AGS 4860

Senior Seminar II

June 3, 2002

Anonymous

Telegram on the Table Assignment – Option 3

The Inconvenient Phone Calls

My feelings for my father were always indifferent, just as his seemed for me. As I was growing up, I became embarrassed of him. It was true that he managed to work every day and made sure the bills were always paid. It was also true that he was never home in the evenings or on weekends, not because he was working late, but because he was a regular at all of the bars in our small town. He was a city councilman, a basketball coach, and a baseball coach. He attended the council meetings and the games in between stops at the bars. Boys who had been on his team while I was in school and as I grew older and dated, would tease me about my father being a drunk. Sometimes I truly hated him because of the stories I heard. People would laugh and tell me stories of bets he made, one which included him running all the way from a bar on one side of town to another located on the other side. I envisioned him running along the highway in the business suit he always wore to council meetings. It made me physically sick to my stomach when I saw him drunk. This didn’t happen too often because he always came home long after we were in bed.

The only time I can recall not seeing my father with a cigarette in his hand while I was growing up was the one hour he spent every Sunday in church. I remember all seven of us children begging him to stop smoking. I recall sitting with him in church and being so embarrassed and a bit concerned about how hard and long he coughed. He would cough so violently that he could barely catch his breath. This resulted in him making all kinds of embarrassing involuntary sounds all through Mass. These episodes brought about combined feelings of anger, embarrassment, fear, and concern. Sometimes I was afraid that he wasn’t going to catch his breath. Other times I was embarrassed about how much noise he was making. It would always make me angry when he lit up as he stepped outside the church doors.

I vividly remember the day I moved out of the house when I was 18. My mother was visiting her relatives in Newfoundland. Since it was Sunday and all of the bars were closed in town, he happened to be home. He would not help me move all of my belongings into the family station wagon. However, he watched as I loaded the car. He told me that it was my choice to move and I would have to do it by myself - I did. I had grown accustomed to doing things myself. I had successfully decided where I was going to Business College and how to get a student loan myself. I went to the college alone and registered for one year of school. I was disappointed and reluctant when I found out that my father had to sign some papers at the college. I dreaded the visit because I knew how it would go. My father was extremely uncomfortable and intimidated in any situation that did not involve his very limited and familiar routine and environment. At the college, he could barely speak and appeared out of place and awkward. The scenario seemed to make everyone in the room uncomfortable, especially me.

Shortly after I graduated and moved on to my first real job in the big city, my dad had a massive heart attack and had to undergo quadruple bypass surgery. This was the first emergency our family had ever experienced. We were all at the hospital and were very frightened. Since he was in a hospital in the city where I lived, I visited him every day. I experienced unfamiliar feelings of love and concern for him. He seemed so fragile. Eventually he began to plead with me daily to sneak cigarettes into the hospital for him and a fellow heart patient. I was so disappointed and disgusted. I still remember the looks on their faces as I entered each day. They would stand in the hall and watch hopefully as I walked toward them, wringing their hands like heroine addicts. I finally gave in and brought them the cigarettes.

We had learned long ago that he truly could not live without alcohol and cigarettes and he continued this way of life after surgery. In fact, he bragged that with his new arteries he had a new lease on life and continued to smoke and drink excessively. My family was so disappointed and hurt, wishing that we could show him photographs of himself plugged into the life-support machines. It would not have changed him. He was going to live life the way he wanted to, no matter how much a change meant to his family.

At this point, I remember thinking that I would not care when he died. I was furious. He was killing himself daily no matter what any of us said or did. He did this in spite of his small children standing in front of him, drawing lines on the cigarettes and asking him to please not smoke beyond that point (we had learned that the most harmful ingredients were near the filter). At other times, when we asked if he could play with us or attend events we were involved in, he would tell us repeatedly that he had to go "count the money" (one of his duties as trustee at the Eagle’s Lodge). As we grew older, we all learned to joke about these things and act like they didn’t bother us. Humor has always been my family’s biggest defense. We would say that Ed’s Tavern was his second home. We all knew the phone numbers to places like the Eagle’s Lodge, Ed’s Tavern, The Curve, etc., and would call and ask for him if we found it necessary. We didn’t find it necessary very often. We knew how much being at the bar meant to him and how he did not like to be disturbed. If there was a rare occasion where it was imperative that he come home, we knew to call as far in advance as possible since it took him a long time to get back home even though the bars were all less than a mile away.

