Now let me remember my father. A deeply imperfect man as I imagine he would agree if he were alive to do so. It was a year ago in a few hours or so that I watched him for hours and hours on life support making the agonizing decision, with no one there except a lovely nurse from Scotland or South Africa, I can’t remember which – there was one from Scotland too, though, Ayreshire, which is where my husband’s family lives. I was in California, in some weird suburb of the capitol city in a modern Catholic hospital. I had arrived from the East Coast the night before, outrunning a blizzard, barreling down an airplane aisle so I could just get on a flight in O’Hare going to Sacramento. The stewardess had asked people to make way for me because I had something urgent to attend to but everyone piled into the aisles anyway. I said loudly, I need to get through because my father is dying in Sacramento and I have to get there. I pushed passed people and eventually made it through, blazing a path for a Russian couple with a baby trying to get to the same plane. They managed to run up ahead, one of them did anyway, so we could board. And then the miracles started.
Miracle one: when I got off the plane, my father’s bipolar, methadone consuming, pot smoking, heart of gold, mind of confusion partner had actually made it there on time. Miracle two: my luggage had made it to the plane and so was spit out unceremoniously on the tiny luggage carousel (I guess most people don’t like Sacramento or certainly don’t fly there) – how that was possible is beyond me. My father’s partner, C and her friend, the chronically depressed friend met at the group therapy for methadone ex-junkies, a large and taciturn woman who was fairly convinced she was smarter than she was, but yet clearly meant well in her own dark humored way, when she could see past the fog of God only knows how many pharmaceuticals, somehow managed to drive me to my sponsor’s husband’s friend’s place. I forgot that was miracle 1a, a woman who’s name is not angel but who will hereinafter be referred to as Angel, because that is what she was. I was at my AA sponsor’s house on the East Coast, about to go back to Europe, when I got the frantic email from C about the fact my father was in the hospital on life support. She asked her husband if he knew anyone in Sacramento and in fact he did and right after I booked my flight, not knowing where I would stay, fearing staying at C and my father’s place (which after I saw it the first time a couple days later looking like a teenager’s crack den with cat litter box overflowing I knew my fear had not been unfounded), Angel had gotten back to me saying I could stay with her.
My cat had died the week before, she had lived with me for close to 20 years and her death on my father’s birthday had been devastating, especially because I was not home to be with her. So when I walked into Angel’s house, I was met not only by a lovely woman to whom I will be eternally grateful (who had also lost her father a couple years earlier under unfortunate family circumstances) but also her two cats, one of whom was a lovely Tom cat, sleek and subdued and in the end very protective but also a blind, skittish but ultimately magical cat Angel had of course spent a fortune to save after she had been mowed down by some car. Her friends thought she was insane but believe me, she was worth it. So I had three guardian angels, one human, two feline, and I needed them all.
The next morning, because I knew C would never get out of bed, Angel drove me all the way to this God knows where Catholic hospital that looked from the outside like a mix of one of those horrendous modern Catholic churches, a shopping mall and some kind of Disney ride called Hospital World. So wherever I was, there I was. Angel dropped me off and went to do her good works in state government saving rivers and trees and all innocent creatures and landscapes. Seriously, she did that, no joke and was successful even though her boss sounded like she could leave something to be desired, but anyway…Angel was/is amazing.
So, I walked in and asked some lovely seeming volunteers where the ICU was and somehow after some mis-steps found it. This amazing nurse showed up and brought me to my father who was in his bed, being kept alive by machines. In fact, from the moment I walked in I could tell he was gone. He was a body being kept alive by machines. Perhaps his spirit was trapped in there, but the body was done. So January 7, 2010, I just sat there with him for hours and hours. Stared at what was left of the father I barely knew, his only daughter and living relative. The amazing nurse walking in and out and giving me coffee. I was surrounded in Sacramento by the Commonwealth, which since I like in the UK now seemed kind of amazing. I began to realize they were nuns or somehow Catholic and deeply spiritual in a real sense. These folks were living it. They were also as I sat there arguing with my father’s Godforesaken insurance company, explaining that no they could not move him from their ICU to fucking Kaiser’s ICU just cause it was costing them some extra money. Someday I will do bad things to Kaiser, but revenge is best served cold, so will wait on that…
But sitting there, next to this body being kept violently alive by oxygen and every other kind of support, I just prayed and prayed to anyone and anything and asked him what he wanted. I tried to talk to him like the nurse suggested but words seemed beside the point. Instead I spoke to him silently and had confidence he could hear. And then the most amazing miracle happened, well it happened from when I walked in, I forgave him everything, all of it – the abandonment, the non-existent boundaries, his inability to be there for me as a child or hear me as an adult until way later, the whole thing. It just vanished. And I knew we had to let him go.
