Lessons Learned II

Lessons Learned II

My husband summed up his thoughts in the last Caregiver’s Diary on what he has learned about death and the dying over the last two years, as he lost his mother and father.  My father, Gordon, passed away on October 27, 2011, and has also been referred to in this Diary – the guy with the big white Cadillac, who never had to hang up his keys.   I agree with a lot of what my husband said, but my experiences with losing my father were somewhat different, and I have a few other thoughts to share:

Death Cannot Be Managed

My father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in December, 2010.  He went through radiation, but never really got his strength back and died 11 months later. We met many lovely people during this period, the surgeon who put in Dad’s stent, his initial surgical oncologist (surgery was not an option) and his palliative care doctor, who ‘managed’ his case for the final months. She put him at ease, patted his hand, adjusted his pills, and reassured us about how his final days would go. There was a ‘system’ in place – so that when the inevitable final crisis hit, he would hopefully not go to an emergency ward, but alert some kind of palliative hotline. A nurse would arrive and administer to him from a kit full of drugs that would have been given to him in advance. My father was fuddled by this – as was I.  Were they planning to ‘put him down’ in his own apartment to the soothing strains of Enya?  We were too disturbed by this scenario to ask further questions, and had a coffee and donut instead.  

As it turned out, Dad got a nasty cold, which seriously dehydrated him. The cold was treated, but the dehydration was not.  It  was missed somehow by the palliative care doctor. Dad weakened and fell in his apartment, couldn’t get up, and had to call 911 himself - from the floor.   An ambulance arrived and carted him off to emergency  - the one thing the ‘system’ had been trying to avoid.  He died there two days later. 

So be wary of the ‘system’ – and take the word ‘manage’ with a grain of salt. It could go a million different ways at the end  - and usually does.

Never Leave A Sick Parent Alone In Emergency

You are their last best friend there – and like a comrade-in-arms, you must never desert them.  My Dad was brought in to a mad house, and my sister and I waited for hours until he could be treated. The doctor on call finally saw him at 3 am, stabilized him with fluid drips, and told us that a bed had been found for him in palliative care. We left at Dad’s own urging and returned the next morning to find that the bed had vanished, he was on a stretcher in the hallway, and he seemed visibly weaker. We stayed all day – spoke to the nurses, who assured us that he was stable, was being rehydrated, he had eaten his breakfast well, the palliative care doctor had been by and had actually signed discharge papers for him for the next morning.   Dad did eat his lunch with us, some of it, but seemed tired and napped mostly.  Again, we were assured that was the best thing for him.  So… we finally left that night to get a bit of sleep ourselves. Once home, I called the ward again, at 10 pm.  I was given every assurance in the world that he was stable and comfortable. 

The call came at midnight – he was in distress. A ‘catastrophic event’ had occurred.  They weren’t sure what it was, but he couldn’t breathe and was failing. Did we want heroic measures taken?  …No. We raced back to the hospital in pouring rain and were told by a phone call, as we entered the emergency ward, that he had passed away 10 minutes before.  The oncologist on call did not know my father and was truly horrible.  A compassionate male nurse pulled us aside and told us about the last moments of my father’s life – he was with him and said that Dad was full of peace. That nurse was one of those angels that I believe present themselves at such times.  He saved my sanity.

For the rest of my life I will regret leaving my father that night.  So don’t do it. Tag team with family, call in friends, anything.  Don’t leave your parent alone on a stretcher in a hallway.

Get Past Your Own Fear Of Your Parents’ Death

Losing my father was the greatest fear of my life. And when he was diagnosed with cancer, that fear went off the dial.  It prevented me from fully using the time we had left to really say everything we wanted. I am not talking about forcing Dad into touchy-feely conversations for my benefit. I am talking about taking any opening he might offer, and responding honestly in the moment. Until the last week of his life, we never even said the ‘death’ word. I think he could sense that it would unhinge me and was holding back to protect my feelings. But as he fought off his last cold, we sat together and he suddenly said, “I think I’m dying, and I want you to know that I feel absolutely serene about this.”  Big silence. “Are you okay with that?”  I remember that I wanted to burst into tears, run away to Paris, maybe, but this was important.  I told him that I wanted what was best for him, and that I believed in my heart there was a natural order to things.  It was a strangled response, but Dad was a scientist and liked the ‘natural order’ thing.  He seemed relieved. From that point on, we seemed to talk more easily and in his last few days, he told me stories about him, and my late Mom, about all sorts of family secrets and scandals. I couldn’t ask the questions fast enough and he laughed and cried and mused and remembered, and we had a really great time together. My fear of losing him had finally given way to my enjoyment of his company for whatever time we had left.  

