Part Time Off American

No part time jobs for a while. My Daddy’s dying so I’m going home. He’s already in the “Hospice” stage and mostly just sleeping his days away on his living room couch. We’re all here…my older sister, my brother and myself. Just waiting. That’s pretty much all one can do. It’s not an impatient kind of waiting, because “impatience” connotes you want something to hurry up and happen. When your Daddy is dying…you’re not in a hurry…everything stands still.

You can’t control death. You finally realize after much struggle that it’s strictly between itself and the person going through it. Maybe that’s the way all of life is, and we just thought it was different. And all that anxiety and push and pull and manipulation we went through was nothing more than a big ol’piss in the wind. For Life was living us all along, no matter what we thought we were so busy doing or changing.

Before he retired, Daddy was a Bird Colonel in the Air Force. A big strapping man and a fighter pilot since WWII. .A real “man’s-man” as they say. He loved to hunt and fish and was always the life of the party. Momma had died when she was just 49.Which shocked Daddy cause he always thought he’d be the first to go. And, now, Daddy had outlived his second wife and was having to deal with death, again. He wasn’t afraid, though. Being a fighter pilot, he always looked everything right in the eye and dealt with it…. He had already made all his own funeral arrangements and gotten all of his finances in order. Even called the funeral parlor two days earlier asking them, “How much is it to be cremated? Is it cheaper?” . He had waken up, asked for the phone, made the arrangements, hung up, said “Don’t look at me that way! I’m not  gonna give death an extra penny to promote itself!” and fell back into his coma-like sleep on the couch.

Several of his old Air Force buddies had come to visit him. Just… sitting with him as he slept on the couch. They were all in their 80’s, too. They told me stories about Daddy’s bravery during WW II and the Korean War. They said that when Daddy spoke about his combat missions at their monthly “Bird-Man” poker parties, they all listened quietly with great respect . “It’s not braggin’ when you’ve lived it.” One of his buddies said, “ And, honey… your Daddy’s lived it.” As I listened to their war stories , you could feel the strength of those men… it was both touching and bittersweet. For, somehow I sensed that they, too, knew they were a dying breed.

My little brother, for whom I think this has been the  most difficult had to get back to his dental business in Texas. He said good-by to Daddy. They both tried to hold back the tears, but you cannot ignore the hurt and pain of a last good-by. You just can’t. And maybe you shouldn’t. Maybe you should just wail a great wail and let it all out. For the pain of a last good-by runs deep. The tears flowed down both their cheeks, they hugged quietly and my little brother left. It was hard. But what else can you do? Letting go is the only answer.

After my brother left, something changed in my Daddy. He seemed more peaceful, somehow. Like a decision had been made.

It was October the 5^th. My birthday and I was doing the breakfast dishes. Daddy had joked with me earlier and said, “Now, lookee here. I’m not gonna die on your birthday cause you’ll  never forgive me!”  Either way, I wouldn’t be celebrating.

Then, as I was washing the last dish, I suddenly felt this cold breeze go past the back of my neck. I turned to see who had walked behind me, but no one was there. “Oh, my God.” I thought to myself, “It’s the angel of death .” I quickly walked over to Daddy who was sleeping peacefully on the couch and watched him for a moment. He was still breathing. So, I shook it off and went back to drying the dishes.

My birthday passed rather uneventfully, which was fine with me. My sister bought me a cake and lit one big candle for me to make a wish on and blow out. I wished that his death would be quick and painless. No suffering. My sister and I had our cake and went to bed.

Around  3 AM my sister woke me up.  “Daddy wants to go to the bathroom!” She said frantically.  “He refuses to use the porta-potty that Hospice brought. What are we gonna do?” I thought a moment. “What else can we do? You know how stubborn he is!” I said.  “Let’s help him onto his walker.”

We looked at each other in astonishment as it took every ounce of strength he had left for him to lift his big 6’2” frame onto the walker. His whole body was shaking. But, he was determined. We helped as best we could, but we were thinking the whole time that he’d never make it and would probably die of a heart attack before he even reached the bathroom door. But, he did make it and slammed the door behind himself.

My sister and I sat quietly, looking at each other. Wondering if he’d ever make it out. Then, with a great sigh of relief, we heard the toilet flush and he emerged from the bathroom booming, “God Dammit, you girls! Here I am dyin’ and you haven’t written my obituary! Get a pen!”

Well, my sister scrambled to find a pen and paper as I helped him back to his couch. And for the next 30 minutes, Daddy sat straight up on the couch dictating his obituary. Revealing times and places he had never told us about. Names of all the medals of honor that we had seen for years in the cases, but never asked him about. Why hadn’t I ever asked him about those medals and what he had done to receive them? How many battles had he fought? How many times had he gone down with his planes? How old was he when he went to Burma? What was it like when he first met mama? A million questions were racing through my mind like the tape on an old recorder rewinding faster and faster as it gets to the end.

