guy?"
Maybe he could clean the kitchen? Make your lunch? How about unpacking some of those boxes still strewn all over your living room?
My father would have nothing of it. The two of them sat all day together watching television.
I did what I could do to help. Luckily, he had friends who "aired him out" several days a week. There was always somebody at the ready to take him to the super market or for his chemo treatments at the doctor.
I've written before about one excursion that I did adopt for myself. A lasting and final good memory of my dad...
It was the Friday of Thanksgiving weekend and I was off. I decided to give Dad's buddies the week off. I'd do the honors of acting as driver for the day. It was the least I could do for his pals who had so diligently helped him over the years.
As I helped him out of the doctor's office and into the car, I wondered what was next in the weekly routine. Even when he was ill, my father was always all about a consistent schedule of events. I asked him what happens next.
"Well, we usually go get something to eat."
Where?
"White Castle."
I was perplexed. There wasn't one nearby in Mount Vernon.
"No, we go to the one down on Allerton. Where we used to go."
Oh. All the way down there, I thought.
Yes, all the way down. And I shouldn't have questioned it for a single moment.
My father and I sat one more time in that parking lot. The car hops were gone, but I brought the food out of the restaurant. And we chomped down on five or six sliders as if the years had morphed all together into a single second.I didn't know it that day, but it would be the very last meal I would share with my father.
Eventually, he wound up back in the hospital and his doctor discretely shared with me the ultimate and sad prognosis. His final days would have to be spent in a Mount Vernon nursing home. Dad thought it was a rehab place and that he would be back in his apartment before he knew it.
One Saturday, my mother and I were visiting him. The Black orderly asked us to leave the room so Dad could be bathed. The curtains were drawn and, since the slightest movement gave him waves of intense pain, my father screamed again. And took out his anger on the orderly.
With multiple doses of racism as if it was an extreme sport telecast on ESPN. The "N" word was used as a noun, a verb, and an adjective. I cringed with every syllable.
When the orderly was done and came out into the hall, I felt the need to apologize.
"Um, he's not really like that."
Well, he was a bit. But not to the, no pun intended, "Nth degree." The orderly was incredibly gracious.
"Hey, no big deal. He's a nice guy. He told me to do a good job dressing him because he had a funeral to go to."
I looked at my mother with a bit of foreboding. I know the funeral he's talking about.
Dad died the very next week.
Despite this blog entry, I don't really dwell on the sad moments that coincided with the final years of my father's life. I tend to look back on him with humor and will not remember something without laughing. Much in the same vein as the M*A*S*H incident I recalled above.
Or the time when his back seat driving on a trip home from Shea Stadium made me so angry that I demanded he get out of the car. On the top of the Whitestone Bridge! Danny, my best friend from high school, was there as a witness and still talks about that evening.
Or the way he rigged his walker so it could be used as a shopping cart with a special receptacle to hold the New York Daily News and his racing form.
Or the final really big chortle he gave me when I was the one forced to clean out his apartment. Getting rid of those freakin' boxes he had never unpacked from my grandmother's house.
On this day, Danny was helping me with the project. In a closet, I found an old suitcase which I recognized from the days when we would have our annual summer family vacation at Atlantic City.
Except the valise was locked shut.
Hmmm? Why? Was there something special in here that Dad wanted me to find? Maybe there was a sign? Or some hidden treasure? Or just maybe I had watched too many movies?
Nevertheless, I wanted that suitcase opened and I wanted it open now. Danny and I did our best to wreck that carry-all's lock. We finally jimmyed it open with a screwdriver, a butter knife, and, ultimately, my own two feet when they stepped down hard on it.
The suitcase opened.
Inside was....
A brown paper bag full of Japanese money. Left over from his days there during World War II.
And....
A dozen light bulbs.
This was obviously my dad's survival kit. If he ever was stuck in a dark Tokyo apartment.
I couldn't help but laugh that day.
And every single Father's Day ever since.
Dinner last night: Hamburger at the Pasadena Pops.
2 comments:
Your recollections about your dad are both captivating and touching. Thank you for sharing them.
15thavebud
Len:
As I watch my own father fade little by little, I get an appreciation of how difficult it must have been to write a column like that.
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