97. Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Date: November 28, 2001

Age: 24

I got to spend my birthday in Gatlinburg, Tennessee--giving a speech to a bunch of cops.

Love you

Dad

There was absolutely no way to find an appropriate card for this post, and really, before I came down to Miami earlier this week, I had just grabbed a handful of postcards with no rhyme or reason to them. Therefore, this is the best I can come up with to say that my dad died on Monday.

Sunday began with a comedy of errors--C's flight to Miami arrived about an hour after mine, so I waited for him. As soon as C found me he said, "I picked up someone else's bag, I have to return it to them." Thankfully the woman who ended up with his noticed the mistake before leaving the airport and called his cell phone, otherwise he would have later opened up a suitcase filled with bikinis for her island vacation.

The plan was to rent a car and drive to Dad's, and pick up B when his flight arrived later that afternoon. When we got to the house, however, it was clear we weren't going anywhere, and B was going to have to take a cab over. H was already crying, with news from the hospice nurse that Dad probably would pass away that day.

He made it through the day, however, and through the night, where we all slept on the floor around him. He passed away at 7:45 Monday morning.

That 17-hour vigil was undoubtedly one of the most significant moments of my life, and there's so much to write about it. And I will, but I think I need to wait until he's put to rest, and I'm out of his house. For some reason I feel it's disrespectful to blog about it now. Probably so much of this blog is disrespectful, but there you go.

Dad rediscovered religion in the past few months, so the funeral is a Catholic mass, followed by burial, then reception at his house. H's house. Sunday and Monday she could barely hold it together.

I will say this about his last day on Earth: he had been lying on a couch, and with the pillows removed, it was deep enough for two. Sunday night into Monday, when my brothers and I slept on the floor around him, H slept beside Dad on the couch and held his hand. In the morning, I watched her wake up. She looked at his hand still in hers, no doubt checking the color of his fingers--we all were, as the hours passed, because we were told that his fingertips would begin to turn blue as circulation slowed, a sign that he was nearer to the end. She saw the blue, like I had just a few moments before when I returned to the room after a quick shower, and she started to cry silently. She was awake for only a minute or so when his breathing stopped. 7:45.

I'm doing okay. The day of his death was better than the last day of his life. Yesterday was exhausting. So will today. But then the life I knew in which my dad was always a part of it--at least in his own way--will be finished, and I'll begin to live with him truly absent.

Goodnight, Dad, rest in peace.

96. Heidi's Motel, Brewster, New York

Date: November 25, 1977
Age: Six months

Happy Thanksgiving! This is your first, and we are together in Brewster.

Love, Mommy & Daddy

Dad hasn't left Arkansas yet. He'd been hoping to switch to outpatient at the myeloma clinic earlier this month, but that never happened. Still in the hospital, and chemo is doing nothing. H told C today that he is not going to fight it any longer. Stopping all treatment, and he's going home.

There's no way he can fly on a commercial jet. It's an 18-hour drive from Arkansas to Miami. H is trying to make arrangements with a social worker for an air ambulance so he doesn't have to endure all that time in the backseat.

I know we've gotten the panicked phone calls before to tell us to come right away, but I don't think this one is a fire drill. Once he gets home, H will tell us when to get there. But there isn't much time left, so it should happen next week.

95. Bogota, Colombia

Date: June 12, 1982
Age: 5

This place is very high in the mountains. Tomorrow I take a plane ride to a place where it is very hot. I will be home in 13 more days. I miss you.
Love, Daddy

A few nights ago, I dreamt that my father was flying to South America, and his plane crashed. It had been a big deal for him to get on a plane, considering his immune system was so compromised, and he would be breathing in recycled air and whatever bugs the other passengers were afflicted with. I could see the plane tear apart, inside and out--very graphic, but not gory. Whatever my father had been thinking or feeling is the part of the dream that left my memory almost immediately, and maybe that's for the best.

Then, I was sitting in my father's home office in the house where I grew up, which my mother sold in 1997. I called my brother, C, and before I could even speak, he excitedly told me about his plans to take our dad to the Vatican. That's when I told him our dad was dead.

As always in my dreams about him, my father looked as he did when he was in his late forties/early fifties. Clean-shaven, without the beard he's had since the mid-90s.

I'm not one to interpret dreams. My fear of flying, coupled with my dad's mortality always at the forefront of my mind, brought this one on. Who the hell knows how the Vatican played into it. As for other dreams I've recently had: I know my reccurring one about my teeth falling out is a classic stress dream that many people experience, but beyond that, I really can't explain why, in my sleep, I've been having romantic and sexual interludes with the least attractive men from Top Chef.

What's more intriguing is that a few days after this dream about my dad's failed travels, he emails my brothers and I to tell us he and H are taking the Auto Train to Washington, and from there driving to Arkansas, back to the multiple myeloma clinic.

