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Daddy’s Death
Sometimes teachers get riled up; sometimes preachers get riled up, but doctors? Daddy’s doctor never raised his voice even when Daddy died. When Daddy got sick everyone talked in whispers. In 1922 Colon cancer killed my father slowly, with great suffering. I was ten years old. Sitting three pews back listening, another doctor was animated, riled up, about life, about living. No one was riled up about Daddy’s life, his death. Everyone expected him to die, accepted it. This doctor is different. Momma absorbed every word. She whispers, “I wishing Daddy could have heard this!” Daddy’s doctor said, “Nothing can be done. It happens. No one knows why some people get cancer and others don’t.” A doctor’s duty, one no doctor likes, telling a patient and their family that they have cancer and are going to die. Talking to us in his office, as he finished, he pulled out a cigarette. He offered one to Daddy then lit his own. Rivulets of smoke painted fine lines in the air settling into once white, tobacco-yellowed walls. Walking to the window the doctor blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling and looked out. A milk wagon, a few cars roll by, people in the street talking, an ordinary day, no death, no dying, people going about their lives. The doctor focused on that, let the nicotine calm the knot in his gut and said what had to be said. “John, I’d be wrong to give you any hope. We don’t have much success with cancer. Yours is too far gone for even that. It’s spread. Surgery won’t help, but it’s Christmas.” He put his hand on my head. “If a cure is discovered, I’ll know. It’s 1922. Medicine is advancing every day, no one knows what cures will be in the morning paper, but don’t expect it.” He put his hand on Daddy’s shoulder. “It’ll be bad. It’s not a good way to go. You have a few months at best.” The doctor left us in his consultation room to grapple with what was said, went on to his next patient. How could it be cancer? Daddy remembered his mother, how bad it was. The screaming after her gut blocked, the agony. His father sent the younger children to a neighbor. Grandma came. Nothing anyone could do she suffered for two weeks, a living hell. How could this happen to him? A cold chill shook him. Please, God, it can’t be! He prayed then said, “NO!” He shook more, not crying, shaking, knowing. Momma did not know what he had seen. She lived down the road two miles from Daddy’s house when his mother died. She saw him at school. He did not smile much that year. She knew the love he had for his mother. The motherless boy, who two years later danced with her at the church dance, and never danced with anyone else after that night, never wanted too. Knowing their dances were ending, he was ending, Momma cried. It was so sudden, a week before Christmas. Daddy always had some colon problems, nothing new. Constipated more than usual the last few months until last night he was fine. Three weeks ago, Thanksgiving was nice, a visit to Grandpa’s, the whole family gathered, all of Daddy’s brothers and sisters and their families. Turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie and more, it was a feast. We ate ourselves sick. The next day we went home. Daddy felt crampy, not as good as he might. Momma gave him two enemas; he was all right the next day. Never feeling perfect he worked on into the middle of December always bloating. Another bout of constipation, another round of enemas, this wasn’t like him, but he had been constipated before. Constipation was nothing new. Three days later he had not had a movement again. Momma gave him an enema and planned another. Lying on the bed he held it fine, got up and tottered to the toilet. It stuck. Nothing came out. How could that be, more than three quarts of warm water in and nothing coming out? He walked around. His gut hurt. The enema should have been gushing. He tried again, nothing. More cramps he laid down on the bed. He said, “Mary, this isn’t right. Who ever heard of not being able to let an enema out?” Momma called the doctor. Over in half an hour, the doctor examined him. Probing deep something solid hit his finger. Asking his nurse she dragged out a long thick catheter. The doctor explored pushing, moving finding out where it was. Boring in with the catheter the doctor found the passage and worked the hose forward. Daddy winced. Water began to gush into the bucket on the other end of the catheter. Massaging him and giving it about twenty minutes no more enema flowed out. “John, something is blocking the bowel. I need to know more. My nurse will finish cleaning you out. Come see me in my office tomorrow morning and I’ll take an x-ray or two. OK.” “OK,” Daddy said. Filling through the catheter and emptying through it for the next hour Daddy had a colonic irrigation. The nurse