[ed. See also: Dirty Dying.]
In late August, I got an extra day — just an average day — with my father.At 82, my dad had a whole litany of ailments: a bad heart, inferior lungs, failing eyesight, some skin cancer and a pesky wound on his leg that just wouldn’t heal. So, at the last minute, a day after my mother’s birthday, I detoured from a business trip over to Tampa to see them.
We didn’t do anything special. I made a bunch of work calls, returned emails, even took a nap. Dad paid some bills, opening up a little to me about the state of his finances, which he never did. He had his Social Security, a small pension and the money that he worked hard to save in 47 years as a union butcher for the A&P. Looking through an old tin box, I came across his Army discharge papers and discovered he’d been awarded three bronze stars — something else he’d never bothered to mention. Then he sat in his chair, hooked up to the oxygen he didn’t wear as much as he should, occasionally dozing off between reruns of “M*A*S*H” and “Bonanza.”
I took him to the doctor, where he got (for him) a pretty clean bill of health, and we went to the grocery store. I bought wine and some half-and-half for my coffee. He bought scratch-off lottery tickets — one for him and one to bring home to my mother. On the way home, in a half-sentence conversation that only a father and a son could have, he confirmed that yes, he did want to be cremated someday, and yes, that veterans’ cemetery where they buried Uncle Bob seemed like a nice spot.
by Russell J. Schriefer, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Keith Negley
