Finding Dad: From "Love Child" to Daughter (19 page)

  
20
Born Again: Old Souls, New Baby

Life started again, I was getting back into my groove of taping shows, anchoring the news, and setting up interviews for my series
Kara’s Cures
, which focuses on ways to better the mind, body, and spirit. The Hartford Family Institute was holding a forum on grief and wanted me to interview Kerrie O’Connor, a psychic healer, who would be speaking about the “other side” and giving messages from departed loved ones to the audience. I decided to do a pre-interview on the phone to assess her. After a few minutes of small talk about her work as a medium, she told me she had a message for me and asked if she could share it.

“Sure, I’m open,” I said, curious.

“Your maternal grandmother is here, and she’s singing happy birthday. Does that make sense? I glanced at my calendar and realized it was August 10th, Grandma Vargo’s birthday.

“Oh my gosh, it would have been her birthday today.” I was ready to hear more.

“She says she watches over you and wants you to remember not to wear the crown of thorns. You are here to spread light…wait did you just lose a baby?”

“Yes.” The reminder hurt, but this time she said my spirit guides were talking, not Grandma.

“That baby was not meant to incarnate in human form. That soul came to raise the vibration of your womb so you could carry the next child, who will be a very evolved soul.”

As someone who’d grown up with a traditional Christian background, this message was over the top for me, but I couldn’t deny how it somehow made me feel better. I would rather think there was a spiritual reason for all the pain we were going through, even if it sounded off the wall.

“Okay, when will I have another healthy baby?” I asked hoping more than anything that would happen.

Kerrie answered me without hesitation. “There is a strong male energy around you. You will conceive sometime between December and January of this year. The nine month cycle of the baby will be the birth of a new cycle in your life.”

Needless to say, I booked Kerrie for the show. I wouldn’t know how accurate the messages were until I found out I was pregnant again on New Year’s morning, 2009. I’d had my suspicions, but decided to wait to take the test until New Year’s, since Dennis and I both had the day off, and I was hoping for something to celebrate.

I ran downstairs to the living room, where Dennis was sitting. “I’m pregnant.”

He turned around and looked up at me with a wide smile. “What? Are you sure?”

I nodded, wearing a big grin. “I bought a test, hoping we could ring in the New Year with good news.”

The doctors told us to wait six months after losing the baby before getting pregnant again, and we had just crossed the threshold. Once again, conceiving was the easy part, though I now worried carrying the baby would be the tough part.

After giving me a big hug, Dennis picked up Helena, who was now almost two years old. “You’re going to be a big sister!”

I couldn’t wait to tell my father. Dennis and I thought he could keep a secret, so I spilled the beans: “Dad, I’m pregnant again!”

“Hot damn! That’s great news, Kara. Hot damn!” I could hear the relief in his excitement. I’m sure he worried I may not have been able to have a healthy baby again. I know we did.

“Now listen, Dad, you can’t tell anyone yet because it’s too early.”

“Okay, yes ma’am! I won’t say a thing.”

I wore big clothes to work, and didn’t tell people I was pregnant until I was five months along, just in case. I’m sure people could tell, but after what we had been through, no one asked.

Julian Crescenzo Stephen House was born one week early on September 1, 2009. Dad was now eighty-nine, and was, once again, at the hospital waiting to meet his new grandchild along with our mothers and Soozie. Unlike Helena, everyone said Julian looked like Dad, with long skinny legs, curly blonde hair (Similar to Dad’s baby pictures), and a big presence that far exceeded his tiny body. In time, it became clear he had a personality like Dad, too, since everything he did was big and bold. His tantrums were fierce, his cries for food were extra loud as he banged his fists on the high chair tray, and his giant crystal blue eyes seemed to contain the hidden wisdom of an old soul.

Even my mother took notice. “Julian has a lot of Bruce in him.”

She was right, but we still kept our promise to honor our mothers’ sides with his middle names—Crescenzo for Marilyn’s father, and Stephen after my maternal grandfather, who had taken such great care of me when I was a baby.

My father loved holding Julian and clunking his head on Julian’s forehead with a “boom, boom.” Julian always cracked up, wanting more, even though I worried about his tiny skull.

“This baby is rugged, he can handle it,” Dad would say.