said, “No food, nothing solid till after the examination tomorrow.” Morning, after a long night neither Momma nor Daddy slept well. Another enema, this time with barium sulfate in it, the x-ray machine whirred. Three more times the doctor fired it as Momma watched. Daddy was used to enemas. The constipation was not new; he had it off and on all his life. Momma was adept at fixing him and me too, at times. She gave good enemas. Taking them was another matter. Momma was good at giving them; she never took them. Her experience with enemas was holding the bag up and filling Daddy or me until we had to go to the toilet. Had she heard of anyone not being able to release an enema? Half an hour after the x-rays, the doctor put a shiny steel scope up Daddy’s bottom. A little blood and a sample was taken. Another hour and the doctor met us in his office. What he saw and did not explain was a large mass at the recto-sigmoid junction in Daddy’s colon. It was near the size of a baseball and moved up and down forming a dam laying against the sphincter O’Bernie in the sigmoid colon. The mass was the reason Daddy could not go to the bathroom or release an enema. Lumps were in two other places in the colon. On the other side he saw lumps outlined on the bottom edge of the liver. The biopsy was cancer. Some of the lumps were metastases to the liver and other lesions in the colon. He could feel them when he dug into Daddy’s abdomen. A simple diagnosis it was terminal colon cancer, cancer beyond fixing. Relatives, Daddy’s coworkers, people we never knew, brought Christmas presents, they all came. I got two new bicycles, fourteen dolls and two big boxes of other stuff. My room was so full I had trouble finding room enough to sleep. It was the worst Christmas of my life. Momma and Daddy had friends, but after Christmas was over, the visits went away with the tinsel and lights. Almost everyone stopped coming. Coming once or twice when he first got sick, they visited him for a while, and never came back. Were they afraid they might catch it? Was it the end of all things, the end all of us face, death? Is death something so bitter, so foul, so odious that those fearing it, hide from it, can’t be in the same house with it? Is it the death, cancer, gut wrenching pain, bowels blocked, bloating and stench? No heroic death, marching off to war, sweethearts hugging, friends cheering. Is cancer ever a glorious death? Some deaths are the charge of the light brigade, holding off Santa Anna at the Alamo, the stuff of legends. Daddy, a little boy playing soldier, never imagined he would die this way. Who does? Who wants to see themselves facing such a death, or see a friend face it? His friends who played, marched with him in playground armies, died taking hills commanded by girls on see saw cannons, grew up, grew older, never heard the call of trumpets. If they did, they survived and came home after the armistice. The time of heroic deaths passing them by, they see their own future; salute a falling confederate mustered out of their grammar school army, a fellow soldier dying an ignoble death and retreat into denial. Not them this time, soon enough it will be. Not able to stomach this reality, imagining a call to glory, girls screaming, scattering from the see saws as they charge the hill, a better death, a death less horrible. They retreat from the specter, never seeing Daddy again. Daddy lived a few months as the doctor predicted. By the end it was Daddy, Momma and me. My uncle came every day to check on us. His duty, his devotion, he was our only visitor other than a preacher occasionally and the doctor who came twice a week, their duty. Could Daddy go to the bathroom on his own? Urine and other things were fine, only bowel movements were impossible. The doctor had a fix. The nurse came by every morning, giving him a colonic, working the large catheter beyond the mass and injecting and removing the water from above it. After one of the colon therapy sessions, Daddy did not feel anything, was like his old self. He thought about going back to work, knew time was short and wanted to spend it with us. The doctor told him it would grow, the fix would work for a while, a week, a month, a few months, no longer. Soon his bowel would block, Daddy would die. Momma watched as another woman plumbed her husband’s bowels. If he needed an enema, she could give it to him. This was no different. Watching she questioned, “It this the way to do it, go in and press down to the right then around?” “Yes, that’s right,” the nurse said. “Can I do it next time?” “Do you want too?” “John’s my husband. I want to take care of him.” The next day the doctor watched Momma do it. “That’s fine. You do it,” the doctor said. The nurse stopped coming. Every day for two months Momma gave Daddy his colonic. Doing fine he had indigestion, began to have sharp pains