He's in DC for a meeting. I emailed back to get details about the rest, knowing I stand little chance reaching him by cell phone, since he always has it turned off. He called me, but unfortunately I missed it. His message said that there may be a new treatment he can do in Arkansas, but he was also going to retrieve some of his stem cells, which he said the clinic is "holding hostage." He said he'd try calling me again.

Should he start on a new treatment, he could potentially be in Arkansas for weeks. I guess my brothers and I should try to visit, considering the bullshit guilt trip he tried to lay on us in the Spring.

I realized the other day that this is the first time in my life that everyone in my immediate family lives in a different state: C in New York, B in Pennsylvania, my mom in Delaware, my dad in Florida, my grandmother in Ohio, and I'm in North Carolina. I feel strangely detached from all of them right now--I've only spoken to them all once or twice since I moved here, minus my mother. Even the contact I've been having with her, however, ebbs and flows. I realize I'm sort of doing the same thing my dad has been doing to my brothers and I all this time--keeping people at arm's length, and giving them updates about my life on my terms. It's foolish of me to take for granted that we will come together in one formation or another, and downright morbid that I may be relying on my father's health to be my reason for reuniting with my brothers.

I can't remember if I've mentioned this before, but B once told me that in his role as a dad, he'll often think of how our dad would have handled a situation, and so then he does the exact opposite. He's a pretty goddamn stellar father to his kids, too. While I've enjoyed having some separation from my family, I think I should take a cue from B and do the opposite of what we've experienced, and pick up the phone.

94. Pittsburgh

Date: November 22, 1991
Age: 14

I don't think I ever sent you a card from here, so add this to your collection.
Love, Dad

This card is in honor of my friends Matt and Rachel, who are getting married in Pittsburgh this weekend. Ah, the blessed union of two souls.

I'm on a plane to Pittsburgh tomorrow with a poofy bridesmaid dress (although I'm on Matt's side of the wedding party). Aside from my crippling fear of flying (and I'm out of Adivan to get me through the flights), it's going to be a fabulous weekend. I'll be reunited with my best friends--the people who consistently challenge me, have seen me at my best as well as my worst, and helped shape who I am, both during my childhood (like Liz and Melissa) and my adulthood (I'm talking about the rest of you). My mother will be there as well, and I guess she's played a role in that whole development process, too...

I have to come up with a toast for the reception. As the woman of honor (translation: best man) in a wedding over the summer, I think I gave a kick-ass toast. I have plenty of charming anecdotes about my friendship with Matt to draw from for creating another good toast, however many of them aren't for public consumption (such as the Sindex, which was our numeric code for telling each other how far we got with a date, when he and I were roommates. Far more comprehensive than those juvenile baseball metaphors). I'll come up with something good, however. If not, I'll just wish them a happily ever after.

No real news from my dad lately. He and H have decided to sell their house and move into a condo. I think it's a lofty undertaking, as that house is like a museum, so I don't know which is more overwhelming--keeping up with it, or disposing of it and downsizing. Maybe he just needs a project.

He says he's going to have a garage sale, and although I offered to travel down and help out with this, he ignored me completely. He did, however, send me a bunch of camera equipment, including a gorgeous Canon camera from the 1950s. I'm not sure if it works, and even if it does, it's a bit too antiquated for my limited photo expertise to interpret.

93. I Heart New York

Date: August 28, 1980
Age: 3

New York, New York
It's a wonderful town.
The Bronx is up,
The Battery is down.
The people ride around
in a hole in the ground
New York, New York!
love, Dad

Hello New York! I fall more in love with you the longer I know you. And isn't that how a love affair is supposed to be?

See you soon.

92. Key Largo, Florida

Date: August 19, 1998
Age: 21

This summer went so fast. I didn't get done half the things I wanted to, but at least I did some diving. That was good. Talk to you when I get back.
Love, Dad

Not surprisingly, my dad doesn't go diving anymore. He once told me he wanted to still be diving at eighty years old. He'll be seventy this fall, and it will be two years ago next week that he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and so he hasn't been diving for a few years now. I doubt he'll even get to do any serious traveling ever again--since his immune system is so weak, his doctors warn him against flying, against breathing that recirculated air.

My dad has always loved the ocean, and I thank him for making it a part of my life for so long. I miss going out on his boat--he was a certified captain. If you asked him to drive fast, he'd drive fast. Slow, he'd go slow. He'd be mindful of people on the boat who had never been on one before, cruising out into the ocean, and made sure it was calming and enjoyable.

I never learned how to dive, unfortunately, but we often went snorkeling around coral reefs, and he'd point out eels and other underwater creatures. The fish didn't care you were there. Sometimes they'd dart away if you tried to touch them, but I'm sure they weren't scared, just annoyed. (Can fish become annoyed?)

Of course, all of this changed when our family fell apart, and when it came back together again, the experiences were different. A few years ago, my brothers and I received gift subscriptions to Islands magazine. My dad and H had taken their diving trips beyond the Florida Keys by then--that's why I have postcards from South Africa, Fiji, and other places that I couldn't tell you if they are their own countries or territories of another. Places my brothers and I may never have the good fortune to go, so it seemed strange that we were receiving a magazine about destinations such as these--and others far more remote.

