I 'liked' your Facebook post a few minutes ago, but that felt kinda wrong. My condolences, Tom. This day starts a new chapter for you both. It sounds like you've both found peace with the big picture, which is priceless. I lost my Dad last year from a sudden heart attack while on vacation. Though we had our differences and weren't particularly close, I'm glad that our last phone conversation ended with an exchange of a few laughs & 'love you's.
Peace to you. Louis Katbone
Thanks very much.
In the end it was about easing my father's transition. I always thought a heart attack would take him, since he smoked five packs of cigs a day, drank a quart of scotch a day, and ate nothing but meat, potatoes, and cheese until he got diabetes, at which point he expanded his diet by adding ice cream, cake, cookies, and pie. He was so opposed to being told what to do that he refused to follow recipes! Simply reading "add one teaspoon of salt" would enrage him.
"Don't lecture me! If I wanna add five tablespoons of salt, I will, and you can't stop me! Whattaya think of
that, huh, pal?"
Dad, it's a book. It's inanimate. It doesn't have an agenda of controlling you.
Since Dad did all the cooking, sometimes he subjected us to culinary atrocities that are indescribable, such as the Great Ham Debacle. He bought a gigantic country ham, which was raw, packed in salt, and covered in mold. You're supposed to soak it for twenty-four hours, completely submerged, but Dad figured that putting it in a shallow pan of water for twelve hours on one side and twelve on the other would be fine. He also didn't change the water, which is what you're supposed to do, and he didn't scrub off the mold.
Then he baked it in the oven without putting it in the aluminum-foil tent and pouring in the water to keep it moist.
When we came into the house the smell was indescribable, like month-old whale rectum, fishy and fecal-y and somehow deeply German, maybe because of the spices. Dad was extremely proud of his German heritage. Tim and I looked at each other and knew we were in for another grand old time, choking down some never-before-experienced horror that Dad engineered because he hated being told what to do even by books.
The ham was leathery and a hideous maroon color, like a colossal scab. It tasted like what I imagine a chimpanzee that died of bubonic plague and was then mummified would taste like.
Here's what happened to me when I tried to eat it:
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Tim got down an entire slice because at the time he was a chain smoker, so his taste buds were dormant. At the end of the meal we all ran home and took showers. Mom told me that only AFTER we nearly died from his toxic ham did Dad admit that it hadn't turned out the way he'd hoped, and he buried it in the back yard.
Dad's favorite meal was a sandwich made with an inch of cheddar cheese, an inch of salami, and a pint of mayonnaise. This was AFTER his quintuple bypass. Nobody--not even his own heart--was going to tell him what to do.
So I always thought he'd just fall over one day. Instead, he went through sixteen days of mind-boggling antics that won't ever see the light of day, even though they have their darkly humorous side.
My mother has a macabre sense of humor, but Dad didn't. When he was scheduled for hand surgery a year ago, he asked me if I could donate blood for him. He was on blood thinners because of the salami-and-cheddar sandwiches, so uncontrollable bleeding was a risk. I told him I'm permanently barred from donating, since I lived in Europe during the eighties and may have been exposed to the prion that causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Dad then became terrified that
he'd get it from a transfusion.
I said, "Well, they screen the blood pretty well, and besides, you don't need to worry about getting Creutzfeldt-Jakob because it has a forty-year incubation period."
Mom laughed, but Dad looked stricken and said, "Are you telling me I won't be here in forty years?"
I'd scared him by making a joke. He honestly thought that he'd make it to 123 and just keep on going.
So the fact that he died so peacefully and quickly is pretty much proof that we all have a soul and it survives. If anyone could stay alive forever though sheer willpower, it was Dad. His habits would've killed a normal person thirty years ago. If he was still afraid to die, he'd be in his coma eighty years from now, decades after
I died of old age.
Since he went really fast and peacefully, it means he was no longer afraid. I'm betting that Saint Michael stood at the foot of his bed and said, "C'mon, Ed! Remember those navy sailors you used to battle in San Francisco in 1948? They're all up there, bragging that they're going to kick your coastie patootie. Don't tell me you're chicken, buddy. Besides, we've got salami sandwiches and Marlboro Reds by the carton."
Either that, or Michael said, "Ed, I absolutely forbid you to die," and Dad stuck out his chin and said, "Oh yeah? Well, watch
this!"
