“Don’t turn out the lights! Don’t turn out the lights!” Dad came out of the morphine induced coma and began jumping up and down on the bed. It took three orderlies at the Long Beach VA hospital to restrain him and shoot him up again. Weak as he was, he struggled to to push them off.
Mel and Uncle Bob reported to us back at Bob & Nora’s home in Redondo Beach - the hub of pre-shiva-sitting while Howard slowly died - that his eyes were wild and he was frothing at the mouth while he jumped. Clearly, part of him was not ready to die. His cancer-riddled body could no longer support his will.
He’d once been a boxer, a soldier, a street-car driver, a newspaper photographer, movie maker, chain smoker, friend, lover, husband, and father. While he was a son, something must have gone terribly wrong inside. Something must have bent the twig that grew into the tree called Howard Wilbur Maxwell. Something was not quite right with him.
My guess is that in the web spun by death, he was caught with remorse of such proportions as to catapult him out of the coma for one last chance to set things right. I wish I could have been there. I wish I could’ve heard from his mouth the nature of the frantic effort. I hope it was, in part, that he wanted to apologize to Mel and me for his drunken tirades, lewd acts and abuse. Here is my fantasy:
Hazel eyes plead, “Forgive me, my children, please forgive me.” From behind closed lids, salt drops squeeze, falling, spreading a gray puddle as the institutional white pillow slip meets its plastic core. Mel and I sit side by side. I’m sixteen He’s twenty two. Our father holds and strokes the backs of our hands with his neat, square-nailed thumbs. Nicotine stains his fingers amber.
I can't bear to look at his sunken cheeks, protruding collar bones, toothless mouth. Mel stares at his own shiny Navy dress shoes. I wish I could hear Mel's thoughts. I reach with my other hand to hold his free hand.
Our Father, who ain’t in heaven yet, Howard is his name, continues: “I wish we’d had doctors instead of lawyers back in 1959, kids. I didn’t want to leave you. I wish I could’ve bound my own wounds so as not to pass the lashes on to you. I’m so very, very sorry for all you had to endure at the hands of my drunken self. I so wish I could’ve spared you the pain. I so wish I could’ve made it right with your beautiful mother, Barbara.
Please know that I will always love and cherish you and watch over you as you grow into the selves you came to be on this planet. As much as Angelically possible, I will guard you and protect you from harm.” Dad squeezes our hands and closes his pleading hazels. Lids are almost translucent. I imagine him watching even as his eyes are closed... now, closed on this side of the veil... to be opened anew on the other side.
Mel squeezes my hand and I return the reassurance as both of our noses drip and our cheeks run with tears of gratitude. The three of us united in some bond of understanding and forgiveness.
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In the late 1980’s, when I was actively healing from the wounds of my childhood, I had a recurring vision of a cobalt blue arrow that I came to associate with my father... as if he was present when that vision came... as if he was pointing out the way of possibility. It was a comforting and re-patterning presence - much the same as the night, about six months after he died - that I sat straight up in bed and moved over to make room for Dad to sit down. While I didn’t see the mattress depress, I felt it as he sat in brilliant, quiet, comforting presence.
Yesterday, in conversation with Emma, whom I've known for twenty years, she allowed as how her husband of 47 years was an alcoholic, and how mean he could be when drunk. I told her, my dad was like that too, but that I wouldn’t trade what happened to me back then for anything, even though it was painful and left tread-marks on my psyche. I am so lucky and filled with gratitude every single day, that I made it through those early years, and was able to find competent healers to help compost the garbage. The healing helps me to sit in presence with folks who have big feelings. I know something of big waves, and the ebb and flow of them. Surfing Howard’s rages taught me how to watch the tides and know that they rise and fall - the frothy swells, not too dissimilar from Howard’s final jumping, frothing farewell. I’m so lucky to have found love; so lucky to have found and married Mark. Not passing on (too many) wounds, perhaps our biggest gift to our children.
Emma, too, has highly competent and functioning children and grand-children. She and I agree that gratitude is the best attitude.
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