Memories of Dad IV - Last Story

Dad and Me - February 2006
Me and my Folks

I’d like to share one last story about my Dad. And it really is the last story.

February 3, 2009

This morning, Mom, my sister Susan and I meet with the medical team. Dad has been hooked up to a BIPAP machine for breathing. This is a plastic bubble that fits over his face and is pressurized so that the lungs are blown open and oxygenation is better. Dad is struggling with it and I think he would be better without it. It’s a stressful meeting but eventually everyone agrees. The bubble should come off. If nothing else it will allow Dad to talk and let us know what he really wants us to do.

We re-group in Dad’s room and the nurse unhooks the BIPAP machine and takes off the bubble. She puts Dad on plain oxygen. Dad’s first words are, “What a relief!” Within minutes he is talking with Mom, Susan and me.

“Hey,” I think. “ Pulling the plug isn’t as sad as I thought. No question this is what Dad wants.”

We talk about the good old days. Dad gets reports on all the relatives – especially Sophie and Norman, the Kenyan boy with the new heart valves. We talk about the barbershop we used to go to and Dad remembers the barber’s name – Bill Wilkins.

Dad tells us all about the recent salmonella peanut butter scare, including where the manufacturing plant is located. Apparently, being in a coma is no excuse for missing out on the latest fear-mongering from CNN.

I tell him stupid jokes and we laugh together.
Two termites walk into a pub and one asks: ‘Is the bar tender here?’
How much did they pay Johnny Depp to have his ears pierced for “Pirates of the Caribbean”? A buccaneer.

My favorite image is when Susan and I leave the room to go out to lunch. We look back and see Mom and Dad holding hands and looking at each other. Wow!

By evening, it’s just me and my Dad in the hospital room. I call the nurse to help get him up in a chair.

“Is there anything else I can get you?” I ask.
“Ice cream,” Dad whispers and he winks at me conspiratorially.
I score a couple of vanilla Hoodsies from the fridge in the visitors lounge and we sit watching ‘Star Trek’ while he takes small bites of the ice cream. It’s doubly delicious because we have to keep hiding it from the nurses. He’s not supposed to have anything to eat. We feel like playful small boys pulling a fast one on the authorities.

Play and adventure – that’s how we show the God of Monkeys and Apes that we are still alive, even when our hearts are breaking, our wings are drooping and we’re about to lose our grip and fall off life’s trapeze. . .

February 4, 2009

It’s 10:40 PM and I am asleep, caught in the throes of an angry dream. In the dream I have to go somewhere, but my shoes are missing. I know exactly where I left them and they’re not there. Someone has stolen my shoes. I am so mad.

The phone rings and it’s my sister. Dad has taken a turn for the worse. He’s going fast.
I wake Mom but she doesn’t want to go to the hospital, so I go in alone.

Before getting in the car, I look up at the mountain sky, always so bright and clear. The great square of Pegasus is directly overhead and a brilliant half-moon is sailing in the sky beneath.

By the time I get to the hospital Dad is gone. It’s peaceful and OK. Hugs and sadness.
Then on the way back from the hospital, I remember the shoe dream.

“Dad and I always wore the same size – 8 ½ D,” I recall.
Suddenly a light-bulb fires off in my brain.
”Holy smokes,” I realize. “That guy who stole my shoes in the dream must have been Dad!”
“And he didn’t take just one. He took both of them.”
I start to laugh and tears fill my eyes, as I realize that wherever he is going, Dad needs two shoes size 8 ½ D. (Dad had his right leg amputated in a bus accident in 2004.)

The next day I tell Susan my shoe dream. She also had a dream the night Dad died.
My sister dreamed that she and Dad were walking down the street and she suddenly realized that he was walking on both legs! She was happy he wasn’t in a wheelchair in her dream.

“Did you happen to get a look at his shoes?” I ask.

“Not really,” Susan replies.

Take that, you God of Monkeys and Apes!
Manley, the one-legged shoe thief, strikes again.

Durango, Colorado - January 1, 2008

Durango is my kind of town!