around his liver. He bloated sometimes, but that came and went. Hurting before we knew what was wrong with him it worsened in small ways, nothing overt. He was depressed, irritable and angry, with nobody or anything to be angry at. His anger passed. He looked at me, wondered what I would look like grown with babies, looked at Momma, wondered what she would look like old, bent with white hair. He cried. That came and went like sad movies at the Majestic Theater. Next he developed a vacant stare, not at anything, or anybody, staring into emptiness, seeing a future missing, years unlived, never to be known or experienced. The colonics were becoming routine, a morning ritual for Momma and Daddy. They woke up; Momma got the colonic ready; Daddy took it and they went on with their day. One day the colonic changed. It was harder to get the hose into Daddy. It hurt him: he bled each time Momma tried to get the hose in him. How could she get water in, or take it out? A mass of flesh worked its way out as Momma pulled the hose out. It reeked beyond anything imaginable. More lumps of flesh worked out. Unable to get this to flush, Momma wrapped it putting it outside in the garbage. She sent for the doctor. The nurse came. The doctor came. Both tried to do it. Working for over an hour, they had no more success than Momma. The towels under Daddy’s hip were soaked with blood, but no relief. They tried. Momma, the nurse nor the doctor couldn’t get around the blockage. It started. The next day he started crying and yelping like a puppy hit by a car. The doctor gave him a shot of heroin. Suffering blunted, he drifted into a narcotic haze, slept. I sat by him; held his hand. I cried. It pained me to see Daddy with horrible hurting. Awake in the next room, how could I sleep listening to Daddy suffer? It got worse. The colonic irrigations not working, what could we do? Momma asked, “Doctor, should we take him to the hospital?” “You can if you want to, Mary. It won’t make a difference. The heroin is the strongest pain killer I have. The hospital can’t do anything more for him than we can do here. John, where do you want to be, here or in the hospital?” Daddy said, “It doesn’t make a difference? Could surgery help?” The doctor looked down, “No, John. The cancer has spread. No way to get it out or unblock your digestive system. Nothing I can do. Do you want to die at home with those that love you, or at the hospital? I can make arguments either way. If it was me, I’d stay home. It’s hard on your family, easier if you’re in less pain. I can give you all the heroin you want.” “I want to be home with Mary and Belinda. I don’t want to go to the hospital. I don’t want to die!” The doctor took out five vials of heroin and held Daddy’s hand. He showed Daddy how to sniff it. Momma said, “Can it hurt him? Can he take too much?” The doctor looked at Momma. What was she afraid of; it killing him? “It won’t hurt him, Mary. It will numb his pain.” “I don’t know what to do. What do I do? How can I help him? What can I feed him? He doesn’t eat anything?” “Love him, just love him. Don’t feed him! Food won’t go through any longer, the heroin and a little water is all he needs. If he eats anything, he will be in agony, with no way to stop it. Mary, come get me if--- get me if you need me, if it gets too bad, if you think I can help, when you can’t handle it anymore. Do you want help, Mary? I had better send a nurse to help take care of him.” “I love him! I love him! He’s my husband. I want to take care of him, nobody else! Can they do more to help?” Momma said. “Are you up to this? Can you take care of him? I can send a nurse---” “No, I don’t want anyone else. Belinda can help me. I don’t want anyone else taking care of him, John’s my husband. I love him. I take care of him!” “That’s all he needs, Mary, Love.” The doctor left, giving her a hug before he went down the steps. Meeting my Uncle Robert in the yard the doctor said, “Robert, come every day now. You come in the afternoon. I will come in the early morning. Come get me if it gets worse. I can give him the heroin by injection, but it works as fast by snorting it. If he’s hurting to bad to hold it in his nose call me, I’ll start coming by to keep him sedated, or send a nurse do to it. But Mary doesn’t want anyone. I understand their feelings, they want to be together, alone without an audience, without a stranger in their midst. If it goes too bad she will have to have help. Keep an eye on her, OK.” The two men looked at each other, the doctor had done this too many times. It was my Uncle’s first. Uncle Robert put his head down looked up a few times, tried to say something, couldn’t. “Robert, nothing will go through, he can’t eat anymore. If he tries it will block. The pain will be hell. Pain killers and crushed ice to whet his thirst, that’s all he needs.” “Won’t he starve?” Uncle