It’s A Huge Loss

For most of us, losing your final parent is a profound loss. You are an orphan. Don’t underestimate how hard it will hit you. You will want to call them, email them, run to them when life defeats you. And they will be gone.  And if you are childless, like I am, the feeling is even more curious. There is nothing to pull you forward into the future, and nothing grounding you any longer in the past. This feeling persists, so it’s important to reach out, cultivate friends, community, form new ‘family’ – anything that will start connecting you again to other human beings. I lost my bearings for over a year after Dad died and I’m just starting to get them back.

My parents and parents-in-law were part of the war generation, who are passing quickly. They have left me with a legacy of fortitude, self-reliance, and common sense. Their values were hard work, fiscal restraint, patience, kindness and accountability. They were far from perfect, but they were glamorous, and knew how to have fun. They danced, drank, smoked cigarettes, had fabulous music and made me laugh.

It was a privilege to have known them. 

Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned

I have been chronicling the deaths of my mother, my father-in-law and my father for the last 2 years. I have learned some things about death during that time, and it’s appropriate that I share them here.

Dying Is Hard Work

It takes effort to die. Getting up in the morning is hard, dressing and washing is hard, eating is hard. Grinding through the pain, the depression and the discomfort requires a strength of character I believe most people don’t discover they have until they start dying. The effort required will almost always lead to frustration and anger. The secret is not to personalize this anger. It’s directed at the disease or infirmity, not the caregiver.

Doctors Know Nothing About Dying

For the most part, GPs and specialists know very little about the mechanics of dying, and their innate need to fix things often gets in the way of dying well or comfortably. Doctors in med school spend very little time on end-of-life or palliative care. Their instinct is to fix, to cure, to dose, to intervene. There are doctors trained as specialists in palliative care, and they are rare and precious as rubies.

My mother’s long-time GP mixed up her anti-nausea medication so that it actually made her sicker when she ate. She wouldn’t prescribe significant pain relief, and she wouldn’t come clean with my mother on her life expectancy. Once we hooked into the local palliative care network, though, everything changed. Her new doctor was intimate with death, a friend of the dying, and supremely knowledgeable.

When it came time for morphine, the palliative care doctor didn’t dispense capsules on a daily basis. She gave mother a big bottle of liquid morphine, carefully told her it tasted pleasant and that the whole bottle would kill her painlessly if she didn’t take care. She left it at that. Delicate, and yet definitive.

The Dying Need Their Dignity

Dying is the ultimate loss of control, so control over lesser things becomes critically important to the dying. My mother was adamant no one was going to see her on her death bed except the doctors whose business it was to be there. In fact, she forbade visits from her children after the cancer she died from started to affect her looks. My father and Kathie Rose the caretaker were the only ones she saw in her last months.

Even as he approached death, ravaged by cancer that wouldn’t allow him to eat, my father-in-law found driving his big new Cadillac an important release, taking his elderly friends for doctors’ appointments and shopping.

My father, in his last days, resisted being moved to a higher level of care in his retirement home, despite the fact it was needed, because they kept the “droolers” and the “zombies” on that floor, and he had all his marbles and didn’t belong with them. Also, he would be reduced from his 3 room suite to a single bedroom and, despite the fact he never used the space in his suite except the bedroom, this was seen as a demotion.

The Dying Drink Too

My mother was drinking wine as long as she was drinking anything. My father hosted a big dinner party with all his children the night he died, and he enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. My father-in-law, although he almost quit his scotch habit after his diagnosis, still treasured a wee dram on special occasions. “Nuff said.

The Dying Really Don’t Have Time For You

The survivors think it’s all about them. How sad they are, how much they’ll miss the dying, how important it is to say that special thing, make that final contact and correct a lifetime of misunderstandings. Oddly enough, the dying don’t care much about that. They have a hard job to do, and it takes up all their time. A palliative care nurse once listed the top five final regrets she had heard from the dying, and the most common was “I wish I hadn’t spent so much time on my children and spent a little more time on me”.

This is what happens at the end. Fear and pain are constant companions, uncertainty and regret the norm. There is little time to worry about the spectators. The best and most helpful thing caregivers can do at the end is manage pain, comfort without judgment and listen. Mostly listen.

Another Aftermath

Another Aftermath

Stories and memories of my widowed 89 year old father started pouring in by e-mail and phone the day after he died, prompted by a posting on Facebook of a lovely picture of him in his last weeks, still smiling and still hale.

Many of the messages had the same theme: dad was gregarious, welcoming, always up for a drink or a talk or a loud meal, always reaching out to people and overseeing his argumentative brood. Friends from 50 years ago, with whose children we had played wrote” Our first day in Connecticut from England, and we saw your dad striding up the drive, bottle of wine in hand, asking us to dinner”.

This was typical behaviour. Once, at Christmas in Montreal, we encountered a bunch of hippies (that’s how long ago it was) in a school bus on Mount Royal. Dad asked them all for dinner, and then called mum to tell her. I have a photograph of every chair around our big kitchen table filled, strange young happy men and women, us kids, and dad with a big jug of wine at his feet.

