The Last Summer

My father’s face brightened as the yellow whaler pulled up to the dock with my 14 year-old nephew at the helm.  “That…was… my… boat,” he choked out a full sentence as the mental connections attached and sputtered, like wires in a flashlight, illuminating the memory.

 

 

It was the boat my father had hopped on for years to escape the confines of the shore.  He’d taken us all for rides, including his nine grandchildren, especially when their tired mothers needed a break.  At the wheel of any vessel, out on the blue green waters of the lake, my father always found peace.

 

This is likely the last summer my Dad will be able to come to the mountains, his favorite place in the world. Dementia or Alzheimer’s or whatever corrodes his mind in a slow erasure is scrambling the circuitry.  The predictable routine he endures at his assisted living facility in Boston is lost here at the lake.  There are wide open spaces and wooded paths, vast stretches of time with inactivity, then the sudden flurry of all of us around, conversations swirling like individual eddies that confuse and capsize his cognition.  “All this noise,” he says, looking up at me helplessly.  The frustration and anger, the weepiness of past summers has mostly passed.  In those moments it was painful to watch him, like a drowning victim, capsized by the fear of his mortality.  My father is childlike now, a simple man.

 

Disease, we call it.  And it is a “dis” ease, an uneasiness among us all at bearing witness to this gradual loss, this diminishment.  He can no longer communicate beyond simple phrases.  The hands that once dug in dirt and were callused from chores, are soft now like a babies.  His limbs and extremities are roped with veins that break easily and form angry bruises just under his paper-thin skin.  In the absence of fluid language, his arms swoop through the air like a conductor, fingers flitting a secret sign language, in an attempt to express himself.  His wide, eager smile breaks my heart.

 

My children are the fifth generation to return to this lake each summer.  And it is inconceivable to me that my father has been asking to “go home” to the assisted living facility.  But this IS your home, I think, the home of your heart.  This is the your “sacred” place, the spot where you found joy and sanctuary. Remember when we’d spy the first sliver of lake and burst into song as the station wagon crested over Tongue Mountain? Can’t you feel your roots in this land? I want to ask him. But he would only look perplexed at such a probing, complex question.

 

We three sisters know the family generational lore by heart.  Our nook on the lake is where I was conceived, where my father, hiking alone the year before he met my mother, almost slipped and plunged to death while climbing a rocky cliff.   “If it weren’t for a lone root on that sheer rock, none of you three would be here,” he’d remark solemnly during our annual pilgrimage to that spot by boat.

 

There is nothing at all easy or comforting about being around my father now.  So many of my friends and contemporaries are traveling in this middle place, the valley of mid-life, with aging parents.  We are all at various stops aboard the orphan train.  The details may be different; Alzheimer’s, stroke, cancer, a sudden fall, but the broad-brush strokes are the same.  Losing a parent is tough, primal stuff.  You only think you are prepared.

 

“Don’t ever let me go into a nursing home,” my Dad said repeatedly when he would return from visiting his own mother in an almost vegetative state.  “That’s not living. Just take me out back and shoot me,” he’d exclaim with a pained expression.

 

Humans were built for survival.  We are wired to desire just one more day with the people we love.  We are war-like creatures, spoiling for a fight against death.  But at what point can we truly recognize that the scales have tipped, that there are now more bad days, more days of pain or confusion or difficulty than the good ones?

 

This is heavy stuff, you say. You bet it is, and so let’s tiptoe away to another thought for a moment. This is what I really want to know.  In the end, if you are scared and addled or in pain, does a life well lived mean anything?  Do all of those precious memories, the summer afternoons where you held your grandbabies high over your head on the bright beach, the mornings you woke your young daughters at dawn to fish, the walks down the aisle with each girl, the boat rides with the wind in your hair… does any of that count for us at the end?  I hope to God it does. I hope that it brings comfort and calm and a sense of purpose in some small measure.

 

 

My father sits next to me as I write this, staring out at the lake in which he’ll no longer fish or swim or captain his boat.  I hope that, like muscle memory, those images of a life well lived, of happier moments, are playing in his head like an old time movie, reminding him that even though this hurts like hell, he is loved.

 

Note:  I wrote this piece last summer and the seasonal timing didn’t work out to publish it until this year. I had also wanted to see if Dad would return this summer, giving me a happy reason to revise this post. Sadly, 2012 was the first year of my life that my father didn’t come to the lake.  And he was missed.