The two of them bonded, tethered by their toughness. As Julian grew, his hair came in platinum white, and random women would stop us on the street to touch it, and sometimes kiss his head in between gushes of, “look at the hair on that beautiful baby…”

He fit in perfectly at Bailey’s Beach in Newport, where towheads were part of the summer landscape. Every weekend we took the kids to the beach to meet my father for lunch. The days of sitting for long drawn out conversations over dessert on comfortable upholstered cushions were over. Dad had to get used to the idea of sacrificing a white linen table for French fries on the plastic chairs closer to the sand, where children were supposed to sit.

At this stage in his life, family trumped formality, and he loved every second he spent with our children—though sometimes he looked at us in disbelief as Julian screamed in his high chair: “Can’t you make him quiet down? What’s wrong?” Dad asked, looking worried and concerned, not understanding that Julian was known for loud dramatic wails on an hourly basis.

“He just doesn’t want to sit anymore,” I would answer, exasperated, hoping my father would get the message to eat a little faster so we could leave. “Den, can you just take him for a sec and I’ll sit with Dad?”

“Sure, uh oh, um…” a look of dread coming over his face.

“What’s wrong now?” Dad asked, clearly oblivious to the smell coming from our sweet child.

“Oh God, he exploded…it’s leaking…” I said, wondering how to get him out of the lunch room without everyone losing their lunch.

Den moved in for the rescue swooping him out of the high chair, “I got him,” he said, running to the bathroom with arms outstretched, trying to keep the leak from springing on him.

“Is there anything I should do to help?” Dad asked, looking helpless.

“Not unless you can change a diaper,” I laughed. This was not a crisis he could battle, and he clearly didn’t want to be in this particular foxhole.

After a weekend of watching us in toddlerdom, Dad sent us one of his trademark letters, dictated to his secretary and typed on his official letterhead, thanking us for a joyful weekend with the children.

“Dennis, you are the best “mother” I have ever seen in a father. I’m amazed at how you take care of Helena and Julian. If it weren’t for nannies, I don’t know how my three boys would have survived.”

Dad admitted he had never changed a diaper in his life and wasn’t sure if he had even held a bottle. It just wasn’t what men like him did, especially in his generation. I decided there should be a first for everything, and if Dad had never fed a baby, then this was his time to learn. I placed my large chunky towhead son on Dad’s lap and handed him a Doctor Brown’s bottle filled with baby formula. “Okay, Dad, hold his head up a bit and give him the bottle. Believe me, he’ll take it.”

Dad was the very picture of nerves as he placed the plastic nipple near Julian’s mouth, seeming very unsure of himself. For a man who’d always been in control of every situation and used to issuing commands, Dad’s look of vulnerability in the hands of a baby was utterly charming. Julian’s tiny strong hands grasped the bottle, and he started to suck the milk down at his usual rapid pace. Julian was happy having his Poppy feed him, smiling back as the milk dribbled out the corners of his mouth onto Dad’s fingers.

As Julian grew old enough, he loved to talk to women. “Hey, ladies,” he’d yell at the power walkers passing by in the neighborhood.

“Oh, look at how cute he is.”

Julian had Dad’s magnetism and Dennis’s likeability.

As Dad’s traits grew more apparent in my son, I felt relief knowing a part of my father would always be with me through Julian, regardless of how much longer he lived. I would never be ready to lose my father, but there was some solace knowing he got to witness a part of himself be born in my son.

Four months after Julian’s birth, we all gathered for my father’s 90
^th
birthday at the Providence Performing Arts Center. Dad had helped build the center to become the first-rate theater it is today, and they honored him with a party for five hundred people. I produced and narrated a video showcasing the highlights of Dad’s career and family life, even joking about my own arrival thirteen years earlier. The soundtrack to the story was a song I knew he loved, that summed up his life. Dad had always told me and my brothers, “When I die I want, ‘I Did It My Way’ played at my funeral.” Dad loved Sinatra, and made a rare confession: “Of everything I have known, if I could be born again, I’d choose to be able to sing.”

He couldn’t carry a tune in a suitcase, and unfortunately neither can I. But that night we were in perfect harmony—he loved my tribute and publicly thanked me when he got up to the podium to speak.

