Thursday, October 31, 1985. 1:20 p.m. A farmhouse in rural Janesville Township. A hospital bed set up in the middle of the living room.
Lying in the bed, gasping for breath, is my 61-year-old father, and he has just spoken the last words that will ever pass from his toothless mouth: “Last day.”
He is surrounded by his wife of 37 years, his four children, a pastor and a nurse. The pastor reads the twenty-third Psalm. The nurse checks vital signs and announces them like she’s in a televised medical drama. The family begs God to end the man’s suffering, some silently and some aloud.
Finally, in an undramatic, non-Hollywood fashion, his body stills. His chest doesn’t heave, his eyes and mouth do not close, his head doesn’t fall limply. He just gets still, eerily still. His six weeks in Hell have concluded. He is free.
When there was nothing more that medical science could do for him, he insisted on coming home to die. But he didn’t submit easily. He fought it to the end, refusing to sleep for three days, fearing that he would never wake. He fought so hard that even when death finally came, his eyes wouldn’t close.
My siblings and I kept a 24-hour watch with him. While the others slept, at least one of us sat with him, holding his hand, all day, all night, at all hours. He was never alone. We would not let him die alone.
We leave the living room and gather in the kitchen, not quite sure what to do now. My aunt and uncle show up to weep with us. The undertakers arrive. I try not to watch, and I wish later that I hadn’t. I have never been able to erase the image of my father’s naked body, emaciated, jaundiced, and covered with bedsores, being zipped into a bag.
I cannot sit in the house any longer. I go outside, call the dog – Dad’s dog, the beloved part-huskie he named Mush – and the two of us go for a walk out to the woods at the far end of our 141 acres.
Mush chases birds and enthusiastically runs around with the energy of a child who has just been released from the classroom for recess. I sit on a rock and watch the joyful canine, oblivious to the fate of her master, and wish I was that happily ignorant. Instead, I wonder, what now? I worry about my mother, the loyal, dependent farm wife who has never lived alone. What will she do? Who will she live with?
Twenty-five years later, I reflect on all that has happened since. I need not have worried about Mom. Instead of shriveling up, she dipped into a reserve of strength that we never knew she possessed. Independent, sure and assertive, she laughs in the face of fate, a quality that has gotten her through cancer surgery, a new hip, and a new knee.
She never remarried, never even dated, although she's had opportunities over the years. Dad was her one and only.
My niece, only ten at the time of Dad’s death, wrote a school paper about her deceased grandfather, referring to him as the brightest star in the sky. The rest of us embraced that thought and even now, I still think of him immediately when the first star shows up at dusk.
It's strange to think that I'm now to the point where I have spent more years on the planet without a living father than with one. Too often when I think of him, I selfishly feel sorry for myself. I regret that he didn’t see me evolve past the stage where I was an unfocused young man pondering what to do with his life. I regret that he didn’t see his grandchildren, that he didn't see me get involved in my community, that he wasn’t there to help me fix the plumbing, that we couldn’t continue our annual trek to see the Brewers play.
I am relieved, however, that he met his future daughter-in-law. Mom always says that Dad heartily approved of my spousal choice and declared that she was "good for me." At a time when I wasn’t always making great decisions, at least he knew I had gotten that one right.
Mom comes to almost everything the kids are involved in – band concerts, plays, school ceremonies. She loves being there and I think in some way, she feels that by being there, Dad is, too.
A few years after his death, “Field of Dreams” showed up at movie theaters. At the end of the film, Ray Kinsella, the builder of the baseball diamond carved from a cornfield, is reunited with his long-deceased father, and they play a game of catch. I’ve seen the film dozens of times, and I always cry when this final scene unfolds.
Twenty-five years ago. I miss you, Dad.
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