For that was where dad exists in everybody’s memory who knew him. Sitting at the head of a kitchen table, big jug of wine at his feet, presiding over a noisy table full of children, guests, old friends, hangers-on and dogs.

His other natural element was at the wheel. He always commuted long distances, and he always had interesting cars to do it in Two Citroens, a Simca, a used Mercedes, a procession of Volvos, several Peugeots. The one thing they all had to have was a sunroof, because he loved the sun on his face while he drove, even in winter. His forehead was always tanned mahogany.

He thought nothing of driving from Connecticut to Ontario in a day, with a car full of five kids, some dogs and mum, and towing a trailer, usually full of contraband for the cottage. He had a way of leveling his gaze at the customs officer, deepening his voice and saying “nothing to declare. We’re Canadians returning for the summer”. Meanwhile, packed in the boat on the trailer were tools, stoves, fridges, supplies, booze, everything needed to outfit our new cottage.

The cottage was on a tiny island in a famous lake in Ontario’s cottage country. Dad’s idea of a vacation was to lie flat on his back all day long, get up for dinner, then lie flat on his back again. He did this for two weeks every year, and I have a pencil sketch by my younger sister to prove it.

As it turns out, my father left a more substantial estate than any of us thought. He, who had never owned a house until his forties, who had worked three and four jobs at a time to raise five children, had actually left his children a legacy.

Now it remains to see if the surviving children can rise to the challenge of dividing dad’s estate without rancour. This is often a sad after-chapter to many well-lived lives, and for the sake of our family bond, I hope we can do the process justice.

A Golden Exit

A Golden Exit

“Happy New Year! You made it to 2013”. Donald Corbett, my widowed 89 year old father said “I wish I hadn’t”. “Don’t worry, I’m sure you won’t see 2014”. “Oh God, I hope not” Dad said.

There had been a swift change on the care front. We had convened a family conference before Christmas, prompted by another fall. We had told Dad it was time to move to a room on the second floor of Serenity Towers, where he could get more care. The second floor is where they keep the incompetent and incontinent. Dad calls them the droolers and zombies.

Nevertheless, there is round-the-clock nursing and attention on the second floor, and a small dining room right there, Residents can also take their meals in their rooms if they like. There is staff to help dress and wash those who can’t do it for themselves, and Dad has been having trouble lately. He’s almost stopped bathing, and dressing takes him hours. He would have help for all of that on the second floor.

He resisted us mightily, accusing youngest sister Rachel, his primary caregiver, of conspiring to get his prime suite, and get his money (he doesn’t have any, really. He insists he didn’t fall and can take care of himself. We left it unresolved.

A week later, after the new year, Rachel tells us he reluctantly agreed to move to the second floor. Two days later he said he was looking forward to it. Yesterday he said he couldn’t wait. I guess his frailty has caught up with him and he realizes how much help he needs. It helped that Rachel left him alone for a few days after he first refused our entreaties to move. Tough love worked.

Out of the blue, younger sister Harriet e-mailed to say she was flying in from the west, she had gotten a cheap ticket on points. She hadn’t seen dad in two years, since the memorial for my mother in the fall of 2010. At that gathering, dad was using a cane, but he was loud and bossy and overbearing as usual. I’m not sure Harriet was ready for the reed-thin, papery old scrap dad had become.

Dad decided we would mark the visit (four of his five children) with a “Last Supper” (his words) at Serenity Towers. We gathered at Rachel’s house and went over to Serenity Towers together. Rachel and her partner had moved his furniture in that afternoon, and he was seeing his new room for the first time.

It was one room, with a bed in the corner, but quite large, with room enough for his desk and computer (which he never uses anymore) and a table and several comfortable chairs. It was a much more sensible arrangement than his three room suite, most of which he never used.

We had a glass of wine (the ban on alcohol on the second floor was only for the droolers. Those with all their marbles, like Dad, could keep a fridge of booze). In addition to three squares a day (which he is encouraged to eat), he gets three snacks delivered to his room during the day. Also, the staff will encourage him to drink fluids and stay hydrated, with which he has a problem, like many of the very old.

We went down to the lovely dining room (dad being pushed backward seated on his walker) and had a big table set for the whole family (minus oldest brother Hal, still out west). A group photo was taken and immediately put on Facebook, where it immediately drew a number of comments about how good it was seeing Dad with his family.

The food, as I have mentioned before, was excellent, real home cooking, just not enough of it. Dad had a half portion, which he didn’t finish, but he was doing what he liked best in the whole world, sitting at the head of a table full of his noisy squabbling children. He slowly ate, and beamed at all of us.

We toddled back up to his new suite for a drink after dinner. He gave away a few things to his kids and then said “I’m not a believer, but what I want to know is what happens when you die? Is it just the end? All black? Has anyone ever come back to tell?”. This was a new direction for dad, never the most philosophical man. I wanted to say “you meet all those who’ve died before you. They’re waiting for you in the light, and mum will be there too”, but instead, I said “That’s a funny thing to be worrying about. You’re not going anywhere yet”.