“I want to thank all of you for coming tonight. It’s been nice to hear such wonderful things said about me, and I want to invite you all back here to celebrate my 100
^th
birthday.”

I planned on it, since Dad always got what he wanted.

  
21
CROSSING OVER

As I approached my 19
^th
Father’s Day with Dad, now ninety-one, I got the call I’d feared the most. Dennis and I were enjoying a rare date night in Newport. The first time Soozie called, I let it go to voicemail, figuring I’d get back to her when we were done with dinner. Then she called Dennis’s cell phone.

“Hi, Soozie…” I said wondering what was so urgent and hoping it wasn’t anything bad.

“Kara, honey….” she was clearly crying, “you need to come to Rhode Island Hospital. Your father has been rushed to the emergency room. There is something wrong, and he’s in a lot of pain.”

“Oh God,” I said, feeling sick. “Okay, we’re leaving now. We’re in Newport, so I’m only thirty minutes away.” Years of reporting on death and destruction had trained me to hover above horror so I could gather important information. But this was
my dad
. The blood drained out of me as I looked at Dennis. “We have to go, my dad is in the hospital.” I tried to keep calm on the thirty minute ride to the emergency room.

“What’s wrong with him?” Dennis asked.

“They don’t know, something with his stomach. He’s in a lot of a pain.” We ditched our car in the parking garage of the hospital and ran the rest of the way to find Dad lying in a hospital bed.

He smiled weakly at the touch of my hand on his shoulder. “Hey, Dad.” Looking at Soozie’s puffy eyes, I put on an encouraging smile.

“Hi, baby,” he winced in obvious pain. “Thank you for coming. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

“Oh, Dad,” I whispered, struggling to hide my tears, “of course not.”

The doctor came in and explained that one of my father’s kidneys was blocked and he’d need an operation to drain it…immediately. The good news was they had caught it in time before anything toxic happened to his insides.

I let out a sigh of relief, knowing there was a plan to help my father. It was a routine procedure, and the docs seemed confident Dad would be out in a couple of days. It sounded encouraging, but I couldn’t help wondering about what surgery would do to a ninety-one-year-old man. But the doctors were confident Dad’s risks were minimal because of his amazing health for his age—no heart conditions and the blood pressure of a teenager.

Dad was pretty cocky about his health, and loved to shout from the rooftops how healthy and strong he was: “C’mon I’ll put my numbers up against anyone and win,” he would gloat after getting a physical.

His good spirits raised my own, and we laughed in the prep room as I snapped pictures of him smiling in his hospital gown to text to my brothers. Dad was in good spirits, and all seemed fine going into the operating room. Unfortunately, the simple procedure wasn’t enough. They discovered the other kidney was blocked, too, and wanted to perform another operation to insert another stent in a few days. I stayed on to help Dad recover. He didn’t make for the best patient: He hated the IV’s and catheter, and would constantly tug at the tubes, which made life tough for the nurses. “I’m in pain! Get these off of me!”

Soozie and I tried everything to calm him down. “C’mon, Dad, just let them lead—they know best how to take good care of you. Remember your motto: Lead, follow, or get out of the way!”

I wished I could have stayed to coach him through the second surgery, but I had already taken a lot of time off, and I knew there would be nothing I could do except sit in the waiting room while the operation was going on. It was more important that I be on hand when he was home recovering, so I went back to hosting my talk show and anchoring the news, always keeping my phone close to me and checking it during commercial breaks.

After the shows, I really wanted to head back to the hospital but, instead, I headed to my interview at The Beyond Center, a place for New Age healing in Vernon, Connecticut.

My photographer, Peter McCue, was always a source of comfort to me at work. His warm smile and open mind made it fun to do stories like this together. But today, as he drove us to the center, he knew I was not myself. “How’s your dad?”

“I don’t know—I hope ok. He’s getting another procedure today, and I’m waiting to hear. I may have to take a call soon.

“Okay. If you need to slip out, I can cover.” Peter was always a master at making me feel better. He seemed to understand that I desperately wished the world would stop turning and let me off for a bit so I could be with Dad.

I was set to interview the owner and psychic medium, Rebecca Anne LoCicero, about her weekly events to help people heal with “messages from the beyond.” Instead, it seemed my father was trying to send me a message from the hospital.

