...and my father was allergic to shellfish, believe it or not...

Suldog reminisces about his father, who died 16 years ago.

 My father, Bernie, retired from a job he had worked at for over 30 years in 2002.  He was 60, but even with the white hair, he looked about ten years younger.  When he started working for RCA and Sperry-Rand in 1972, his year's salary could buy three automobiles (indexed for inflation, it would be around $35,000) and computers back then were not the 1TB monsters they are now; in fact, back in '72, 8K was tops.

In 2004, we began to notice changes - not frightening changes, but ones that started to give us concern.  My dad began complaining about his leg hurting around August 2004, and by September 2004 he could barely walk on it.  One night, the doctor wanted to bring him in for an MRI, because by then we knew it wasn't a rheumatoid problem.  While waiting for the call for the doctor, my father reached for the TV remote.

The next thing I knew, my youngest brother, Sean, came upstairs with his cell phone - and usually when the sentence that comes out is "We have a 62 year old man in pain, we suspect he broke his leg..." that ain't good.  We weren't panicking, but this was very, very strange and upsetting, as my brother was about to introduce his first child into the world - in Beverly.  My father, mother and others were ready to cheer my sister-in-law when this happened.

The next morning, after they brought him to the Brigham and Women's Hospital, we visited him.  Of course, he was high on morphine, but he was in good spirits.  A lab tech came into the room with a little metal case and told us it was nuclear medicine.  My mother, brother and myself decided to retire to the cafeteria for lunch, but eight hours later, our worlds would be turned upside down.

It was lung cancer.  Stage IV.  That was why my father's tibia had broken - it had already spread to his bones.  Tearful phonecalls ensued.  I broke down sometime later because getting whacked with the news your father has cancer is pretty hefty.

Fast forward one year later.  After six regimens of cancer treatment and several radiation treatments for the glioma that was discovered in his brain in May 2005, we knew that his time on earth would not be long.  This time, he was at the Brigham and Women's for a hematoma that grew in his shoulders and burst, and he remarked with absolute clarity to my mother that "this had gone full circle."

The hematoma would mark the last time he would ever see a hospital, but the weird thing about this, though, was that he seemed to be getting back to normal.  He was eating heartily and was still lucid.  But radiation and chemotherapy, while we think eliminated the lung cancer, had stolen his laughter, his functions, and he transgressed from cane, to walker, to wheelchair, and then to bed.

My father's functions began their decline on the weekend after my 34th birthday.  My father, who had celebrated his 63rd birthday at a rehab center in August 2005 after receiving more radiation in his bones, looked at least 20 years older.  We had already had a 35th wedding anniversary celebration at home (and again, Dad wasn't a slouch in eating - he even cracked a few jokes and lent out a huge smile), but a few days later he began to descend into hallucinations.  By Friday, he was in the full throes of decline.  He would extend his hands out and knit with invisible yarn.  He would ask for dead people, like his father, who had died in 2000; his mother, who had died in 2004; and other people.  By Saturday morning, my father lapsed into a coma; our mother then told us to go buy suits because we would be needing them soon for the wake and the funeral.

Monday night, we had an Irish wake for my dad.  It was the most fun I had, even though I had finally told my supervisor that my father was ill and he might not last long.  The next morning, November 22, 2005, my brother woke me up.  We came downstairs and I looked at my father for the last time.  No sound.  He peacefully passed away in his sleep, exactly 14 months to the day he was diagnosed.  My mother was weeping and hysterical,   Everyone was called to alert people of the news.  Then, my brothers, mother and I we gathered around to bade him farewell before the funeral directors took him to be prepared for the wake and the funeral. 

Of course, while dumping out the drugs that made my father comfortable in his last days, my mother scolded me (well, introducing him as the "guest of honor" to the hospice nurse at 6:30 in the morning will cause a newly-anointed widow to do that) for not expressing my emotions correctly and told me I shouldn't be stoic.  She didn't realize that from the moment he was diagnosed until the moment he died, fourteen months of pure torture culminated in a peace I never felt before.  I finally felt relieved that the long battle my father endured was over - he didn't win the battle, but he was free from the torture that cancer had allayed him with.

The saving grace is that a representative of the Big Deity Upstairs was already present.  My aunt, Sister Genevieve Kozlowski, nicknamed Aunt Kay (she was actually my grandmother's adopted sister) was going to go back to her convent outside Buffalo and was visiting us for Thanksgiving.   When she learned my dad was about to die, she stayed until that Sunday.  She read at the wake a passage from John 14:2, which reads: "In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you."  She also helped assemble the memory board with various pictures of my father in his youth, middle age, and towards the end.  

I contributed his timeline and added the following poem on there - "Say Yes!" which was written by a confederate soldier and is the title of Rick Wakeman's autobiography (organ and keyboards from the prog-rock group Yes).  I will leave you with that thought for now.


Say Yes!

I asked for strength that I might achieve;
I was made weak that I might learn humbly to obey.

...I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given infirmity that I might do better things.

I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.

I asked for power that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.

I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.

I got nothing that I had asked for;
But everything I had hoped for.

Almost despite myself my unspoken prayers were answered;
I am, among all men, most richly blessed.

- Unknown Confederate soldier.