Even though I was happy, I felt anxious. My girlfriend and I had our ups and downs. There were breakups and infidelities and apologies. There was a miscarriage that I didn’t know how to handle. I was unfairly distant and selfish.
But then we got back together and my son was born.
Zach’s was a home birth, just after midnight on the hottest day of the year in 1994. The next morning, going out the front door and walking to the store, the world did indeed feel totally different. The sky looked larger and gravity felt nonexistent. I noticed every color and every movement around me. I didn’t know much about babies or how to be a father yet, but I knew right away that I was going to do better than my own father.
Aneurysm
Nearly fourteen years after I became a father, I got a message about my own dad. It was from a cousin or aunt, someone I’d never met. She was using that uncertain voice that people use when they’re not sure if their message is being recorded. “Kevin? It’s about your dad. He had a brain aneurysm and he’s in the hospital. They’re not sure if he’s going to last much longer. Your mom wanted me to call some people and tell them. If you want to see him, or say good-bye, you should probably come right away.”
I knew that this was a call I’d be getting soon. For his last four years he was in a wheelchair and everything about him was shutting down. I would call home and talk with Mom about various things and then she’d hand the phone to Dad. It was obvious that speaking had become harder for him. Slowly and with little volume, he would try hard just to get one sentence out, probably about a chore around the house he would never get to or something about church. The words barely made it above the pained breathing. His voice was an eerie death rattle coming through the phone line.
And now this came through the phone line. I played the message over a few times and then saved it.
I was at home in Portland, a four-hour drive away. I had no desire to go right away. I was about to go to work anyway.
I called Mom and talked to her. She said he was brain dead but still breathing. I asked if he was responding to anything, if he could hear her. The phone line was crackling and cutting out and she couldn’t understand what I was saying. I had been waiting for him to die, and had even fantasized about it, but I couldn’t help feeling anxious now that it was really happening.
“Can he hear you? Can you talk into his ear?” I asked.
“What’s that?”
“Can he understand words?”
“I’m sorry, Kevin. I can’t hear what you’re saying.”
“Could you tell him I love him,” I finally said. I was starting to cry.
“Maybe you should take some days off of work,” she said gently.
I knew I wasn’t going to drive up there until he died. I didn’t want to take the days off work and hang out in Kennewick on a deathwatch. The place made me depressed more than nostalgic. Mom and Dad had moved out of the big house we used to live in, the one we rebuilt after the fire. They bought a much smaller manufactured home out behind Columbia Center Mall in the mid-nineties and Mark was still there too, living with them. He was Dad’s caregiver the last few years, doing everything from getting him out of bed each day to driving him around. Sometimes Mark and Dad got into arguments and Mark would disappear somewhere for a few days. A few times, Dad himself would try to disappear, cruising in his electric wheelchair along the side of some busy road, going who knows where, until a police officer would stop him and call Mom to come pick him up. I had to laugh the first time I heard about one of these runaway attempts.
I decided to stay in Portland and wait it out, pretend business as usual. I wasn’t going anywhere until the heart stopped beating, until the funeral was set.
The Viewing
Dad died a couple of days later and I drove up to Kennewick.
The day before his burial, I went to the funeral home to see Dad in his coffin. I went with Dad’s sister Evelyn and her husband, Rolando. I remember meeting Evelyn a couple of times when I was a kid but I had never met Rolando before. They lived around Washington, D.C., most of my childhood and there was some tension on Dad’s side of the family because Rolando was black.
Despite the early disapproval of others, they have been married for more than fifty years and have several children and grandchildren. I heard that Dad’s family didn’t like to advertise that they had a mixed marriage among them. I don’t recall Dad ever mentioning Rolando.
One of Evelyn and Rolando’s children became an airplane pilot though and that fact became worthy of mention for Dad when he talked with others. “My nephew is a pilot for that airline,” he would say, as if he had some hand in this success.
Evelyn is very religious and as we walked into the funeral home she was quietly praying and making the sign of the cross. Rolando, a large man with a kind nature, gently touched her back as they walked. Some piped-in music greeted us in the room that kept Dad’s coffin. It was the beginning of viewing hours and I was a little surprised that there was no one else there. Evelyn and Rolando stood back and prayed as I looked closely at my father. His hands looked thin and smudged with spots, as if they had been flattened in some sadistic way. His head was like a skull with fake waxy skin molded around it. I thought I’d see some kind of evidence of the brain aneurysm that finally killed him, but I didn’t know what to look for. What little hair he had was swept across his scalp like the faint suggestion of a haircut. His forehead was the only thing that looked strong and real. I looked at him for a few minutes, wondering if I could see myself, but I couldn’t. I moved my hand to his head and watched my fingers rest on his forehead. I petted his forehead and thought how strange it was to touch my father this way. I started to cry a little, though I didn’t want to. My sniffling gave me away and Evelyn came to my side and touched my arm lightly. She started to talk about how he was in Heaven and that God was taking care of him now, or something like that. I was more annoyed than comforted by her. I looked down at his chest. He was dressed in a dark blue suit with a blue-and-silver tie and the kind of light blue button-up shirt that he would sometimes wear while working in the yard. His chest looked wide but caved in. I stared there, where his heart would be, and watched for any movement. Any sign of a soul.
No Eulogy
The next day, toward the end of my dad’s funeral service, the priest asked if anyone wanted to say some words or share a fond memory of my dad. I have not attended many funerals in my life, but I know that this is usually the most emotional and interesting part of the service. Some people think that God lets you watch your own funeral to see what people say before he takes you up to Heaven or gives you to Satan or whatever.
There was an awkward moment when no one approached the podium. Then one of the two older nuns at the service went up and started talking about how helpful my dad was. “Whenever we needed to use a truck, John was always willing to help,” she said.
In his last several years, my father was an usher at the church. I think he even did it in his wheelchair for a while. Most of the priests and nuns and churchgoers knew him. A few days before the funeral, someone from the parish told my mom that the church, which holds about 150 people, would probably be full for the funeral. There were about 30 people there.
As the nun talked more about my dad, she shifted from “John was always there for the church” to “John was also a family man who loved his wife and children.” Even under the roof of the church where I had spent so many