I have never once read the magazine.

A few days ago I opened up my mailbox at my new apartment in Greensboro, and there it was. Sure, my mail has come forwarded from my Brooklyn address, but Islands seems to follow me, as if it's not going to let up until I read one cover to cover. My dad must have our subscriptions on an automatic renewal. I wonder if he even realizes we still receive it.

Two years ago next week was one of the worst times of my life--my father was diagnosed with cancer, my long-term relationship ended acrimoniously, and I was in between abdominal surgeries: no longer sick, but not yet healthy, and between my body recovering and the emotional turmoil I was going through, I looked more sick than anything else.

To look at me today, you'd never know I was sick, and having gone through such a terrible illness is something I'm not quite over emotionally, but I'm getting there. I'm sorry that my dad is never going to get there. No matter how well his disease is managed (and here he's made us think, twice, that the end was nigh), he's never going to get a break from it, never not look ill. When my brothers and I pushed him around in a wheelchair at the Metro Zoo back in June--and that alone was surreal for us--H called and told us to return right away, the doctors phoned, our dad needed more blood, or new blood, or platelets, or something. This is it for him, this is how is life will be, no matter how long, or little, it lasts. I don't mean to imply that my father's life now is pitiful, because he can still have good days and enjoy life, and I think he does--but he's got to miss the traveling, the diving. At least he still lives near the ocean.

Someone I once knew, who is no longer with us, wrote during his own illness:

"I'm mentally and physically blasted. But I am thankful for life, thankful for love, thankful for existence, and thankful for everything, in ways that never, ever happened until I made it out of the house today. Yesterday I was so depressed I couldn't think of anything but death. Today I am so glad to be alive I'm just amazed...I'm writing about it today party to have notes I can read when I'm back to feeling hideously trapped in this house...But I am just going to let if fly today, let it fly."

Let it fly, Dad. Let it fly.

91. Best Western Berkeley House

Date: January 9, 1979

Age: 1 1/2 years

This is the town which was a center of student violence a decade ago. People say it's a great place, but it looks pretty tacky to me.

Love, Daddy

This one goes out to Denis, who will make it back to Berkeley where he belongs, someday. I know it's not as tacky as my father claimed it to be. Perhaps his opinion was based solely on this postcard. And after consulting a librarian's (which I'm now qualified to be, thanks to finishing my MILS) best friend/worst enemy, Wikipedia, the incident of which my father wrote happened at People's Park in 1969. Anyway, I find it funny that this is the only representation of Berkeley in my collection, and my only other Bay Area postcards are your traditional San Francisco photo ops--Alcatraz and cable cars.

So I've been in North Carolina for about two weeks now--I was hoping to update this sooner, but between trying to get settled and starting school and UNCG HAVING ONLY ONE WORKING SCANNER FOR THE ENTIRE STUDENT BODY, this fell by the wayside. I'm not going to write about life in NC just yet. There's still a lot to process. All I will say is that so far, it's been great.

My last night in New York, I cried a little after I said goodbye to my best friend, and cried some more the next morning as I was driving over the Verrazano Bridge, leaving Brooklyn. But I wasn't sobbing, I wasn't distraught. My reasons for leaving were too exciting.

I've spoken to my dad once since I moved. He sounded pretty good, and an email a few days later said that "biopsy results show only an incremental decline. Will start a new therapy next Tuesday." Once again, I have no clue what any of this means. Upon further pressing, I found out the therapy is once a week, outpatient. I know that C has asked about coming to visit, but my dad has returned to putting him (and therefore, all of us) off. I'm convinced he only wants to see us when he thinks the end is very, very near, and so our visits thus far have been based upon false alarms.

I'm glad he's getting along fairly well. Why he had to scare us with a "weeks to live" prognosis in June, I don't know. Maybe he just wants the rest of us to understand some semblance of what he's feeling.

Last week I had a dream that I was still a teenager, living in his house, and I was angry at him over something, and told him he couldn't live there anymore. My brother B took my side, and moved in to the house to resume parenting responsibilities over me. We saw our dad one last time--he came over to tell us that he'd stay away, but he would have no part of us ever again. He was the angry, unhappy person I remember knowing 15, 20 years ago. In fact, he's always that age in my dream--late 40s, early 50s. Before he had a beard. He's had a beard since probably 1996, and yet whenever he appears in my dreams, there's no beard.

I woke up feeling so horribly guilty about whatever had gone down between my father and I in the dream that I was questioning the frustration, and sometimes anger, I've been feeling toward him for the past year. When post-slumber coherence returned, I understood that my feelings are still justified, but the dream also reaffirmed that, no matter what goes down between us from here on out, there's no point in confronting him about it. And even if he wasn't dying, I'd still feel the same way.