My View
My father, Charlie, left his Danvers home of 56 years to live with my wife, Roxanne, and me in Peabody last February. His health had become problematic for him.
Dad was not eating properly and his weight loss had become obvious. His poor gait presented a risk for falling. He wound up hospitalized for eight days, after which he agreed to move to our place as a condition of his being discharged.
The alternative was an indeterminate stint at a rehabilitation facility. We thought he would be better off being around those who loved him.
Dad still missed my mother terribly. Slowed by chemotherapy three summers before — the year Mom died — he nevertheless had become contented with his own company.
Assertive in a measured way and very bright, Dad was also a humble and self-effacing man. Beyond that, he possessed a dry humor.
When the chemo first produced a side effect of skin reddening, Dad decided that I should start to call him "Tonto" after his boyhood idol, the Lone Ranger's trusted American Indian friend.
So, for the next three years, every morning phone call began with the salutation "Hello, Tonto!"
To which he would reply, "Hi, Kimosabe!" Those terms of endearment became interchangeable with "Dad" and "Danny" to the point of unawareness.
Before his hospitalization, Dad began staying in bed later and later each morning. Then he began to beg off the routine Sunday "game 'n' supper" at our place. Roxanne and I became worried.
Left to his devices, Dad's alternative to Sunday dinner was soup and crackers with lots of salt added.
Dad had to make concessions to the new realities. He understood that his independence was gone. His sense of dignity was in jeopardy as well.
It could not have been easy for him. He had been in charge of his life since returning from the war. He was the comptroller for a mid-cap company before retirement decades ago.
We six boys had grown up under his benevolent dictatorship. Dad was a true family patriarch who was nevertheless deferential to our mother. As kids, we assumed that all men were like him.
Now, at 85 years of age, his world was changing. He would be leaving his own home.
The big insult was the fact he could no longer drive. It had been the Great Unspoken Thing in the family. Of fortuitous coincidence, his license had expired three weeks prior to his discharge from the hospital as he had forgotten to renew it.
Bad news can often be softened in the telling, so I explained that he could now boast his driver's license had expired before he did. He loved it.
We contracted North Shore Elder Services for weekday assistance with his morning shower and dressing. Ken — a long-ago immigrant from Africa via Great Britain — cared for Dad with both compassion and professionalism. They became fast pals, each truly fascinated with the other's life story.
Dad told Ken of growing up in Lawrence during the Depression and of what he saw in wartime. Ken told Dad of the deprivation in his homeland. He would speak of his love for things Irish after spending time with such a family in London. Both loved this country as true patriots.
Their fondness for each other was genuine: Two intelligent and considerate gentlemen of entirely different backgrounds sharing intimacies and companionship.
My brothers and their families came over to spend the day most weekends. Grandchildren and their children popped in as well.
Dad quickly settled into a routine where the TV remote was king when the weather was bad, and sometimes even when the forecast was good. He sat outside to watch "the birdies" while listening to talk radio after lunch.
Dad's needs were as simple as his joys. Each night he would call up the stairs: "Good-night, Roxanne." Her "Good-night, Charlie" response prompted a satisfied chuckle. Turning in bed onto his right side, he would then say good-night to my mother's picture.
He enjoyed the slavish companionship of Ozzie, the golden retriever, and the buffoonery of Chloe, the Jack Russell terrier whom he would joyously taunt with his walker and to whom he would offer solace during a thunderstorm.
He eventually became strong enough to come to Mass with us each Sunday, albeit in his transfer chair. Still, he continued to lose weight. His response to daily physical therapy reached a plateau.
The battery of testing began in late April. By early June, the worst was confirmed. His colon cancer from four years prior had returned and metastasized to his liver. Surgery might have saved a much younger man, but lesions were now spread throughout the organ. To attempt surgery would almost surely kill him. To let him be was to give him time.
While Dad remained at our house, he began receiving services from Hospice of the North Shore. They could not have been better to him.
Throughout the summer, he received visitors and went on short trips with us to visit his siblings. The Sox kept things interesting for him through August.
But the disease continued to advance. Dad was becoming forgetful toward the end. One day, he turned to Roxanne after I had left his room and asked, "Why does he keep calling me Tonto?" He seemed puzzled with her explanation at first.
The day came when he could no longer make the dozen steps to the bathroom. We prepared for end-care. The terrific Hospice nurse, Richard, started coming by daily instead of weekly.
Soon Dad could barely stay awake. Father Coughlin of St. John's came to bring the final sacraments and blessing to him. It was the last visit to hold his attention.
We made the call-out to his sons and grandchildren and his sister — the one who introduced him to Mom — for the final pilgrimage to his side. Mom's twin came, too.
Roxanne played Gregorian hymns on his CD player as a soft comfort while Dad slipped into a three-day sleep. The family kept vigil. He knew we were all there.
On the final morning, Ken came by as usual. Though there was no need to bathe him, Ken offered, anyway. I assisted Ken with turning his near-comatose friend. I had rarely seen such tenderness and reverence.
By midnight he was gone.
Roxanne loved my father as her own. Being the daughter, sister, wife, mother-in-law and mother of military veterans, she appreciatively accepted a grateful nation's colors on behalf of the family.
Months later the grief I feel sharply rises and then softly ebbs at unexpected times. I will step quietly down the stairs in the morning before realizing that I can no longer disturb him. Tears flow on hearing a rendition of "O Holy Night," his favorite carol.
But these flecks of grief remain muted and short-lived, for he left us with more than we lost.
I wish he were still here.
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Dan Flathers is a Peabody resident who has previously written for Viewpoint. His e-mail address is cdflat@comcast.net.
