(OT): RFM...
My father, 95 years old, died on Holy Thursday in a St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital Intensive Care room... with my brother and I present... and just as my sister (who had driven for three hours from Austin) drew open curtain to enter into his room. He was heavily sedated and asleep, but he roused himself just a little bit... opened his eyes to a half slit and looked right into mine.
Then... there was... well... you know the rest, I suppose. His eyes were peaceful. His mouth open... reaching for air... or was he singing? (I had told him at Christmas that I had heard his voice in my apartment earlier in 2004 calling my name. His response without missing a beat: "Son, are you sure I wasn't singing?")
There had been a quick turn of events beginning the prior Friday night when he was admitted with double pneumonia and blood clots in each leg. Things seemed to stabilize until he endured a horrible Tuesday morning with the apparent mis-administration of a main line in his chest, a subsequent pneumothorax, and, what we learned a day later was... a massive heart attack. (One doctor's words: "I don't know how in the world he survived the heart attack.")
Had he not survived it, I'd've have not received his last gift to me. He had been very slow to emerge from a round of sedation. There were concerns that he might not come "up" at all. But, he gradually came to during the Tuesday night that I spent with him. The "coming to" process was, in its way, a wonder to watch. A flicker of a focused gaze from out of eyes that had been "empty" for hours. A finger's slight move. A little, very little color in his cheeks. The return of tone in the muscles of the face. Life, as it reappeared before me, is a subtle orchestration of muscle tone (tension), attention, and the rhythm of breath.
As he was rousing himself, I saw a bit of pain in his eyebrows.
With the breathing tube (which he kept trying to yank out), he was only able to communicate with his always-expressive pale blue eyes and nods and shakes of his head. I asked him a series of "Yes" or "No" questions. And he seemed to be remarkably clear for one who had been through a storm that was far worse than I knew at that moment.
Wednesday, or so we were told when I went back up to visit in the afternoon, he was "resting comfortably." Those words, unfortunately, masked bad news that was darkening his prospects seemingly by the minute.
Then, as these things go I suppose, all systems began switching to the "off" position. "Failure of multiple systems" were the words used.
There's so much I want to write about him. And I will. I want to write about his "habit of happiness": the smile that was always there in his eyes; the way he'd whistle to birds in the morning; the geraniums and irises and roses he tended; the songs he sang to nurses, grocery clerks, attendants... anyone who would listen. He knew how to take delight in little things: the taste of a poached egg on buttered toast; grapefruit sprinkled with Imperial Sugar; the blooming of the redbuds and wisteria; the songs of "Carousel" and "Oklahoma."
Today at his service, each of the children spoke of Dad's life. I quoted his beloved poet of New England, Robert Frost. Dad's favorite poem was "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." And at the end of my short remarks, I cited the beginning of a poem that Dad (to my knowledge) didn't know: "After Apple-Picking", written in 1914.
The lines are these:
"My long, two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree,
Toward heaven still.
There's a barrel that I didn't fill
beside it; and there may be two or three
apples that I didn't pick upon some bough.
But, I am done with apple-picking now."
No posts about this news are expected or, probably, appropriate. None here knew him. But, as I had written of him in the past, I wanted my friends here to know.
I had thirty minutes or so alone with him... in his hospital room... after he passed. Again, as I had said throughout my Tuesday night and part of Wednesday, I thanked him for everything. His left hand was dark purple from too many needles or, perhaps, even from fighting his entubation. His finely tapered fingers were still warm.
Then, as I was leaving, I wrote these words on the board in his room:
"RFM
November 23, 1909 to March 24, 2005
A sweet, loving, happy man."
Best Regards,
c m