 

 

 

 

 

DAD TO THE RESCUE -- The Final Installment

For those of you diligent enough to read along thus far, we’ve had a semi-successful prom proposal, a trip to Paris and then an emergency appendectomy just when it all started to sound “Up With People” perfect. 

After spending the few remaining night hours post-surgery upright in a vinyl version of a crippled barka lounger -- dawn broke.  We had made it through the night minus one appendix.  Thank the goddesses.

I had been on the phone and emailing back and forth with Bob. “Maybe you should come,” I offered tentatively.  “Now don’t come.  She’s going into surgery.  Now she’s not.  Don’t come all the way here, I’m OK.” You get the idea.  Chick indecision.  The familiar “I don’t want to inconvenience anyone” baggage of the oldest child. 

What’s that you say?  My oldest sibling was never thoughtful?  Well, how could you possibly understand the burden and curse of being the firstborn; the damage to one’s psyche from functioning as the parental “tester” model.   

The last space shuttle mission was launching and Bob was supposed to be covering it for ABC–News later that week.  But I felt about as strong and together as a mesh bag full of Jell-O.  I needed him.

When your husband is a journalist, there is always news breaking in the world.   One of the things I love about my man is that as much as he loves the pursuit of a good story, he loves his family more.

I’m not Janet Reno or Lara Croft Tomb Raider tough, but I do take pride in being capable.  I can figure out what to do in most situations.  But this one had worn me down.  It had frazzled all my mother board-wiring.  I was in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language, my baby had just come out of surgery and no one seemed to be able to tell me when we could go home.  I needed back up reserves.  I needed my MAN.

And frankly, what man doesn’t want to be needed?  What dude in modern America (especially one who drives a Nissan Hybrid) doesn’t want the opportunity to channel Marlboro Man charging across the plains to rescue his Wo-man and little’uns. What Grimm’s fairy tale raised boomer-gal doesn’t succumb to an occasional Camelot fantasy, no matter how many women’s studies courses she took?

“I’m coming over there,” he said.  “I’ve already booked the flight.”  And that was all it took to lose it.  His impending arrival was now a good thing because the doctor on rounds announced there was no way we were getting out of here before Friday.  He looked at me like I was poodle pooh on the sole of a shoe when I suggested maybe, well, we could move it along and go home in two days.  It was only Sunday morning.  There was no way we were putting her on a plane, he said.  NO way.  Non. I felt desperate.   I’d never wanted to taser somebody into submission so badly.

Let me add as an aside here that the desperation was fueled by our room being located on the “Digestives” ward of the hospital.  If I’d smelled smells in the ER downstairs (see previous blog entry), it was nothing compared to the natural gas leaks happening on this floor.  All up and down the hallway, patients tooted and pssssfffffted away like a symphony of little helium balloons releasing.  It was an assault on the olfactory system.

Friday? I thought.  Five more days in France after successful laparoscopic surgery?  At first the country’s chilled out attitude toward long hospital stays, the wine bar in the downstairs’ cafeteria all seemed tres groovy.   I liked their style; don’t push it mon ami, take it easy, reeelaaaax, have some Boone’s Farm.

But now, facing a prolonged exile from my homeland, my twins, my dog, house and returning college-aged son, my lip began to curl back in Teutonic distaste at these softies.  Wimps.  Buck up, I thought.  No wonder you Frenchies needed the Yanks in WWII.  Perhaps our own Pearl Buck medical system of birthing the fetus in the fields, washing it with spit and going back to the crops was a bit more….. realistic.   Our American hospital policy of “stitch ‘em up and kick em out” suddenly looked more workable.

Really?  You’re thinking.  You were balking at being marooned in France?  With a doctor’s excuse note and all?  Yes, I say.  Remember we were in a hospital, not smoking unfiltered cigarettes in cafes and picking up bouquets on our evening stroll.  The best food I had access to was in a vending machine.  And remember.  I smelled smells.

I began to hatch a plan (as only the sleep-deprived or deeply disturbed can) to bust her out of there, Bruce Willis style. 

I’d unhook that IV, grab a banana off the breakfast cart, shove it under my sweatshirt menacingly and scream something dramatic like “Don’t nobody touch us!” as she hobbled out the front doors, me “covering her” and growling for them all to “stay back.”  That’s right people.  I was a Cagney and Lacey devotee and I dug Peggy Lipton on Mod Squad.   I have a recurring fantasy that I’m Mariska Hargitay on SVU.  I aspire to look that hot while packing heat and perp-busting.

