The Old Man

The old man died four years ago today; I was holding his hand when he suddenly opened his eyes and made an "umph" sound and then let out a long, last breath. He'd been in a coma for three days-- finally succumbing to small cell cancer of the lungs, something he probably got from scar tissue from when he had half of one lung removed in the late 50s; a result of Camels or sucking in smoke from fighting fires or breathing in all the chemicals from the Texas Gulf Coast or the War or all of the above. By cancer standards, his wasn't a particularly hard death: he was in a sort of morphine haze much of those last six or seven months and didn't endure a great amount of pain. I'd make the two hour drive over on most every Saturday morning during that period to cook him breakfast--he kind of liked that--then we'd chat for a spell, and then he would drift off and I would then visit with mom and do a few chores before eventually heading back.

When someone dies in your presence, it understandably takes a while to process it--the crying and hugging between relatives and friends also present--each with his or her own personal touch with the deceased and each with a unique outlook on what just happened. Someone (in this case, me) makes a call to the nice hospice people who pretty much know based on experience a general 24 hour window when death will occur. They then notify the funeral folks and both arrive at around the same time. The kind hospice lady asks where the narcotics are and then you and she both go into the bathroom where you witness her emptying the stuff into the toilet and flushing it away. You then sign something saying that she did that. The funeral home guys quietly and efficiently move the body onto their gurney and into a black, plastic zip up bag--the funny thing is that I remember that his tattooed right arm was left hanging out for some reason. He'd cautioned me as a kid never to get a tattoo in that they were "permanent." His was originally some affair dedicated to his first wife and no doubt gained via the encouragement of adult beverages while on his first Hawaii liberty call. The spot on the design where the name had originally been shown was subsequently blocked out, so the overall effect of the thing was always to me sort of a nondescript faded green blob warning of the dangers of tattooing. Guess it stuck--haven't yet got one. Anyway, the funeral guys rolled the old man out the door and down the sidewalk leading to the street and were quickly gone into the night. I stood there and surmised, "I guess this is how it all works."

I thought of the old man recently when I watched the interviews and comments of the men portrayed in the "Pacific" series running on HBO. Like them, he was a young Marine in that mess and like most of those that made it back, he did not like talking about it. I was always fascinated by World War II and military history in general and we played a sort of undeclared cat and mouse game over the years with me trying to extract information and him doing a pretty decent job of stonewalling. He'd let out a few nuggets here and there but he did not like dwelling or discussing the "bad stuff" and much preferred conferring humorous or self depreciating incidents. One of the milestones of my life was one day realizing how insensitive I was regarding what he must have endured--it was at a barbecue at my house once right after I was married. I was multi-tasking in a big way and noticed him sitting in front of the television while I was popping inside to get a tray or whatever. "Here, dad: watch this" and I casually inserted a tape I had recently found on the Tarawa Invasion in which he participated and then I went back outside to burn meat and swig brews with friends. Later, I glanced inside the sliding glass door and saw the old man crying like I had never seen him cry before--he was sobbing and my mother was doing her best to comfort him. To say I felt a little low about myself would be just a tad of an understatement. What he and other men who have been in wars never get over are the men that they knew (and didn't know) who didn't make it back. Survivor's guilt I think they call it. I don't have that about the old man but I still do think of the times when I wasn't there for him or didn't respond in kind to the affection he showed to me--a common theme with children--my own will probably one day have it (or, maybe not). Mine is the guilt of ungrateful or insensitive rotten kids.

I'll wrap this up by saying that I wish I could talk with him again. He came to me once in a dream a couple of years ago and it was startling--I'm still not sure it wasn't real and have been trying to figure it out ever since. If he were still alive, we'd have a few minutes this morning on the phone to catch up and I would probably mention the HBO series to him and he'd mumble something and deflect it away and we'd then move on to the "damn Democrats" or the "damn Astros" or the gravy mom put on his biscuits, or recollections of hunting dogs long dead but not forgotten. I would note his inflection and pronunciation of certain words ("symbol" and "emblem" always wound up as "semblem") and "police" was always, "PO-lice." I didn't like seeing him suffer and glad he went relatively easy, but I do miss the old man. Always will.