Robert said. “Starving is painless, Robert. What is about to happen is a living hell. A blocked gut hurts in increasing waves of pain. I was hoping the cancer would tear, bleed out, let him die easy before it went this far,” the doctor said. I held Daddy’s hand as Momma hurried to get a few things done. We were quiet. He started yelping with the pain and squeezing my hand so tight I thought he was going to break it. That day his pain never stopped. Daddy’s tears, Momma’s tears and my tears never stopped. None of us slept. I kept falling asleep sitting up, if I lay down his screaming woke me. When he cried, I cried. That evening my uncle came. Momma talked to him, “Robert, Belinda has to go with you. She can’t stay!” Uncle Robert said, “Mary, can Ellie come stay with you?” “No, Robert. I’m taking care of John. We don’t need anyone else. I’m taking care of my husband!” “I don’t want to go, Momma. I want to stay with you and Daddy. Please, I don’t want to go, please!” She packed my suitcase. Taking some heroin, less than enough to put him to sleep or stop the pain completely, his pain eased enough for us to talk. I went in to see him. I said goodbye to my Daddy. “Daddy, I don’t want to leave you! I don’t want you to die! Please, make Momma let me stay with you, Please!” He held me, both of us crying. “Honey, it’s my decision. This is too hard on you. I don’t want you to remember me like this. I want you to remember swinging in the park, me pushing you. Do you remember that? “The last time you pushed me like that was before you went to the doctor.” “That’s the way I want you to remember me, before I went to the doctor. I’ve had a good life, Honey. You and your Momma are the best part of that good life. That’s the way I’ll always remember you, swinging, smiling, happy, me pushing you. Remember me every time you go to the park, every time you swing, are happy and smiling. I’ll always be behind you, pushing you, loving you.” Hugging him, I said, “I’ll always love you too!” “I love you. I’ll always love you. The next time I see you, you won’t see me. I’ll be taking care of you, pushing you on the swing. Other girls don’t always have their Daddy with them. I’ll be with you every second, watching over you, taking care of you. I’ll be with you when you have children of your own, loving them.” His voice broke. He cried. “I want to see my grandbabies!” He held me tight clenching his teeth. The pain was back. He sniffed heroin. He drifted into sleep somewhere between the total exhaustion of pain tearing him like a thorn bush spinning in his gut, a narcotic twilight and a night ahead that never ends. He was a good Daddy and good to me. I love him. I didn’t want to go, but sobbing all the time my sadness upset him. Dying was hard for him. I was making it harder, more painful. I looked at him; watched him breathe. Taking one last look at my Daddy alive, I slipped out not waking him. Daddy wanted to always be with me. He was in my mind. He was going. I was gone. Uncle Robert held my hand. My Uncle’s wife and kids were good to me. Not hungry I had an early lunch with a large glass of warm milk. Lying down on the bed to rest after lunch did I hear the noon horn at the plant? I woke in darkness, my shoes taken off, and two blankets over me. On one of the blankets was a tin bell. I knocked it on the floor getting up. Hearing it, Uncle Robert came in with supper Aunt Ellie saved for me. As I ate, hungry this time, I was glad they kept dinner for me. He said, “Are you ready to see a Charlie Chaplain movie? The Kid is on at the Majestic.” He took me. It was funny. I started laughing as soon as Mr. Chaplain started his antics. Charlie Chaplain was a great actor. I went to sleep the minute I hit the bed and slept through everyone getting up and going to school the next morning. My aunt woke me for lunch. Every day after that, my uncle took me somewhere special, another movie, skating, on a long hike in the woods. We went to the park walking for an hour coming back to the swings. He pushed me. Remembering what Daddy said, I cried. Uncle Robert stopped pushing me. Pushing myself, I kicked going higher and higher. I felt someone push me again. Uncle Robert was sitting on a bench, watching me. Turning, I looked back. Who was pushing me? Uncle Robert never took me to the park again. That afternoon, he came home early from visiting my parents. He said, “The door was unlocked. No one answered. I went in to check on them. Mary was wrapped around John cuddling him, holding him. She was lying with him all afternoon. Rigor mortis, he was stiff. Mary kissed him one more time and got up. I’ve never seen sadness like hers, but she’s not crying. She is busying herself about the house taking care of everything. She’s laying out clothes for the funeral. Ellie, you get over and help her. Go to the church, get some other women too!” |