I got a call in the early morning the day after the Last Supper. Dad had died during the night, peacefully. He had waited to host his children for dinner, had the time of his life, then slipped off quietly without waking. This is the golden end we all desire, the one that was denied my mother. I only hope I’m as lucky as dad when my time comes.

A Very Difficult Conversation

A Very Difficult Conversation

An e-mail from youngest sister late at night to youngest brother and me. Our 89 year old widowed father had fallen again; presented himself to the night nurse covered in blood, then denied it had happened the next day. Could we do a conference call in half an hour? Things needed deciding.

Serenity Towers had called youngest sister in. After last night’s incident, they were very worried about his safety. When youngest sister confronted him with the fact he’d fallen again, he said he hadn’t. She asked where he’d gotten the bandage, and he said he’d had it for days, but youngest sister, who had seen him the day before, told him that wasn’t true.

He’s been falling for years. He drinks, he gets up at night to pee, he falls, bleeds, and goes back to bed. Before she died, my mother was always washing blood out of his towels, pajamas and sheets. He’s never broken anything, even recently, in his extremely fragile and enfeebled state. We think he’s too feather light to do much damage on the way down.

Anyway, as younger sister has said in her e-mail, it’s probably time for the second floor, where they keep the incompetent and the incontinent. He can get round-the-clock care and watching there, there’s a nurse always on duty, and he takes all three meals right on the floor. He’ll have to downsize from his three-room suite to a single room and bathroom, but all he does is sleep anyway nowadays.

Dad is deathly afraid of the second floor. That’s where they keep the “droolers” he says, the “zombies”. This is not going to be easy. Youngest sister suggests a family intervention at lunch on the weekend. Youngest brother says, “no, tomorrow, let’s get this over with”. Youngest sister says “I’ll tell him we’re coming for an early Christmas lunch”. I say “No, tell him it’s a family conference. Scare him a little”

It scared him. He saw all three of us waiting for him at lunch at Serenity Towers the next day and said, nervously “Youngest sister brought three of you, am I going to have to pay for all of you?”

Youngest sister, over dessert, said “Dad, we’re not just here to have lunch with you. We’re here to talk about your options” Dad belligerently said “My options are staying in my apartment. You’re just trying to tell my memory’s no good, why should I listen to you?”

This wasn’t going well. Youngest sister had said we had to offer him choices, not box him in. His choices were to move to the second floor, to engage a full-time care assistant to stay with him 24 hours, or he could go to a local full-care nursing home (which would surely kill him). Serenity Towers would do everything in their power to allow a resident to stay, but they would insist they leave if they became belligerent and uncooperative.

I broke in. “Dad, we’re very worried about your safety, and so is Serenity Towers. They’ve asked us to tell you if you want to stay here, you’re going to have to move to the second floor”. His face crumpled a little.

“They have insurance liabilities, Dad. They can’t allow you to stay in your apartment if they can’t care for you. They could get sued”. He said weakly “I’m OK in my apartment”. I said “Dad, you fell the other night and showed up at the nurses station covered in blood. They notice things like that”. He said weakly “I did not. There’s nothing wrong with my memory, I have no recall of that”.

“Besides, what would I do with my stuff? I can’t live in one little room”. I thought - Bingo! - that was the close. Now we talk about everything else but the decision. Youngest sister leapt in with “Oh that’s easy, I can get the kids to do it in a couple of hours, You go down for lunch and come back to your new room”.

He made one last stab “Well, I’m not going to take it from you. I’ll wait until the staff tells me”. Apparently, when I had left the table for a moment, he had lit into youngest sister, accusing her of meddling and plotting with the staff against him. Youngest sister puts up with this, but it’s not easy, I can tell.

He shuffled off up to his room on his new walker to get his corns seen to. Youngest sister cornered the Manager and explained our conversation. Connie said she would back us up to the limit, and tell him it was their decision at Serenity Towers. She said many residents don’t have family to help them make this decision, and the staff have to inform them, which is much harder for everyone. Serenity Towers was fully on our side.

On the way out, we stopped in for a look at the second floor. Nicely decorated, a reception desk, a small dining room. We asked the staff member in the kitchen about residents and alcohol. She said they hold occasional happy hours, for those who are competent to take part. They have one old lady whose booze they keep locked at the front desk, and if she complains enough, they’ll give her a shot.

This won’t do. Dad has been a drinker all his life, and while it’s slowly killing him (when he’s 119, maybe), it’s also keeping him alive by giving him something to look forward to every day. One room, no one to talk to and no booze? No, we’ll never get dad to agree to that.