As the years passed, he became very ill and was finally diagnosed with a fatal lung disease. He stopped smoking because he could not breathe well enough to inhale the drag of a cigarette. There was no way to reverse the damage that had been done and there was no turning back. He was going to die a terrible, slow and painful death. His lungs were hardening and would one day stop working. I told myself that he did it to himself; that we desperately tried to warn him and he would never listen. I recalled how he would get angry with us if we tried to talk to him about it. Now he was going to die. To make things worse, my mother was forced to take care of him every day for years. The man who never wanted to be at home now was unable to leave. I would tell myself that she deserved it since she never did anything to get out of this sorry situation. She enabled him all of those years.

None of this affected me too much. In my mid-twenties, I had moved to Detroit and only went back home two or three times a year. I would occasionally make phone calls to my dad. They were always awkward. We never really learned how to talk to each other. It was obvious that he was very uneasy trying to make conversation with me. He would quickly hand the phone over to my mother.

Sometimes I felt angry about the situation in which I felt my father had placed my mother. Now that all of her children were grown and gone, after she had virtually raised us on her own, she was forced to stay home and nurse the man who never wanted to be there. I continued to tell myself that his death would be a blessing. When he died, I reasoned, mom would be free to travel - which was one of her life-long dreams. His illness really wasn’t affecting me. I had a full and busy life in Detroit. I had a great family, a nice job, good friends and was attending college classes. I didn’t really have time to dwell on the situation.

In December 1999 came the final blow. He could barely walk, his oxygen level was getting dangerously low and he contracted pneumonia. He had to be hospitalized. I had to go home and visit him even though it was not a convenient time for me. I was preparing for final exams in two classes and had to wrap up a few things at work before the holidays. I resented the pressure I felt, but I had to go since my siblings had been bearing the weight of the situation. During his stay in the hospital he was diagnosed with lung cancer on top of the already existing disease that had progressed to the final stages. I visited him there a few times. The visits were awkward as usual. He asked me to bring him chocolate milkshakes and he talked to my husband about the Indianapolis Colts football games. We struggled to make conversation.

I had to get back to Detroit. There was nothing I could do for him. I had noticed though that my mother was exhausted and needed back up. I eased my feelings of guilt by putting together a schedule so that a family member would stay at the house each weekend to relieve her. My scheduled weekend was coming up in mid-January. I went on with my life as usual. I registered for eight hours of classes and began the first week of the semester. I made a few phone calls. That was the extent of my support. I didn’t have the time or the energy to deal with this situation that he had brought on himself. I was more determined than ever to continue to work on living a productive and positive life with my family.

I talked to him on Sunday during an Indianapolis Colts football game. He could barely talk because he could barely breathe. All he said was "thanks for everything." I thought to myself, "How dramatic, what’s that all about? He probably just wants to watch the game undisturbed." I hung up. On Tuesday, I received a call from my brother saying that I should probably come home. Hospice had been called and things were progressing very quickly. It wasn’t a convenient time. It would have to wait for the weekend. It was my weekend to fill in at the house anyway. I was certain things were not that bad. This man had totally abused his body and had bounced back so many times. I was sure I could wait until the weekend. A few hours later, my sister-in-law called me from his bedside and said the whole family was there. She said that they thought he might be holding on for me to say goodbye. They put the phone to his ear and I said goodbye. He died within seconds. I knelt in my study for hours crying and praying. I cried through the night. I could not stop crying the next day as my husband drove for four hours back to Indiana. I could barely breathe, my chest was so tight.