But luckily, we didn’t have to go the Dirty Harry route.  Bob informed me all this waffling and demurring was no use.  He was already on the way.  Dad to the rescue. 

Of course, none of us could have known that while he was flying from NY to Paris, the Navy Seals would attack Bin Laden’s not-so-secret compound and kill him.  Big story.  Bad timing.

What I love about my husband is that even though this was a giant kahuna of a story, even though our family had been personally touched by the evil actions Bin Laden had set in motion, Bob never once opened his mouth to his daughter.  But I knew how much this was killing him.  He did what all awesome Dads have done throughout time.  He stuffed it down. And I love him for that.

In 2003, Bob and our friend NBC reporter, David Bloom, were each embedded with the military as they advanced on Baghdad.  It looked like easy victory then to the layman.  But on April 6, just outside of the final push into the city with the Army, David collapsed from a pulmonary embolism and died.

Twelve miles away from the fulcrum moment of the war, embedded with the Marines, Bob stood on the cusp of being one of the first battalions into the city. He was near the tip of the spear.  And then he got the call from his news desk about David.  He walked away from the tanks, over to a sand dune, sat down, put his head in his hands and called me.  Three little girls had just lost their daddy.  My friend and journalist wife Mel had just lost her husband.

And then he did something for which I will always love him, but which certainly couldn’t have earned him much love from his supervisors.  He told ABC he needed to go home.

“I need to be there for David’s girls and my kids,” he told his bosses. “ I need to be there for his wife and I need to carry that coffin with his brothers.”

He pulled the plug. Leaving the story was probably one of the hardest things he had to do. And the easiest. 

So when Bob told me he was coming to Paris, that he wanted to be there for me and for Cathryn, I thought back to this particular time in our lives, eight years ago, back before the war had left its own personal traumatic stamp on our family. My husband was coming.  And my heart skipped a beat all over again.

I would never want someone to write on my grave “she was an awesome tweeter” nor would my husband want to be remembered first as a journalist. 

“They were good parents.  They did their best,” is what I think we’d both choose to chisel on our headstones.  You don’t get yesterday back and you have no idea how tomorrow will unspool. That old Harry Chapin “Cats in the Cradle” song becomes a little less cheesy when your kid is about graduate in a few weeks.  There aren’t a lot of do-overs you get as parents.

I don’t expect our daughter will quite understand exactly what all of this felt like to watch her in pain in a foreign place until one day she becomes a mother.  The selfless acts we undertake as parents are somehow hard wired into our ancestral unconscious. They are part of the fight or flight instinct to wrap our wings around our babies, protect them at all costs, or hurl our bodies in front of the speeding car while pushing them to the curb.

Were we there enough?  Did we listen and not just nod distractedly?  Did I wave them away at the computer, so focused on finishing my deadline that I didn’t really hear the story about their role in the school musical?  Oh the many ways we torture ourselves as parents.  They will end up in therapy some day no matter how diligent we were, no matter how many times we Indian-styled it on the rug playing Apples to Apples. 

But were you there in the pinch?  Did you fly across the ocean when your daughter had surgery?  Did you let them know in all the important ways how much they come first?  Did you touch them enough and tell them you love them at every good turn? I hope I did. The proof will be in how they walk through the world, whom they choose for a mate and the ways they parent their own children.

Eight hours later, when I saw that hunky homo sapien of my heart walk into the French hospital room, throw his suitcase into park and fling his arms open wide, I felt the last bit of the frayed rope snap inside of me.  Cathryn grinned, I smile-cried and everything in side of me turned gelatinous.  In a really good way.

NOTE – this is the last and final installment of the Paris-Proma-Appendicitis trilogy.  But if you’ve enjoyed the blogs, come visit again.  You can also subscribe on the website.