In many families, the most difficult conversation is getting a parent to give up their car keys. Fortunately dad got too feeble to get into his car before he got too feeble to drive it, and he gladly gave it away. No, in our family, the most difficult conversation is about dad giving up his three rooms and his fridge of booze. He’ll get used to the company on the second floor, he doesn’t socialize much, and he’ll get used to his single room, h only really sleeps and reads the paper now. But if he has to ask for a drink, there’ll be hell to pay.

Patience

Patience

I’m not my 89 year old widowed father’s caregiver, I’m just an occasional visitor, and a voice at the end of the phone. Youngest sister is his caregiver, and she sees him frequently and, until recently, took him out for lunch. What she has in abundance is patience, and it’s something I don’t have a lot of.

Patience is essential in dealing with Dad. He takes his time changing sweaters before he goes out, and sometimes decides he doesn’t want to go at all. It’s an incredibly fraught operation shuffling him down the hallway to the parking lot, and getting him into a compact car (he’s 6 feet 4 inches tall, or was) is almost impossible.

Once at the restaurant, it’s almost impossible to extricate him from the car again, and then there’s the long slow shuffle inside. Back in the day, Dad used to like chaffing with waitresses; he spent a lot of time on the road, and they were his company. Signs of the old sparkle still show, but he can’t banter anymore, just smile winningly. The waitresses at the lunch joints around Serenity Towers all know him now, and they’re quite patient too. I guess life is slower in Niagara than here in Toronto.

Youngest sister has given up ordering Dad anything for lunch, because he just doesn’t eat. He’ll steal a roll for later, and maybe take one bite from a grilled cheese sandwich, but he’s not there to eat. I’ve noticed that he will polish off a dessert, so I urge him to order dessert first when we go out. Youngest sister says she will now no longer take him out for lunch.

Youngest brother has had some free time lately, and he’s been down to Niagara a lot. He says dealing with Dad one-on-one is particularly difficult; he has nothing to say, and he can’t really say it anyway. He sits there smiling dimly as though memories had taken the place of reality. It’s really much better to see him with someone else, so you have someone to talk to. Dad likes just watching and listening now.

Youngest brother describes a recent exchange:

Dad “So, do you have a girlfriend?

“Dad, you’ve met her several times”

Dad “What’s her name?”

“You know her name, it’s Michele”

Dad “Millie?”

“No, Michele. Millie was your dog”

Dad “Millie has a dog?”

“No, Millie was your dog, you put her down”

Dad “You put your girlfriend down?”

I guess these last years will get crazier and crazier. Dad is feeble, but in basic good health. He could hang on for 3 or 4 years into his 90s, becoming ever and ever more decrepit. He has a mortal fear of the Second Floor at Serenity Towers, the floor where the incontinent and incapable are kept, but he’s on his way there. Unfortunately, I think his body will outlast his wits, and for a splendidly educated man like Dad, that’s sad.

Dad's War

Dad’s War

My 89 year old widowed father was studying organ at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto when the war broke out. He enlisted as soon as he could. He was 6 feet 4 inches tall and weighed 130 pounds, scarcely the stuff of either bomber crew or front line infantry. Nonetheless, all were welcome, and off he went.

The train trip to the Prairies to train, and Halifax to board the transport overseas were the first times he had seen Canada. He wrote long eloquent letters home to his mother describing the people and scenery. He spent a year recently transcribing and printing those letters and I have a bound copy.

In England, he was seconded to the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA), as the assistant to their Canadian liaison, Capt. Bob MacKenzie. In this role, he lectured servicemen nd war brides on current affairs, life in Canada and the progress of the war. He organized and led meetings of Colonels and Majors on communications and publications. And he did all this as a staff sergeant.

He worked hard to avoid being promoted. He was well-educated, eloquent and clearly not Other Ranks material, but smart officers got sent to the front and died, and he was enjoying his war.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was a friend. He played the organ at Westminster Abbey. He hung out with artists, musicians and reporters. He sampled the bohemian underground of wartime London. He went to country houses for weekend house parties. He got gastritis in Ireland on furlough from eating too many fresh eggs, which were strictly rationed in England. This was his only wartime injury.

Not that the work he was doing at ABCA wasn’t important. Winston Churchill hated the group, though it was a nest of communists and a waste of money. Bob MacKenzie was a staunch socialist, as were all the instructors. They taught impressionable young servicemen about collectives, and nationalization, and owning the means of production. Political scientists agree ABCA was instrumental in defeating Churchill and electing Labour’s Clement Atlee in the election immediately after the war.

I recently asked my dad if would talk to a rapporteur for The Memory Project, a group that is recording the memories of WWII veterans. “Oh, hell, no. I don’t want to talk about it. I had a cushy war”.

I’m glad he wasn’t promoted to Lieutenant and killed at Ortona. Enough were.

