On Pluto (22 page)

Certainty was served up bedside to my parents at Cape Cod Hospital on November 11, 2007, a month before my father's 85
^th
birthday and about eight weeks before his death. Dr. Alice Daley, a skilled internist and compassionate woman who had
closely studied my parents' medical records, discerned it was time for a come-to-Jesus talk. Damn the denial, Dr. Daley knew life was short for both. With my dad in the prone position, my mom seated by his side and insisting she stay, anticipating the worst, and with me, a stunned observer, at the foot of the bed feeling like a voyeur, Dr. Daley gently asked my father if he was prolonging life or death: “If life is a desire to live in some quality, real or imagined, then one is prolonging life,” she said. “But if life is fear of death, then one is prolonging death.”

Dad, deep in the throes of his own dementia, was prolonging his death. So was my mom.

Dr. Daley, in one of the most remarkable, powerful exchanges I've ever witnessed, then asked my parents to give each other permission to die—the “working through” stage of grief.

“Virginia,” she began softly, “how do you feel about Frank dying?”

In instinct, Mom rose to the occasion.

“I will miss him terribly,” she said. “And that frightens me.”

Sensing the moment, fully aware of my mom's state of mind, yet knowing my mother might later regret a moment lost, Dr. Daley asked her point blank, “Do you give your husband permission to die?”

The words pounded through my brain.

There was a pause, as affected as I've ever witnessed.

“Yes, I do,” my mother said, tears welling up. She knew where life and death was heading for the both of them.

“Did you hear that, Frank?” Dr. Daley asked.

“I do,” he replied.

“How do you feel about dying first?”

“I want to die first,” my father said quietly. “I don't want to be alone. I don't want to live without Virginia. I can't handle it.”

Mom reached for his hand.

Denial in the moment had given way to soul-searching truth.

Another baton had been passed in the resurrection of their relationship.

****

“Do Not Resuscitate,” the forbidding acronym, DNR, is the kiss of death. We were all raised to cherish life, and this core belief was now being called into question. A DNR was in play for both parents, a “no code,” as nurses call it, a signed affidavit to respect the wishes of a natural death. And I, the Prodigal Son, “Lunchie,” the guy growing up who often was missing in action, was to make the final call. Not good. It wasn't the position I had anticipated earlier in life; as a young man, I had squandered my parents' moderate means on travel, good wine, and trying in vain to sway women far above my station in life. The DNR weighed heavily on me.

The fire drills continued. After Christmas, my sister Lauren, who lives north of Boston, came for a visit one afternoon and found my parents home alone. A substitute caregiver had run to the store to pick up the
The New York Times
and
Daily News
for my dad. When my sister arrived at the cottage, my father was sitting in his wheelchair facing the wall. A horrific chain smoker, he was puffing a cigarette queued up to his oxygen tank, behavior as rash as lighting a match in a nitroglycerin factory. My mother was wandering the house, insisting no one was home. KaBOOM! We were, as a family, at ground zero, a place many Boomers have been with parents, as their own children one day will be with them.

New Year's 2008, I had hoped, would bring new promise, but faith was not of this world. My dad had made it clear to me that more ambulance runs to Cape Cod Hospital were
verboten
. He was done, and I instructed the caregivers as such. But on January 4, with Archangel Gabriel off duty, a replacement caregiver in a medical crunch freaked, and rushed my father to the hospital in an ambulance. A half hour later, Dr. Daley summoned
me from a meeting in Boston. I flew down Route 3 to the Sagamore Bridge, like a seagull chasing an offshore dragger so laden with fish that the scuppers were taking on water.

Walking down the corridor of the intensive care unit, I immediately instructed the medical staff that my father was going home the next day.
Got it, tomorrow!
There would be no question about it. I then went to his room. In full horror as I walked through the door, he was even more a skeleton of himself, withered in days.

“Greg,” he demanded, “What the hell's going on? I don't want to be here. I told you that! I want to be home with Mom.”