As we neared the end of the interview, the psychic asked me if I had a sister who passed.

“Yes, my stepsister, Cintra,” I said, silently reflecting on her suicide years earlier. She’d been Dad’s stepdaughter with Joy, his third wife—and she’d been the closest thing I’d had to a sister. Years later, I still missed her.

“She says in this family, it’s just sister—no ‘step.’ ”

I almost laughed, because she had always been adamant about that. “True—that’s right.”

“She wants to be there for you now.” Before I could say anything, she closed her eyes, then opened them. “You’re worried about your Dad?”

Chills spread across my arms as I nodded. “He’s in surgery now.”

A strange look came over her face,

“I’m getting something from him now…” she said.

“Huh?” I said, confused, “But Dad’s still with us.”

She explained that energy knows no boundaries, and a soul’s energy can communicate when it’s still alive.

Peter and I sat silent, waiting to hear more.

“He doesn’t like all the tubes—he’s showing me how he pulls out the tubes. He’s a man who likes to be in control, right?”

“Yes,” I said eagerly.

“You need to help him feel like he’s more in control—he doesn’t like everyone forcing him to do these procedures, and he says it has to be on his terms.”

“Sounds like Dad.”

It was a fascinating interview, and as we walked back to the car, I thought more about what she’d said about Dad. I thought she’d been referring to the IV tubes he’d hated with a passion, until I got back to the car and my phone rang—it was Soozie, and she was crying.

She told me they couldn’t do the surgery on my father because he wouldn’t let them put the tubes in his back—he kept yanking at the cords and was combative with the nurses and doctors. I started crying, too, not only because I knew Dad needed that surgery, but because I realized he had reached out to me through the psychic five minutes before. She had just described the exact scene that was playing out at the hospital while I was doing the interview.

Peter and I sat dumbfounded, both thinking there was no way the psychic could have known all that.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I needed to get to that hospital immediately and help settle my father and let the doctors do their job. Ever the fighter, he was inadvertently destroying his chances for a good outcome. He was definitely picking the wrong battles.

The doctors had only used local anesthesia because of Dad’s age. Next time, they would have to put him out, and I knew I had to be there.

Thankfully, my bosses understood, and I sped off to RI hospital to hopefully talk some sense into Dad. When I arrived, still wearing my high heels and brightly colored skirt and blouse for TV, he seemed happy to see me, cracking a smile as he weakly extended his hand for me to hold.

His frail appearance scared me, and I went on a mission to make him eat. I brought him apple pastries from Au Bon Pain, hoping to prey on his sweet tooth, but he only took a nibble and said, “No more…take me home.”

“Can’t do that.”

I resorted to acting like a drill sergeant, demanding he down at least a can of syrupy Ensure that the nurses said was filled with vitamins. “Dad don’t you want to get out of here?”

“Yes!”

“Then drink!”

The doctors wanted to insert a PICC line to feed Dad nutrients and painkillers, but were concerned he would fight them off—and it needed to be inserted at the exact right angle through his arm and into his chest.

“Dad, I’m going to be right here, and we’re going to get this done, okay?”

“Okay.” He seemed tired of the fight and wanted to just get back to sleep.

I had never seen my father so listless. I held his arm and hand, and talked him through the delicate procedure—and after thirty minutes, the doctors had what they needed: a pathway into Dad’s body to deliver fuel during his next operation. Hurrah!

The surgery went well, and I felt sure we would now be able to get Dad to focus on getting better. He just needed to tap into that inner strength that gushed like a geyser whenever it erupted. I was positive Dad could heal himself—he just needed a push. They sent him to a rehab center, and I visited almost daily, trying to get him to listen to the physical therapists and do his exercises.

“Come on, Dad, you always tell me how strong you are, so prove it.” My intent was to engage his competitive spark, but all he wanted to do was sleep. His temperature rose, and they sent him back to the hospital, worried that he had an infection.

I was filled with dread…oh no, no, no, not one more thing. I mustered up all the strength I had and prayed for him to heal. I begged the universal force that had always guided me to now help me find the answers we needed for his health—but that proved elusive. Dad’s body was shutting down, and my heart broke when I realized it was time to call my brothers and tell them to fly in. Until now, we all thought Dad would beat this—because he always did—but the doctors told us if he went home, he would need constant care, and that he might not ever be a hundred percent again. He’d simply lost too much strength. But I took what they’d said with a grain of salt, because they just didn’t know my dad and his ability to fight.