Dying In Good Health

Dying In Good Health

My widowed 89 year old father called the other day. Youngest sister was coming over for lunch, he was dressed. I said “You sound chipper today, you must be feeling pretty good”. He said “Oh, I’m alright, but I just wish I weren’t on this earth anymore. It’s such a chore. Everything takes so long, buttoning my shirt. I have to wear suspenders or my pants fall down”.

The thing is, my father is in good health, he’s just very old. He takes one baby aspirin and some B12 a day and that’s it. He has COPD, his heart is failing and he has no energy, but there’s nothing wrong with him, he’s just Very Old.

My wife says the Very Old “live in a different country from us”. They’ve “crossed over”. I think she means the practicalities of life just become unimportant and they fixate on the minutiae of the moment, oblivious to others.

My dad has fixated his worries on a letter he wrote to his doctor, a long one, explaining how weak and tired he was, and wanting to know why. No one, it seems, has the heart to tell him he’s tired because he’s OLD, and it’s not going to go away.

My wife and I have a favourite bistro, the owner knows us. He knows everyone, including an imposing old gentleman the staff all call Mr. Cratchley. One night, we saw Mr. Cratchley dining with a middle aged woman we took to be his daughter. We heard him say in his commanding voice “Old so-and-so just died”. His daughter gasped with concern and asked “What did he die of?”. Mr Cratchley barked “He was 84! He died of death!”.

And that’s what’s happening to dad. He’s dying of death, and it’s happening faster all the time. He’s papery translucent now, thin and skeletal, a faraway look in his eyes. He’s seeing horizons we haven’t glimpsed yet. He’s looking into a different country.

Thanksgiving With Dad

Thanksgiving with Dad

The weather Thanksgiving weekend was cold and wet. Stiff wind out of the west, where the rollers come from. Jamie and I decided not to sail to Niagara, but to drive.

We were going to have Thanksgiving Dinner with my widowed 89 year old father at his swank assisted living residence.  We had been to see him the week before on my boat, a 33 foot motor sailer. That visit had excited and encouraged him, and he was looking forward to our return. I could tell when I phoned about an hour out that he was a little disappointed we weren’t on the high seas, as stormy as they were.

When we got up to his room, he was glued to the TV, watching the Steelers get tromped by the Eagles. He waved us distractedly to chairs. I looked over at Jamie. I had warned him dad was deteriorating, not recognizing people, fading in and out, not really there. He said “Just wait a minute until half time. I want to catch up on the scores across the league”. Jamie and I looked at each other again.

With a grunt of satisfaction after the half time update, having seen the Browns leading, he slowly levered himself out of his chair. He might be feeble, but he sure could pay attention when he wanted to, to something that interested him. I gave thanks for football, and that he wasn’t a hockey fan, faced with a lockout.

We took the slow shuffle to the elevator and down to the dining hall, for the late sitting, at 6 PM. Every little old lady coming back from the first sitting said the same thing to dad. “Oh, it’s an awfully big dinner”, knowing my father barely ate.

Salad was goat cheese, strawberries, butter lettuce and strawberry vinaigrette. Very inventive and tasty. I saw why Serenity Towers got such high marks for their food. Dad surprised me by eating the whole thing with his shaky fork.

The Thanksgiving Dinner was next, and it was a heaped plate, so it must have been terrifying to those tiny appetites. It was all first class, home made, turkey, stuffing, Brussels sprouts, roasted yams and cranberry sauce. I cleaned my plate, as did Jamie. Dad called petulantly for butter and when he got it, spread it on his mashed potatoes and gummed a bite. That was all he ate of that lovely dinner.

Dessert was real, home made pumpkin pie (a small slice) and Dad inhaled his. I realized he lived on desserts and condiments, which wasn’t so bad, as long as he lived on something. After dinner, dad carefully put the extra butters in his shirt pocket. He shuffled over to the buffet and cadged a handful of peanut butters and jams which he asked me to take up to his room. I don’t know what he was eating these spreads on, or whether he was just hoarding them, but any interest shown in food is a positive.

Dad’s sharpness continued through dinner. He asked Jamie his whole background, right from when he had met him last 30 years ago (which he remembered). He wanted to know our plans for future cruises. He wanted to know why I wear my hair spiky.

I don’t know what’s got into him, but watching football, fretting over the scores, stealing food, these are all good signs. I drove home to Toronto that night feeling better than I had in ages.

Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished

“It’s enormous!”. That was my widowed 89 year old father speaking to oldest brother on the phone. He was sitting an a navy blue deck chair on the patio of the Niagara Yacht Club, cane between his knees, finally looking at my new boat.

I had wanted to show my boat to my father since I got it. It’s exactly the kind of boat he wanted all his life - honest, rugged, traditional. He used to draw it on restaurant placemats for us in his fine spidery draftsman’s hand.

He had owned several boats; an Albacore sailing dinghy he never learned to sail, a classic motor launch he couldn’t dock. But it was the North Sea motor sailer that always had his imagination - sturdy and no-nonsense, and that’s the kind of boat I now owned.

