Looking for my dad

I came back to Syracuse this weekend to get the remainder of the items from our previous house in Minoa. For those of you not in the know, Nicole and I moved to the small town of Liberty Center, about 20 miles outside of Toledo, Ohio in July. We packed everything we could fit in the moving truck, but had to leave a lot of our stuff behind that just would not fit. When we got to Liberty Center, we quickly unpacked the truck before needing to turn around and head back to Syracuse that same day. My dad, who had been in the hospital battling c.diff, had taken a turn for the worse. We were able to make it back in time to be with my dad as he died the night of July 2nd. Following the services, we returned to Ohio, packing our car with as much as it could hold but still leaving some behind to be moved at an undetermined later date. That turned out to be this weekend.

Jonathan came with me. He wasn't sure he wanted to come at first, but after I told him that A) he didn't have a choice and B) we'd be going to the state fair, he came around to the idea. We got in late Friday night and went to the fair with my friends Josh Shear and JB Busch, whom we were staying with, on Saturday. Today, with the help of Josh and JB, we got to the actual business of collecting the remainder of our stuff. We fit everything we could in the car and curbed the rest. Walking around the house it came to me that this was the last time I'd be at the house. It's not like I was in love with the house by any stretch. It's a duplex we shared with my parents, eventually with just my dad. (See my previous post here for details) When I returned from walking around the house, Jonathan was behind the toolshed tending to the small grave we had dug for his hamster, Fuzzy, that died last winter. He was placing rocks in a circle around the burial spot. He said it was a circle of life. Something about my son's devotion to his deceased pet combined with the finality of leaving the house where I'd cared for my dad in his final years got to me and I started welling up. Josh and JB had left, having sensed I needed some time alone with my son around the time Jonathan began saying goodbye to the house, his climbing tree, and his hamster (again). Soon I began crying, and then full-on sobbing. Jonathan didn't notice at first, still putting the finishing touches on the "circle of life" arrangement. Soon though, he came over to me, and asked what was wrong. I didn't know what to say, and didn't know if I could get a word out if I did.

I have what I consider to be a strange relationship with the concept of death, although in reality it's probably fairly common. An example is my grandfather's funeral in 1997. I was a pall bearer, along with my cousins. My grandfather was the patriarch of the family and our entire extended family came to the funeral. At the gravesite, my family sobbed openly as they lay roses on the casket. I, on the other hand, made silly faces at my cousin's cousin that I had a crush on and tried not to laugh. It's not that I found my family's actions funny at all, and I certainly didn't find his death funny, but I think I went into an instinctual reactive mode. Although I still considered myself Catholic at the time, I was already well on my way to the atheism I hold now. For me, death is final. It is the end of the universe for the being experiencing it. I am terrified of it, to say the least. I have, at times, experienced acute nausea when considering it. I am fighting that feeling right now as I type this. Humor, laughing in the face of death, is the only respite I have from the horrible truth that I believe awaits us all. My way of dealing with death is by not dealing with it. Such is the mode I went into the week following my dad dying. "Pizza for dinner? Yes, I think it's what dad would have wanted." Thankfully, his wake was filled with laughter as people shared stories. A friend of his from college, the only friend of his from college I have ever met, told me a story of the two of them jumping into a boxcar and hoboing across Kansas.

The next day was the funeral, where I shared some words about how much he loved his family. I wrote the words, I said them, but I only half-believed them. Sure, he loved us, I don't doubt that, but he could certainly have showed it more to Nicole and I, who became his caregivers as he required more and more help the last few years. He had gone into a depression when my grandfather died and never fully came out of it. Nothing had meant anything to my dad until he got approval from my grandfather. Think of my grandfather as the casino teller window of my dad's life. After my grandfather died, there was nowhere to cash in his chips, and everything became worthless. The depression he was in got worse when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 2006. By the time my mother left him, he had almost totally retreated from life, and no longer appeared interested in living it. I found myself at the funeral having to eulogize someone I had long since lost respect for and no longer wanted to be around. I used a line near the end of my eulogy, "he died as he lived, with his family" that I had reworked from something I had told my brother earlier in the week when trying to explain my feelings, telling him "dad died as he lived, lying down in front of a TV." Nicole, Jonathan, and I left the day after the funeral. I was moving on.

But here I was, standing in my old backyard, leaning against a tree with tears streaming down my face, my son asking me what was wrong. I told him I missed my dad. He said he did too. I sat down, collected myself, and told Jonathan we were going to go to the cemetery where the urn containing my dad's ashes had been buried next to my grandfather a few weeks before. We got to Assumption Cemetery and then I remembered I had no idea where the grave was. The office was closed, so we had nothing to go on. I called my mother, but she didn't know. Jonathan and I walked around looking at headstones. We had done this before a few years ago on a Memorial Day. Nicole was working and I thought since it was Memorial Day and we had nothing to do, we should go pay our respects to my grandfather, but we hadn't been able to find the headstone then. Today though, we were going to find it. I called my brother, who was able to give me some idea of where it was. Jonathan told me about how he knew his grandpa loved him because he would buy him pizza whenever he wanted. We looked in another section. Jonathan told me how he believes my dad is a baby now because he believes in a life cycle, at least that's what mom told him. I said that sounded nice and asked if the baby could help us find the grave.  Jonathan got thirsty, because looking for graves is thirsty business. We went across the street to the gas station and got some Gatorade. We looked some more. Jonathan asked me what it was like when my father died. He knew I was there with him at the hospital. I told him. I told him about the slow, labored breathing. I told him about his body tensing up right at the end. He asked what "tensing" meant. I pushed my arms straight down and showed him. He pushed his arms straight down and walked like Frankenstein. I was glad there was no one around. We kept looking.  Eventually we found it. A modest, medium-sized headstone near the end of a row. My last name on it. I brushed some dry grass clippings from the base stone, now engraved with my dad's name. Jonathan told me he wanted to say goodbye to Grandpa, I said okay, and then he said the following: "Grandpa, I'm sorry you died, but it happens." He asked me if I had anything to say. I didn't, he had said it all.