The Yellow Boat

“Whoa!” I jumped up off my beach chair and began waving my hands in the air over my head, trying to get his attention. “Slow down!!!!” I did a thumbs down move designed to get him to cut the speed. My Dad had just barreled past the five mile an hour buoys in the bay at a fast clip and brushed too-near a kayaker in our busy August bay who was shepherding three swimmers. As he raced past her, oblivious of the speed, she set her paddle down and turned her head. I could not see her expression up close but her body language said everything. My Dad was flying, but the look on his face was priceless. He was in heaven. For him, the open water was the last place in his life, the last place on earth, that he had any autonomy. It was a sunny day and puffy white clouds were just beginning to poke over the tops of the mountains. The lake was calm, his grandkids were on the beach, the wind was in the wisps of his hair and plastered across his face was a big, self-satisfied grin. My Dad has Dementia, or maybe it will soon be diagnosed as Alzheimers. I don’t much care what the term is. He is, little by little, being erased. The strong parts, the parts that cared for me and supported me are now fading. It is the three of us, his daughters, who now care for him with our Mom. Finally, a few yards beyond our raft, he saw me with my arms signaling wildly. His face fell, childlike in disappointment. I could tell he wasn’t sure exactly what he had done wrong, only that something was wrong. I was angry, maybe overly angry because I had been his last advocate. I’d been the one arguing the case to keep his dignity intact for just a few more weeks till summer came to an end. We’d taken away his driver’s license on the road, stripped him of independence in so many other areas. He’d always been a careful boater and I’d argued that if we kept watch on the shore, or volunteered to accompany him on each trip, that we could make it through this summer. By next summer it would be a whole different story. I admonished automatically in the same tone my mother uses, like an adult patronizes a child. “Dad, you were going too fast. Dad, you almost hit the kayak. Dad, there is a five mile an hour limit.” He deflated. “Well, I guess this is my, my swan song,” he stammered. His face was cloudy, his head down like a recalcitrant child. I marveled that he had pulled that phrase out of nowhere. That was a flash of my old, eloquent Dad. I argued with my sisters. “Lee, he cannot drive the boat anymore. No more boat. He is going to kill or maim someone,” said my youngest sister Meg. “Well, kill isn’t good but maim might be acceptable,” I said, to break the ice. We McConaughys were known for our gallows humor, always a wonderful diffuser to deal with strong emotions and overcharged moments. “Yeah, I guess if he just clipped off an ankle on a swimmer that wouldn’t be too bad,” said Nancy, rolling her eyes. “We’re just going to have to find a way around this, “ I said. “We need to have someone go out with him when he goes. That way we can gently remind him of the speed limit.” “We have to hide his keys,” said my sister Meg. And so, because it was two against one, we put them in a secret place in the boathouse. This way he would have to find one of us to remember where his keys were. The next day, by the time he found me, he was anguished, all riled up. He told me he had been looking for his keys for a long time. “Lets check here,” I said reaching into a coffee can. “Maybe you put them here,” I tried to keep my voice non-chalant and level, despite the deception. He looked pained, searching his memory, I assumed, for why the man who always removed his shoes indoors and carefully hung his keys on a peg each afternoon would ever put them in a rusty coffee can. He jangled the keys in his palm. “Dad, I’d love to go,” I said. “Would you take me?” It was the last thing I felt like doing. I’m not a huge boat person. Nerdy, I know, but I’d much rather read a book. I had just gotten down to the dock and spread out my towel, pulled my novel out of the beach bag. I unclipped the ropes from the dock cleat and we puttered out past the five-mile-an-hour buoys. We crossed to the other side of the lake. Sitting at the bow of the boat I helped him see the markers, gently using hand signals to indicate the rocks he needed to go around. He nodded each time. This kind of muscle memory would probably be the last to go in some ways. He’d been driving this bright yellow Boston Whaler and its aluminum predecessor before that for decades. He knew the lake and its craggy shoreline instinctively. We glided past the multi-colored sails of Sunfishes and poked into a deep bay where a turtle hopped off a log. We stared up at the face of a cliff where once, as a young man, he had climbed and almost perished before he grabbed for a small root sticking out of the rock. We had made him tell that story to us a hundred times as kids. “You wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for that root,” he’d say, sweeping his arm up toward the cliff. And we’d all stare upward, imagining my father, young and muscled, pulling himself up the face of the cliff with sheer will. He had taken us to this spot a hundred times by boat. Now, a mile across the lake from our own beach, I felt the wind tousle my hair, felt my shoulder muscles relax. I looked back at my Dad, so proud and in control at the steering wheel. This was heartbreaking, this slow leaving, this long and sputtering good-bye. What did he remember? What had he forgotten? Later that night he grabbed me and pulled me to him, for the moment confusing my name with that of my sisters, but the emotion is clear. “I love you so much,” he says to me. “I am so proud of you.” “I love you too Dad,” I say, breathing in the faint mothball scent of his summer shirt. Its muscle memory for us both.

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