So for hours, after I check with him by asking him to move his foot, which was the only thing that moved – even though I’m pretty sure it was involuntary – if he wanted to go – his foot twitched pretty violently and repeatedly and I figured we were on the same bat channel. So the wait for C began, as I was no way making this decision without her, even though she asked me to come to make this decision. She had of course lost her health care proxy so they needed my consent. We or rather I found it later crawling through the pit that was their house…over and under pot resin, burns on the carpet, encrusted food and little Buddhas…How much more California can you get?
And then came the next miracle, I ate lunch. I actually realized I needed to eat and went down to the cafeteria, made some calls and had a hamburger. I talked with my mother who was being relatively calm and one of my step-father’s who was quite present in his own way. And I went back upstairs to hear their last ditch attempt to help him had failed. Eventually C showed up and I told her what was happened. She cried and freaked and agreed amidst sniffles that we should let him go. He looked unbelievably miserable. They explained to us that when they took all the plugs and lines out it could be minutes or hours before he died. There was no knowing. I had a feeling it would be quick.
The lovely nurse gave me some aromatherapy cream, I picked lavender or she did. She asked if we wanted a cast of his hand, which she prepared and then a pillowcase a volunteer had made. It was spectacular. Catholics know how to do hospitals. I have never seen anything like it. I think they also bumped up the morphine so he wouldn’t be in too much pain.
When they took everything away, somehow C had disappeared and I was there with him alone again. I was rubbing his head with the aromatherapy cream and said ‘You are loved’ and then he took his last breath. It was kind of astonishing. Of course a moment later, an admin woman walked in and asked me to sign a form regarding my flight home and I told her to go away but she wouldn’t so in the midst of what may be one of the more sacred moments of my life I had to sign paperwork. Typical.
Then C reappeared and freaked out she had missed his death. God knows what she had been doing in the bathroom, needless to say I didn’t ask. One learns. But then she cried and cried and I held her, or was that before? I honestly can’t remember. At some point I cried and she held me. At some point my mother called and talked to me and C. At some point people sent lovely text messages as I told people when we took off life support to send prayers or whatever they believed in and of course because I have most excellent friends, they did that. And I know it helped.
And then at some point C and I sat there with his dead body and started laughing because I showed C that if you looked at his face, you could see his wry little smile and she did see it. He looked so much better after the crap was taken out and off of him. I forgot the other black humor part – his pacemaker kept on ticking way past his death so they kept having to try to get it to stop to declare him dead but the fucker was relentless. I knew this would cheer him up no end.
I think at some point they gave up.
At some point C called her two sons who showed up eventually along with a girlfriend of the youngest one. They stood very far away from my father’s body, and I remembered that when you don’t see someone die, dead bodies are scary. I had never seen someone die before and I discovered, that day, dead bodies are not scary. I was unbelievably grateful for the experience of being there, but as I type all this now, it brings it back and it’s hard.
At some point, we said goodbye and left and ate dinner at a Godawful Chinese buffet place, the kind that only happen in the US in strip malls in nondescript suburbs of B-list cities. It was incredible as the food was made up of dayglo colors and had nothing to do with China but I ate it anyway. It was all very strange and we all kind of laughed and cried and I tried to sort out the relation of the one son back from Iraq, who was acting tough but clearly could be pushed over with a feather and the other son the math whiz with the limp and his girlfriend who kept asking me if I wanted a Xanax. Bless her I know this was her idea of trying to help but somehow I just couldn’t convey and probably didn’t even explain I was a sober alcoholic, and no, really, it’s OK, I didn’t need any fucking pot or Xanax or Whatever.
Somehow, I got back to Angel’s house, I think it was C’s Iraq vet son who got me there in his Huge truck thing. I was grateful people weren’t too drunk or high. I was grateful to be going into Angel’s house in the city out of the suburb near decent coffee and even more crucially AA meetings. Did I go to one that night? I don’t think so. I don’t know. I stared. I actually don’t remember the rest of the night.
The rest of the week was a whole other kind of nightmare and I will write about it later this week. It was also a kind of grace and of course was incredibly funny in a dark humor kind of way. Welcome to my life folks.
This is where I come from.
Jerry Brown is now Governor of California again, in a post-script. When I visited my father in California for the first time as a young teenager, Brown was Governor, newly elected then. We were listening to his state of the state address, and he said “I was thinking about the problems this state is facing and then I decided to listen to whale sounds, which I will play you now” and he did, he played whale sounds. I think I laughed, but I was truly freaked out. A northeastern girl surrounded suddenly by palm trees and a governor who listened to whale sounds. And he’s back now. If only my father could have seen that, he would have laughed with delight. In 2003, after he had his stroke which took away his speech and left him aphasic when he could speak, Schwarzenegger was elected and all he could do is point at the screen and gawk in horror. At least however, before he died his beloved Red Sox beat the Yankees in the World Series. A first since the curse of the Babe in the 1920s.
Who says nothing changes?
Good-bye, J. I never did call you Daddy, except when I was very little and only on cards...too embarrassed to say the words...but I know you’re my father. Thanks for the ride, even if you weren’t ready to buy me the ticket. Blessings to you.
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