The New Rochester Hotel

Durango – what a great name for a town in the Wild West! We’re on our way to see our son, Daniel, who works nearby and hangs in Durango in his 2000 Chevy Van when he’s not working. He’s not really a cowboy but close enough. More about Dan later.

Our li’l CRJ 90 regional jet descends from Salt Lake City over the folded foothills of the San Juan range.
“Cute airport,” says Rena. “Only two gates.”
Marge and Roy unload our bags onto the airport’s only baggage carousel while I pick up my chariot of choice.
“Holy ostentatious,” blurts Rena. “A black Cadillac! What kind of a snow cruiser is that?”
“Hey, it may not be much in snow,” I enthusiastically reply. “But get a load of this heated steering wheel. And the trunk alone is as big as your Suzuki!”

Rena settles dubiously into the luxurious tan leather upholstery. The car is so hi-tech that I can’t figure out how to start it – there’s no key, just a key-ring with nothing on it! The National car rental guy shows me the right button to push and we’re on our way.

After a while we find the cigarette lighter and plug in Rena’s GPS which is named Marvin after the quirky, depressed robot in “A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Mad Marvin, the GPS, is in a snit and doesn’t talk to us for many miles. Using dead reckoning, Rena’s sense of direction and whatever grudging advice Marvin is willing to part with, we arrive at our “pied-a-terre” – the New Rochester Hotel in Durango. I think the last time I was in Durango, some forty years ago, it was a flophouse and brothel. But that, as they say, is another story.

The New Rochester is now an old-West style bed-and-breakfast with wagon wheel chandeliers, saddles on the stair railings and mosaic bathroom floors made of tiny black and white hexagonal tiles. There are ten rooms, each one named after a movie that was filmed in the environs of Durango. Movies like “The Naked Spur”, “Support Your Local Gunfighter”, “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon”, and “City Slickers.” For some reason we are assigned to the “National Lampoon Vacation” room! This means we brush our teeth while a poster of Chevy Chase leers at us from over the toilet. Well, that’s our room – we call it the NLV for short.

The NLV is on the second floor and there’s no elevator. Rena eyes her suitcase dubiously.
“ Maybe we should ask for help with the luggage,” she advises.
But this is not Boston. This is the old West, where men are men (and so are women).
“Nope,” I reply. “If this luggage is yourn, Ma’am, then I’m yore luggee.”
I’m beginning to feel more like a Westerner already. I spit on my hands and rub them together before grabbing the bags. Spurs jingle faintly in my imagination.

By the time I get to the NLV, I’m sucking in great lungfuls of Durango’s thin atmosphere. We’re at 6512 feet above sea level – enough to give pause to Jack Palance even.
Rena is standing just inside the door and sniffing suspiciously.
“Do you think this room smells funny?” she asks.
“No, Ma’am. I surely don’t,” I wheeze.
“Well, I do!” she says. “You didn’t pee on the rug, did you?”
“Not yet,” I reply. “Better make way!”
I rush to Chevy Chase’s toilet and return greatly relieved. Breath and color are returning to my body. We open the window to air out the room and head down to the lobby for tea and homemade cookies – yumm! While there I peruse the police blotter of the Durango Herald. There’s nothing like the local police blotter to give a visitor insight into the ebb and flow of community life:

8:24 AM – a woman with a brain injury leaves home to hitchhike.
11:33 AM – a bale of hay is found in the northbound lane of Camino del Rio.
11:56 AM – guests at a local motel try to leave without paying.
2:24 PM - a caller is concerned that a big dog on a short chain might be suffering from the cold.
5:55 PM - a four year old girl mistakenly dials 911. Her mother says there is no emergency.
7:43 PM – four or five men, all dressed in black, are hanging around a business parking lot. They are gone when an officer arrives on the scene.
1:43 AM - a drunken woman is being “over-dramatic” in the 700 block of Main Avenue.

Apparently, not much ebbed and even less flowed in Durango yesterday. “Better luck tomorrow,” I muse.
We hit the sack early. Being it’s Tuesday, no cowpokes are emptying six shooters on Main Avenue. Tomorrow we take the narrow gauge to Cascade Canyon and meet up with Dan.