“I know, Dad,” I apologized “You're going home tomorrow. I have spoken with the doctors, and you're going home.”

“Good!” he said.

“And you're never coming back, Dad.”

“Good…”

“And you're
never
coming back again.”

“Good.”

“Dad, you're
NEVER
coming back here ever again!”

In one of my father's last rational moments, he pulled his scrawny frame upright to a sitting position and addressed me as only a father could lecture a son who wasn't getting it. His body language told me to stand the freak down.

“I get it,”
he said as if addressing a third grader.
“I … GET … IT!”

The exclamation point was a hand gesture, cupping his fingers at the middle of his breastplate, then ever so slowly, for emphasis, drawing his hand to the extremes of his shoulders.

I got it, too. They were the last words my father ever spoke to me.

The hospital dispatched my father to hospice care at home the following day. My mom, I believe, knew in her heart that we were on final watch; still not sure of time and place, frozen in the moment, but knowing the moment was at hand.

The doctors had prescribed morphine for my dad's intense pain to allow him to let go, and die with some dignity, free of his fears. I was asked to pick up his final orders at the pharmacy, and bring the morphine up to the nurses in Eastham that night. The reality was chilling. I was bringing home my father's death sentence.

****

The drive to Eastham was disorienting, unlike the Sunday rides from Willy's Gym. Random images of my folks, childhood, my brothers and sisters, flashed through my head as I pondered the past, the present, and future. Only the past held hope for us that evening, and that was now on the brink.

Entering the house through the back door, fumbling with the screen that I had never fixed properly, the cottage felt as though it had the life sucked out of it. The quiet of imminent death filled my parents' bedroom. My dad was lying motionlessly in bed, eyes open, unable to talk, still resisting. My mother, steadfast as ever in Alzheimer's, was sitting by his side, not quite sure what was about to happen, but dreading horrific change in the air.

I gave the morphine to the nurse, the mother of my daughter Colleen's close high school friend. I felt as though I was wearing the mask of an executioner.

“You need to say goodbye to your father,” the nurse counseled.

“What do you mean?”

“It's time, Greg.”

“Time? Time for what?”
I said anxiously, “I have to call my brothers and sisters; I need to get them here.”

My head was throbbing.

“There is no time left. You need to say goodbye. Your dad is ready to go home.”

She stared intently at me, like the Sisters of Charity at Resurrection.

Instincts locked in. I grabbed my father's hand. My mother, without prompting from me, put her hand gently on top of mine. It just seemed, for her, the right thing to do.

There is no training, no manual, for this.

“Dad,” I said looking closely into his dim brown eyes. “Shake your head if you can hear me.”

He nodded his head.

“I want you to know, Dad, that we will take care of Mom, all of us. I promise!”

He shook his head.

“Dad, you are very sick, and it's time to go home.”

He shook his head.

“Can you see a light, Dad, a peaceful light?”

He shook his head.

“Dad, move to the light. Embrace it. We will take care of Mom. I promise you!”

He shook his head.

“Dad,” I then said, “I love you, and it's been an honor to serve you.”

He shook his head.

Tears were slipping down his narrow, ashen face. Together, we were at the door of acceptance and hope, looking to infinity—my dad, my mom, and me—through facing mirrors of reality. I felt as though I was gazing through a kaleidoscope, a tunnel of reflected light and colors in patterns that both comfort and confuse. It brought me back to the innocence of childhood when all seemed right. But it wasn't tonight.

Moments later my father closed his eyes. He never opened them again.

****

The following morning, Dad was pronounced dead. He passed in peace at home just where he wanted to be, lying in his bed and shielded by the unremitting love of my mother, who lay
next to him, with her arms instinctively across his chest, unsure of her reality, frightened to be left alone, but dutiful to the end.