We set off from Toronto in a dead calm, the lake like glass. We had the water to ourselves, no one else out this late in the season.

The crossing took four hours, the auto-helm doing all the work, and the diesel clanking along contentedly. Time to relax, make a sandwich, put away gear.

As we approached Niagara, we entered a field of bulk carriers anchored off the mouth of the Welland Canal, waiting their turns to enter. Although they dwarfed our little craft, we felt like we were playing with the big boys.

We cruised slowly and majestically up between the breakwaters of the old Welland Canal. Dad was on the east bank with my aunt, who had come to help him around.

We landed, somewhat clumsily and with a little embarrassment and help from the old gaffers standing around. Jamie, my crew, and I are still getting the hang of handling a 40 foot boat which weighs as much as a schoolbus.

Dad arrived in my aunt’s car from the breakwater after we had tied up, which was just as well, as I didn’t really need him to see the confusion which always attends this operation.

Dad made the slow, halting trip from the car in the parking lot to the boat at the dock. He stopped to sit several ties along the way. We keep deck chairs on the quarterdeck for visitors, and we set6 a couple up on the dock. Dad settled into one and carefully looked the boat over.

Just then, oldest brother called from out west. He knew our schedule, and knew we would be arriving at about this time. He spoke to dad. “It’s enormous!” dad said, and then told him how sensible it was, with an enclosed pilothouse for dirty weather sailing.

Dad has been failing lately, succumbing to dementia. He doesn’t know who he’s with and forgets his mealtimes, sometimes showing up at the dining room at midnight. Oldest brother told me when we spoke later, though, thet Dad had been on top of his game on the phone. And I had noticed it too. He looked over the boat with a keen eye, taking everything in. He looked at the rigging, asked about the diesel.

He sat there on the deck chair looking at the boat for an hour. When he started nodding off, I gently suggested it might be time to go back to Serenity Towers, but he said no, he wanted to look at the boat for a while longer.

This was more interest and focus than dad had shown for months. His eyes gleamed, he listened, he asked smart questions. My aunt said the visit with the boat had made his week, then changed her mind . “You’ve made his year. He hasn’t had this much fun since your mother died”.

We returned across the lake the next morning at6 the crack of dawn in a howling wind and driving rain. No matter, it was a fun trip and it made my dad happy. I’m going again this weekend.

My Father, The Carny

My Father, The Carny

My widowed father, now 89, has returned to his roots, in a way. He now lives at Serenity Towers, a luxurious assisted living place in Niagara, just blocks from the old Lakeside Amusement Park in Port Dalhousie.

He got his start there as a carny after the war. He ran the bingo game. It was owned by Conklin Shows, the company founded by the legendary showman Paddy Conklin.

Dad discovered that he could sell twice as many bingo cards by increasing the prizes slightly, with no effect on earnings. It was a neat trick, and word of it got to Paddy

Soon, Dad was Paddy’s driver, chauffeuring him around in a brand-new post war Chrysler. Paddy put Dad to work on some other math problems.

Soon Dad was working the winter midway in Brantford, Paddy’s home town. He was an enforcer. He figured out the rate at which the carnies in the game booths should be giving out the sawdust filled crap toys you win, and if they were giving out fewer than that, they were screwing the house.

He was respected and feared and called “The Professor”, because he wore glasses and could add. Carnies are tough, but they’re not that bright, not even Paddy, and this was the carnival industry’s first experience of forensic accounting.

By the summer of 1947, dad was working the Midway at the Ex, still counting the stuffed bears and going over the receipts at night. He was making $1500 a week in 1947, the equiivalent of about $15,000 today. Paddy valued him, obviously.

What goes around comes around. A client of mine is the CNE. I happened to mention to a senior executive that my dad once drove for Paddy Conklin. His eyes lit up. “You’re dad KNEW Paddy? He drove for him?” This was like meeting someone who had met god to him, and his staff were equally enthralled. When I told them about dad’s role as “The Professor”, they exchanged looks. Apparently those accounting rules are still used on the Midway to this day.

Dad didn’t stay a carny long, just two or three exciting, lucrative years. It allowed him to get married and get set up doing what he was born to do, sell pipe organs. But, for a while, Dad was “The Professor”, feared on the Midway by the toughest guys on the road.

A Chequered Career

A Chequered Career

My widowed father, now 89 and living in an assisted living facility in Niagara, has had an interesting life, right from the start.

First of all, his mother was probably not his mother. She was a grand Toronto lady to whom the concept of giving birth was as remote as climbing a mountain. No, his mother was probably a loyal family retainer known as Auntie.

In the depression, his father, an insurance adjuster, lost his job and went to work on the docks at the bottom of Yonge Street as a stevedore. His grand mother came down several notches and worked as a telephone operator at the King Edward Hotel, where she wore white gloves because she thought the equipment was dirty..

