So, Sixteen years later, it is with great pleasure that I tell the story of my father's last day alive.
Saturday, April 22, 1995, was three days after the Oklahoma City bombing. That event cast a pall over the country and diminished my father's already weary spirit. He was doomed, regardless. Doctors had given him six months to live that prior Christmas. Booze, cigarettes, and a lousy diet hat clotted and pickled his heart. Here it was, four months later, and his anguish for the dead would finally squeeze the life out of him.
I was living at home with my parents at the time, having just passed the bar with a hundred and twenty grand in law school loans coming due. That morning, my mother was out and I was left alone with my father as he absorbed the news of the rubble on TV. My father watched TV a lot. He often slept in front of it. He would die in front of it. He sat, ashen-faced and out of breath, staring at the tube, clutching a pillow to his chest.
The Clinton's were on C-Span, talking to a group of children at the White House about the terrible events in Oklahoma, trying to express to third-graders why such horrors happen and how we should respond to them. The president was talking to children about death, about living on after losing a loved one, about honoring the memory of those who die throughout your own life. My father and I had tears in our eyes as we listened.
I made breakfast for the two of us: bacon, eggs, rye, and we ate together.
C-Span then presented Jerry Lewis at the National Press Club. He was starring in a revival of Damn Yankees! at the National Theater in DC, and spoke with ease and humor about his life. He was genuinely funny. Gone was that maudlin Lewis from the telethons. He peppered his presentation with "Ooofs" and "Hey, Laaay-deee's" and had the crowd roaring. My father and I roared, too. We laughed until it hurt. We laughed until we cried.
Those were curious tears. We were laughing together, of course, but we were also in the grasp of a rare spectrum of emotions. Joy, sorrow, regret, relief. Fathers and sons. Life and death. 8-25. 33.
I had cleaned up all traces of our breakfast, but when my mother returned, she smelled the lingering aroma of bacon and knew she had missed out on something.
The day went on. I left that afternoon knowing that I'd be sleeping elsewhere. I had a date to see The Spanic Boys, a father/son alt-country duo at Wilbert's.
According to my mother, the day ended with my father on the couch as she went to bed. She'd be awaked hours later by the extraordinarily loud volume of the TV. When she investigated, she found my father struggling and unable to speak. Had he summoned her with the remote control?
The ambulance came and took him to Parma Hospital where he was pronounced dead in the same hospital where I was born on his 33rd birthday. I picked up my mother and we got there moments after he did. He was gone. But I must tell you this: He was still warm when I touched him, and I was shocked to notice that he looked better than he had in years. He had the curl of a smile, and peace on his face, and bacon and eggs in his belly. I believe the word to describe his appearance is: beatific.
