Going Home

At my dad’s retirement party, a longtime colleague and crony named Harry came up to him and asked, “So Teddy, what are you going to do now?”  And Ted answered, “I’m going home.”  Ted really was a homebody.  Others wanted to get out, jet off to Europe, see the Grand Canyon, play golf, experience the things they missed along the way.

Not Ted.

He just wanted to spend his retirement continuing to do the same simple things that granted him pleasure.  He visited the grandkids; they could always count on him to have a ‘nilla wafer in his pocket.  He puttered a bit.  He did most of the shopping and the cooking, and the dinners he prepared were like his approach to retirement – simple.  Ham and limas.  Baked beans with a hunk of salt pork.  Day-long spaghetti sauce, always with the addition of a 5-oz can of Las Palmas red chili sauce for a little extra “bite.”  He listened to the Dodgers while he was making his pies and cakes from scratch, and he took three or four naps a day.

Yes, when Ted retired, he went home and stayed there.  He wanted to live and die there.  Neither Harry nor anyone else realized just how much he loved being home; and no one knew just how prophetic Ted’s parting shot was when he said, “I’m going home.”

It was not long after the retirement party that a regular checkup revealed a new cancer diagnosis.  He had fought quite a battle ten years before.  He lost his larynx and his voice.  He lost most of his neck and half a shoulder.  Several surgeries and some powerful chemical therapies seemed to chase the cancers, and he learned to talk again with esophageal speech and returned to work.  It was a clean bill of health at that time, but the cancer had only gone into hiding.

It took Ted a year and a half to die.  My mother was his ministering angel.  She had no medical training, but she was committed to his wishes to be at home.  She seemed to float through those days of his agony without complaint and a will to do whatever she could to make his departure as peaceful as possible.  She did it because Ted wanted to die at home.

It wasn’t long before they started him on chemotherapy once again.  In those days the drugs were nearly as bad as the cancer.  His hair fell out.  He was violently nauseous at times.  He lost weight.  They said he should be in the hospital, but Audrey was steadfast because she wanted what he wanted — and he wanted to die at home. 

As the cancer invaded his lower intestinal tract and colon, they dragged him in for more surgery.  Father Casady sat with Ted to pray and share the rosary and came out saying, “God is good, and Ted is tough.”  Ted came home from the hospital with a bag on his side and more pain in his belly, defying the practitioners who wanted to keep him in the hospital.  After all, he wanted to die at home. 

To give Mom a break from the vigil, one of my brothers or I would come to help him in and out of the tub or just sit and read to him.  We read him the sports page and stories by Damon Runyon, which brought a welcome smile to his face.  His favorite poem was the “The Incredible One Horse Shay” about a buggy whose time is up.  We could see him fading almost daily, and there were days when it seemed right to give ourselves a break and put Dad in the hospital.  But he wasn’t ready to give up just yet and he wanted, by God, to die at home.

In this time of pain and weariness, when a pall hung over the house, there were some lovely moments that stick with me.  One day I dropped by and found my mom sitting at my dad’s bedside, and they were sharing a beer.  That was a bit shocking, because for years Audrey had gone on search and destroy missions for hidden bottles of cheap wine — my dad’s preferred form of oblivion when he was on a bender.  But that hardly mattered anymore, because Ted’s time was short, he was bed-ridden, and for all the destruction it caused, cancer was the catalyst that slaked my dad’s commanding thirst for alcohol.  Ted and Audrey, just like anybody else, sipping on a long neck.

My dad reached up with a frail hand and patted my mom on the cheek.  She had been a loyal and loving wife for 44 years, sticking with him through some tough times.  A simple pat on the cheek expressed what he could no longer utter, because he was too tired to swallow enough air to burp up even a single word.  I felt like an intruder but was grateful for that moment.

Yet an even greater moment of privilege for me came just a few days later.  Mom had reached the end of her strength, and Dad needed more than we could provide.  He couldn’t lift his head off the pillow, and the catheter wasn’t working.  It was time for professional care.  Dad did not want anything to do with a hospital room and all the attendant tubings, but he was able to understand the need.  We called the doctor who ordered the ambulance.

Mom and I decided to take Dad to the ambulance.  I picked him up.  He could not have weighed more than seventy pounds; but before I got to the front door, he seemed to get heavier and heavier.  You know that feeling, when you are holding a little one and she falls into a deep sleep in your arms.  As if she gained ten or fifteen pounds on the spot!  It is called dead weight.  Ted died in the doorway in my arms.   

That moment came back to me on the Fourth of July, prompted by an article about John Adams and Thomas Jefferson who died on the same day, July 4, 1826.  What power of determination drove them to give it up on the exact same day, fifty years to the day from the signing of the Declaration of Independence?  It was more than an astounding historical coincidence.  They willed themselves to last that long, to make that landmark date, each one wondering until the end if he had outlived the other. 

Ted went home, just like he said.