Later, after his father died, dad quit high school to work as an organist to support his mother and brother. He met (and played for) Fats Waller once, and Fats played some Barrelhouse Blues for him.

Never religious, but always a friend of the clergy, dad was to later count Archbishops and Cardinals among his friends. An interested bishop helped get him into the Royal Conservatory despite his lack of a high school diploma. His natural gift for the keyboard, powered by his long slender fingers, became even more accomplished.

He went to war as soon as he could, six feet four inches tall and one hundred and thirty pounds. Unfit for the front, he was posted to the Army Bureau of Current Affairs in London, where he lectured war brides on what to expect when they arrived in Canada. The Archbishop of Canterbury was a friend, and he played the organ at Westminster Abbey.

He attended Weekends at country houses with Smart People and generally had a ‘good war’. His only casualty was a case of gastritis brought on in Ireland on leave from eating too many fresh eggs (then rationed in Britain).

After the war, he went to work for Paddy Conklin, the famous showman, as his driver, This made him an honourary “Carny” and he was also Paddy’s “strategy man”, cruising the Midway to settle disputes between the carnies.

Later, he worked for a man who made inflatable garages and boats. I remember an inflatable hut in our front yard. The man offered him 10% commission and 90% salary, or 20% commission and 80% salary. Dad asked for 100% commission, no salary, and promptly sold the government all the inflatable liferafts for the new aircraft carrier Bonaventure.

Soon, he was doing what he was born to do, selling pipe organs. He traveled North America, and later the world, entertaining Bishops and Monsignors and other clerics. He knew what whisky they liked, where they got their cigars, how risqué the jokes could be. He fit in with these princes of the church. And he was a complete nonbeliever.

He worked for all the leading pipe organ manufacturers, ending up with the best, a company in Quebec, where I grew up. He was a meticulous model maker, cutting facades for miniature organs from Bristol board in complicated patterns that could all come apart and fit in his briefcase.

I slept in his dressing room. I’d hear him in the morning, whistling under his breath as he brushed his hair and tied his tie and shined his shoes. I do that today. He owned cars that were bizarre for the day, Corvairs (2), Peugeots (3) Citroens (2). He once owned a used Mercedes that cost him more to keep than his five children.

He bought a sailing dinghy he never learned to sail. He bought an island in a cottage lake for back taxes, and surprised all the old-timers by building a cottage in the middle of their lake.

He always had the latest camera, tape recorder, hi fi, binoculars. He took trays and trays of Kodachrome slides of us growing up. He sent us to interesting educational summer camps run by socialists. He and my mother worked to elect, in order, Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Gene McCarthy, George McGovern, and then moved back to Canada.

He retired and moved to England, then Vermont, then the Maritimes. Each place they went, he and my mother made new firm friends, usually much younger, and always eccentric. Wherever he went, he’d sidle into the local Anglican church and ask if he could try the organ. He’d cut loose with an impromptu recital and the existing organist, usually a little old lady, would quietly go home and kill herself. He was the local organist and choirmaster everywhere he lived until he was 87.

He doesn’t do much now. Sleeps. Complains. Won’t eat. Can’t hear. But, boy oh boy, I hope I have memories like that when I’m his age.

One More Birthday

One More Birthday

My father had his 89th birthday last week, and it didn’t make him very happy. We were sitting in a faux English pub in Niagara eating clammy fries and mystery burgers, and he burst out “Why am I still here? What’s the point? I’m too feeble to walk, and I don’t want to eat anymore. I shouldn’t be here”.

I was hot and cranky. The drive from Toronto had been a two and a half hour crawl for no other reason than border line-ups at Buffalo and Fort Erie. The meal was terrible, and they didn’t have any non-alcoholic beer, not even Molson Exel, which isn’t fit for horses.

What hadn’t occurred to me is that this was probably the last birthday of my father’s I’d celebrate with him, even if it was in a dingy pub on a blazing hot day. I forget, he’s had many, many birthdays, and he doesn’t have any left.

The trip to Niagara on the boat had been scrubbed. The weekend it was planned for was blustery and rainy, with 20 knot headwinds. Smashing through the swells across the lake wasn’t my idea of fun, and I hadn’t had the boat long enough to risk it.

I decided in the morning not to set off. I didn’t think dad would even remember he was going to see my boat that afternoon, so I didn’t bother calling.

He called at noon “Are you on the high seas? It looks mighty windy from here”.

I admitted I had chickened out, and he said “I thought you might have”. It occurred to me that, rather than forgetting about this visit, it had probably been the centerpiece of his planning for the last month. As he says, he has nothing to do at Serenity Towers but sleep.

The trip is now planned for mid-September, with a trip through the Welland Canal as well (now there’s a scary thought, sharing locks with lake freighters). However, the urgency has gone, and Dad is no longer impatiently awaiting it. I think this is a good thing, because he’s determined to stick around until he sees my boat. I hope he does.