I got the call from caregivers at 6 am and raced to the cottage. When I arrived, my mom was sitting alone at the dining room table, staring blankly out into the scrub oak forest behind the house. A cold, piercing drizzle pelted the picture window; it might as well have been a rabbit hole into the fantasy world of the Queen of Hearts and the Mad Hatter, images she had faced before and would again, months later, in the nursing home. Mom was terrified. I took her by the hand to the bedroom for final valediction. Dad was still—resting in his peace. Always the wife and mother, she sat next to him and brushed his hair back, as if preparing him for an appointment.

“Mom, Dad's dead,” I said.

“I know,” she replied. “I'm alone. I don't know how much longer I want to be here.”

Minutes later, the crew from Nickerson Funeral Home arrived. In a small Cape Cod town, everyone knows one another, and today was no exception. The crew expressed regrets, and then carefully wrapped my father's body in a white bed linen, placing him in a long black plastic bag with a zipper. As the attendant slowly zipped the bag shut, I was overcome with the certainty of death. So was my mom. In the moment, yet knowing better, I zipped down the bag so my father could breathe. I thought my mother would want that. All in the room seemed to understand. I then instructed the funeral home crew that I would walk my father out to the hearse in the stretcher. It seemed like the right thing to do.

“Mom, don't worry,” I said. “Dad's not leaving here alone!”

Putting the stretcher, feet first, into the back of the hearse, I reached down and kissed my father on the forehead. I zipped up the bag. Dad was safely home now.

****

Mom was left behind and lost in the crushing wake of his death. My father was waked days later at the Nickerson Funeral Home in the center of the snug fishing village of Wellfleet where my parents, years ago, had walked hand-in-hand at the harbor. He would have been pleased, knowing that he lay in state wearing his Yankees cap, an act of respect, thanks to my brother Andy. My mom just kept staring all night, the vacant gaze of Alzheimer's. Her children and grandchildren were consoling, but her spirit was far away; she was preparing for a trip to Pluto and beyond.

On the day of my dad's funeral, the January weather was howling, emblematic of my parents' blustery fight for survival. The shrill wailing of the Irish bagpipes split the stillness of St. Joan of Arc Church in Orleans, and resonated the isolation of County Clare. In my eulogy, I quoted Shakespeare, a depiction in
Hamlet
that captured my father in a universal way: “He was a man. Take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again.”

At Evergreen Cemetery in Eastham, he was buried with military honors, as my mother slipped deeper into an abyss. She never left the car, just stared out the window at us. In the weeks and months to come, her plummet was precipitous. Confusion intensified, the filter was shot, the rage intensified, and more and more, she was seeing and hearing things imagined. The hallucinations in her final stage of Alzheimer's increased far beyond the crawling spider and insect-like creatures I've witnessed; demonic figures were reaching up at her from the floor, as if to pull her to hell.

“They are scaring me!”
she often cried.

We tried to calm her. All siblings stepped up. My brother Paul in California called regularly to talk to her about the early years, the long-term memories of life. Tim, Maureen, Lauren, Justine, Bernadette, and Andy visited as often as possible. Deceased brothers Gerard and Martin, I had imagined, were
preparing a mansion for Mom in Heaven. And my dad, I had assumed, was stocking the celestial pantry, making sure there was a Black Dog Chardonnay on ice for mom, and a six pack of Heineken and a bottle J&B scotch for himself.

The disease marched on—a steady, almost methodical gait from the time my mother let go, finally acknowledging she was terribly sick. That's the curse of Alzheimer's in concession; no redemption from here. The terror of reality: once you know you have something, a friend once told me, you have to live up to it. It was a teaching moment. In months to come, there were many alarming incidents with my mother. My sister Bernadette was horrified on a visit in the spring of 2008 to witness my mom brushing her teeth with tanning lotion. Lauren earlier had given the lotion to her because she had remarked that my sister's legs looked so tan. Mom's teeth were gritty brown after brushing with Coppertone. Bernadette gently told her to stop it.