I've been thinking crazy thoughts lately. I mean, nothing dark or horrible or wrong. But about life. And about death. My own mortality, actually. How at age 51 that my life is more than half over. And about the fact that no men in my family have lived past 70. And about my most recent health issues which I hope are under control. And that brings me to my own amazing father. My Dad. Tomorrow will mark the 19th anniversary of his passing way back on March 19, 1994. It wasn't pretty. But he sure was.
You'll find this link to Part 3 (or you can simply read it below) of the three-part series I wrote about him a number of years ago. In this particular link, you can find
Part 1 and
Part 2 links if you care to recount it along with me. I will read through the whole series as I always do on March 19. I've said it before, I think I miss him more now that I'm an adult than I did in my younger years. Some days, you just need a father around.
Part 3 -- It was March 19, 1994.…13 years ago today….and my alarm went off at
6:45am. I was in Liverpool, England, directly on the cold, dark Irish
Sea, and beginning day three of our Rehearsal Camp for the British
Continentals,a group that I was going to be directing on a musical tour
through England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany. As I
lay there trying to get every minute of sleep possible, there was a
knock at my door. A telephone message had been received during the night
by the camp operator. I was supposed to call my sister. My heart was
broken already, I knew what message was waiting. I was exhausted.
Physically but also turning like a butter churn internally. I knew I
should be in a hurry to return the call but I
wasn’t.
I had left Boise only four days earlier after throwing myself across my
father’s lap as he sat in his wheelchair at the airport -- his oxygen
pumping away. And me on my hands and knees in the boarding area, bawling
like a child, my luggage tossed aside. I got up from his lap and went
around behind him. I put my face against his cool, old skin and bones
and held him as he grunted, groaned, and tried to wave me toward the
airplane. I knew the inevitable was soon coming. My god, it
couldn’t be….could it? Never again would I see the life in his eyes.
As
I made my way out into the early Sunday morning, I remember thinking
how warm it felt especially being, literally, just across the road from
the sea. I breathed deeply and heavily, trying as nearly as I could, to
propel myself into calmness. The phone was ringing thousands of miles
away. Her shaky, monotone, and dark voice said that “Dad passed away two
hours ago.” The doctors had wanted him to stay in the Portland VA
Hospital for his dehydration. But he wrote “Boise” on his notebook. He
wanted to go home. A place of comfort, respite, if any were to be found.
The doctor finally agreed to let my mom drive him the 450 miles to the
VA Hospital in Boise and check him in. She drove through the drenching
rain having to stop repeatedly to fix the windshield wipers. My amazing
parents spent the last night of their 33 years together in an old
roadside motel just west of
Pendleton, Oregon. You just never know where the road you’re traveling is going to end up. Dad
couldn’t
breathe while laying down any longer so he slept in a recliner,
upright. I still have the handwritten notes he wrote to the doctors and
family that last afternoon. It is incredible to trace his journey by
reading scribbled notes. That evening ,carbon dioxide began building up
in his body. “Your husband is in critical condition and probably won’t
live through the night” the nurse told my mom in the hallway outside his
room. “Call your family together.” How could this be? Can’t we just put
in a feeding tube…that should take care of it. Did he actually hear
them saying that he
wouldn’t
make it through the night? His last words on paper: “I have to go to
the bathroom….pee….it’s hot.” My brother and my mom were on either side
of the recliner that my father was resting in. They sort of “looked at
each other” at 10pm and their tired eyes told each other that he
wasn’t
breathing any longer. Lewis was gone. Damn that wretched Lou Gehrig’s
Disease….it would never haunt him again. I walked back to my room in the
warm wind just as the sun was making it’s way up over England. I’m glad
it
wasn’t
raining that morning. I returned home the very next day. All of the way
back across the globe to where I’d just come from a few days earlier.
He lay in his Navy uniform, glasses in place, and hands folded just so. You
wouldn’t
have believed the red, white, and blue flowers that were jam-packed
into the small viewing room. The morning of his funeral, I took the car
to get it washed….well, at least that’s what I used as my excuse to go,
by myself, for one last visit with my father. I slipped into the
Alden-Waggoner Funeral Home, turned left, and down the hall where he and
I had a chat. I kissed his cold hands that had worked so hard for 62
years. And I leaned into the wooden box as far as I dared and hugged his
face as tightly as I could. I thought it may break….no, wait, that’s my
heart. That blip in history, my friends, will wring water from my eyes
forever. The rest of the day was spent with 500 of his dearest friends
at his completely overwhelming funeral--45 minutes for their long, wan
faces to file past his casket. The moment or two before the lid was
closed permanently is one moment of time that etches itself in my
memory. “Wait,“ I wanted to shout. I would never see him again. Never.
And, that was it. The lid closed and locked. His essential life lessons
to me were over. Class was dismissed. There were so many of his fellow
Navy men and women who volunteered to salute him that day that they had
to turn them down. His impact on the people of this earth was dramatic
in a horribly simplistic way. As the seven rifles cracked three times
with their 21-gun salute, we jumped…but in silence…on the hillside above
Boise that spring afternoon with the wind blowing. It still blows there
today. The flag was folded with precision by the Navy and rested gently
on
my mother’s lap. As we drove away, my determined and self-assured mom
staring, almost glaring, in silence--her voice broke, the wind seemingly
sucked out of her lungs, and she sobbed. “I told him to wait for me but
he
couldn’t.”
My
father never met a stranger. His infectious smile broke across the
deepest of divides. I have no idea whether he knew about my sexuality or
not. I have no regrets. None. I do wish that I’d done more to open
myself up to him…not only in the last few short years…but throughout my
whole fleeting lifetime. I wish I’d allowed him to see me for who I
truly am. Time is short, my friends. Very. Don’t waste it. I wish that
he’d been able to know me as a gay man….his gay son. The man that I know
I am today. His spirit lives on in me, that I know. I find myself
thinking like him, acting like him, even, possibly, looking like him.
And, in the greatest of honors, I now use his name for my own when I
can. He would be proud, I know he would. I can see his smile, his
crooked teeth, hear his bright laughing voice, and feel his positive
energy even today. I loved him dearly. My world
isn’t
the same without him in it. But in some crazy, unexplainable way, it
is. He lives on in me….and that, my dear comrades, makes my journey on
this earth complete.