When he was done, we just sat there quietly.  He said he didn’t want to lie down. He’d sit up for a while. So, we sat with him as he closed his eyes to rest. I actually dozed off in my chair, too. Death is an exhausting thing.

Suddenly, I was awakened by the sound of my sister’s voice as she was frantically calling the Hospice people. “I think he’s dying! What do we do? What do we do?!” I ran over to Daddy who was sitting straight up on the couch , eyes looking toward heaven. He was  gasping for breath. He looked at me. It was not a frightened look, but a kind of “ridin-the-wave”, stay-the-course,  May-Day  kind of look. Then he made this awful wheezing sound like the air going out of a big tire. Then, suddenly,  he seemed to look past me. Like he saw something. And then he was gone. That was it. He was gone.

My sister lost it. “What do we do? What do we do?” frantically pointing to the body sitting straight up on the couch. His mouth was wide open, and with his face all contorted looking, with eyes staring blankly into space. It was not a pretty picture. He was gone and nothing was left but this empty carcass with it’s mouth wide open and eyes all bugged out. I closed his eyes and put the throw over his body and said to my sister, “Come on. It’s all right. He’s gone. We’ll go outside. We’ll go outside and smoke one of Daddy’s Cuban cigars that cousin George left. We’ll wait outside for the Hospice people to come.”

Daddy was gone. My sister and I  were out back smoking an expensive and illegal Cuban cigar and he was gone. It was over. Or so we thought.

Hospice finally arrived around 4AM and the woman made all the necessary calls to the funeral parlor as my sister filled out all the endless paperwork, ignoring the fact that  Daddy was still sitting straight up on the couch covered with the throw. Finally, at 5:30 AM, the funeral parlor men arrived. It was a Father and Son team. They were both dressed in black suits with matching red ties. You could see that the old white-haired father was turning the business over to his young son. The old man brought in the gurney to put Daddy’s body on and signaled for his son do all the talking.

“Now, of course, ya’ll will want our intimate service at the funeral home for your last

good-byes.” The man’s son said in a rehearsed, pseudo-sympathetic hushed tone. But, for some reason, his voice began to fade away into the background , as my eyes became fixed on his big hands that he had clasped in front of him, in some gesture they must have taught him in funeral school. They were absolutely mesmerizing.. Huge. “Like Liberace’s!” I thought.  I had met Liberace backstage, once, after a performance and I couldn’t get over how big his hands were, too. More suited for a mechanic than a piano player.  And he wore this big ring in the shape of a grand piano, covered in diamonds, on his pinkie finger.  And, now, here was this funeral parlor son with the same huge hands with this huge diamond ring on his pinkie finger that seemed so …I don’t know…wrong. I mean, you expect to see a diamond ring on Liberace’s finger, but what the hell was this big fingered funeral parlor soon-to-be owner/son doing with it on his? In Panama City, Florida?

Then, as he continued talking to me in his rehearsed, hushed tones about “loved ones” and “how hard it can be at a time like this”, I glanced over his shoulder, and in the background, his rather small, white-haired father was falling all over himself trying to single-handedly hoist daddy’s 6’2” stiffening body which was still in a sitting position onto their gurney.  The whole thing looked like some crazy scene from a Monty Python movie! 

Once the old man finally managed to get him onto the gurney, his tie got caught under Daddy’s body and it almost jerked him to the floor! And all the while, the son with the too-big diamond ring and huge hands, kept right on talking,  trying to sell me the benefits of having their “viewing” service at the funeral parlor before the cremation so everyone could say “Good-by.” To which I uncontrollably blurted out, “My Daddy just croaked, Liberace ! And his body’s still in a sitting position on your friggin’ gurney! I think we’ve done “Good-bye!”

Well, everyone stopped what they were doing and looked at me like I was crazy. Which, I think, at that very moment, I possibly  was. The whole “death thing” seemed so ludicrous. Daddy still lying on the gurney in a sitting position, the old white-haired man, shirt half out and tie askew from hoisting him up, the hushed-toned funeral son with his fat fingers and gaudy diamond ring, the Cuban cigars, the hospice lady matter-of-factly going about her work, my sister crying hysterically, “Thank God he’s gone!” All we were missing was Liberace in his mink cape, being flown in on wires for the big closing number! …Dear me. Death is, at once, an awful and ridiculous thing.

I don’t know if they ever straightened Daddy out. I guess it doesn’t matter, really. He was cremated, after all. At the funeral, the preacher kept referring to the brass box with the ashes in it whenever he mentioned Daddy’s name, which seemed absurd.  And I sang a special hymn that they always ended each church service with, on Air force bases all over the world. The verse was,  “Lord guard and guide the men who fly. Through the great spaces of the sky. Be with them traversing the air. Through darkening storms and sunshine fair.” Daddy’s Bird Colonel friends cried.

I cried, too. Not that day. But the following Christmas I cried. I cried for days. I couldn’t stop crying. It was the deep and mournful cry of a child who suddenly realized for the first time …she could never go home again…. Even life is a part time job.