In the meantime, Soozie slept at the hospital on a pull-out bed each night, and my father’s ex-wife, Marjorie, stopped by daily with treats and get-well gifts. We joked to the nurses that we were a happily dysfunctional family. Both of my father’s wives, and me— the surprise daughter—traded shifts to make sure Dad wasn’t alone.

Dad’s spirits lifted when my brothers arrived. They sat around his hospital bed and told him stories about the latest happenings in their lives. We enjoyed family meals of to-go sandwiches and lemonade at the foot of Dad’s bed, and settled on a care plan for after he left the hospital. All of us chose to believe he would be the exception to the rule and be back to his old self soon. The doctors were pleased with Dad’s reports, so I felt safe to go back to work, and my brothers flew back to home.

I’d only been back to work one day when Soozie called me in tears. It was Tuesday morning, July 19
^th
. “Kara, your father has taken a turn for the worse, and the doctors feel you should come back.”

“I’m on my way,” I said through sobs.

As I drove, I thought about the past few weeks. He’d had two surgeries to unblock his kidneys, and had spent most of that time in excruciating pain. I knew he was exhausted. I thought about Dad’s and my journey and how we’d made the most of every moment after we decided we really did love each other. How could I ever live without that?

I made the familiar trek to Dad’s room, but this time it felt different. His hug lingered, and I started to cry.
Does he know he’s leaving me?
I had worked so hard to find my dad, and I couldn’t face going back to a world without him. I buried my face in his hospital gown and let it all go—I melted into him, my heart silently begging him to keep on going, yet knowing he couldn’t. I wanted him to live to see my children grow up, to watch my career grow, to campaign for Dennis when he runs for office someday. The ticking Dad-clock I had felt before was getting louder and about to ding, and there was so much more I wanted to say and do. I wasn’t finished yet.

I wanted my nightly phone calls, family vacations, and history lessons. I wanted arguments over what’s appropriate dress at a Newport dinner, formal invitations to holidays, and most of all, his love—the love that always made me strong and inspired me to do more. I had a beautiful family of my own to take care of, but I didn’t know how I would go on without my rock—the boulder that I’d had chiseled open to create a safe place to heal. Together, we had strengthened each other, changed each other’s identity, and created a life that was better than either of us could have imagined.

If he died, I feared I might collapse, unable to ever move again. But, somehow, I understood his hug was letting me know that we would do this part together, too. I would help him die on his terms. I would be the one he needed in the foxhole, making sure his exit strategy was carried out.

One of those strategies involved letting his old staff know the end was near. My father considered his time as governor as the best days of his life, and many of his staff were still among his closest friends twenty years later. Predictably, the old crew showed up in droves—so many that I lost count. Among the crowd was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who was my father’s director of policy when he was governor,; his former press secretary, Barbara Cottam; Chief of staff, David Preston; and, of course, his faithful friend and assistant, Patti Goldstein. I gave her a long hug, remembering all the secret talks we’d had before the rest of the world knew about me.

David Morsilli looked at me with tears in his eyes. After driving me to me meet my father for the first time, and then becoming my boyfriend, he had witnessed our transformational journey firsthand. “I’m so sorry, Kara, I know how much you two love each other.”

Dad perked up with each visit, talking more than he had in days, clearly loving talking about the good old times. All the reminiscing made it seem like he was improving, but when the crowds were gone, so was his voice. He had given his last meet and greet—his last rally before moving on. Fifi had come to the hospital, and we both slept on chairs outside his room, too afraid to leave.

The next day, Dad stopped moving or talking. When the doctors asked us what we wanted, Soozie and I agreed we wanted him to come home. He had been begging to go home for three weeks, and we knew he’d want to die in his house. The doctor wasn’t as agreeable and warned Dad could die on the way, but we had to at least try. My dad had managed to escape from the Nazis, and we knew he wanted to escape from this hospital. Tracy arrived breathless from the airport, and we all agreed that we were the people he needed in his final foxhole. The old staff banded together and assumed their old roles of advance team, security, and press secretary to handle the rumors swirling that Governor Sundlun was dying.