Home Is Burning (44 page)

“Yeah, me, too,” said my mom, not picking up on the sarcasm. “Okay, everyone out of the room. I need some time with Dad. It shouldn't take too long,” she added with an air of confidence.

We all shook our heads in disbelief and exited the room, not wanting to stick around to watch our dying parents do oral.

My mom and my dad had been married for thirty years. They had a really loving relationship. Life is all about accumulating people who love you no matter what, and they loved each other no matter what. He had stood by her through all the cancer. Through all the battles she had with his family. Through the deaths of her parents. Through the deaths of her many cancer friends. And now she had stood by him through all this. Their love for each other really came through during my dad's last year, even if my dad was crippled and my mom was zonked out for most of it. They would do anything for each other. Fuck, my mom was even giving him blow jobs right up to the last minute …

“Oh, fuck!” I yelled to Greg. “My camera is in there. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

I had to get it out of there. I really didn't want to be the owner of some amateur porno of a cancer patient blowing a terminally ill man about to die from Lou Gehrig's disease as they both cried. “I've got to get that thing back,” I said.

I knocked on the door. Nothing. It's pretty hard to talk when you have Lou Gehrig's disease, or if you have a dick in your mouth. I knocked again. Nothing. What should I do? If I thought the image of my dad dying tomorrow was going to be haunting, imagine having the image of my mom blowing my dad imprinted onto my brain forever. It'd be too much. I'd have to check straight into an insane asylum. Should I risk it? Should I swing open the door? Should I send Stana in there? Should I just go in there with my ears and eyes covered?

“Fuck it, I'm going in,” I said.

I swung open the door with my eyes covered, trying to go straight for the camera. But, as I entered, I didn't hear the sounds of someone getting blown, but rather an in-love couple gently weeping and whispering “I love you,” over and over. I took my hands off my eyes. My mom was curled up next to my dad, holding him tightly. My dad was crying.

“Don't go, Bob. I can't lose you. You're the love of my life. I can't live in a world without you,” my mom bawled.

“It will be okay, Deb. You're stronger than I am. You'll be just fine,” my dad said.

“Sorry to interrupt. I just didn't want the, you know, camera on during the blow job, or whatever,” I said, picking up the camera and turning it off.

“Tell him not to go. Tell him that we'll continue to take care of him. Tell him that everything will get better,” my mom cried.

I took a deep breath. “Well, it's his decision, and he's made it. So I think we've got to accept it. We've fought this disease long enough,” I said, getting a little weepy. “Fuck, that was a great moment. We really should have gotten it on camera. Can we reshoot that?” I asked.

“I'll have no one,” my mom said, ignoring my question.

“You'll have us kids. We're not Dad, but we'll help you out,” I said, while giving a reassuring nod toward my dad, finally feeling like the man of the house for once. I walked over and wrapped my arms around them both. I pulled out of it. “I'll leave you two to it. Just wanted to grab the camera.”

*   *   *

After my parents had done whatever it was that they did in their time alone, the whole family went on a walk through our neighborhood. When we got home, we read some letters from friends and loved ones to my dad. He loved listening to those. The letters combined with all the good-byes made him feel like the most loved person on earth.

As night hit, we were all in my dad's room, not really saying much, just enjoying the comfort of being a complete family for one last night. I read my dad some of my writing. I was expecting him to laugh and cry and love it, but he just noted that he didn't know I masturbated so much. “I do,” I reassured him.

It was finally time for bed. Jessica, my mom, Tiffany, and Chelsea were all sleeping in Dad's room, so there was no room for Greg or me. Oh well. We got to spend a lot of time with him over the last year, more than the rest. I felt fulfilled.

I said good night to my dad for the last time and headed out. As I was about out of the room, my mom yelled after me. “Wait!” I was half expecting to turn back and see my dad standing up, smiling, not having Lou Gehrig's disease, holding my laughing mom. “We just played the most epic prank of all time on you. We're fine. We just wanted to see if you truly cared about us. It was a test, a way for us to get you to become an adult and experience some real-life shit. You passed. You proved your love. Everything will go back to normal starting now,” I expected them to say as everything faded back to normal. A
WELCOME HOME DAN THE MAN
sign would drop from the ceiling. My dad would hand me a glass of wine. My mom's hair would shoot out of her head, growing into the beautiful, curly delight it had been before cancer got to her. We'd dance around the room and laugh and sing and promise to be happy forever.

Instead, my mom shot out of bed, fumbled around for the CD player remote, and said, “We've got to listen to the song one last time.” My dad rolled his eyes as “I'll Follow the Sun” started to play.

I finally got to bed. The sheets still smelled like cat piss.

 

THE DAY OF

My dad picked September 22 as the last day of his life because it was the first official day of autumn, his favorite time of the year. When fall hits in Utah, the leaves begin to change, making the mountainside as colorful as a box of crayons. The weather hangs around the seventies—never too hot, never too cold. It's the last warm gasp of fresh air before the snowplows and salt cover our icy roads.

Just as the season began to change, so, too, would our lives. We were about to lose our leader, our teacher, our father, our friend. The suffering would be over, but the mourning would begin. I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. Sure, my dad wouldn't be in pain anymore, and I'd get my life back. But my dad, my pal, wouldn't be around.

On the day of, I woke up around seven and lay in bed thinking about how I wanted today to be the perfect send-off for my dad. I wanted it to be a magical day full of love, heartfelt good-byes, and reminders of what a great guy he was. I wanted him to feel good about his decision to end this. I wanted him to realize that he lived a meaningful and complete life, even if it was cut short by a shitty disease. I wanted him to know how much he meant to me, to us all.

I got out of bed and did my whole showering, dressing, brushing my teeth, judging myself in the mirror for getting so fat routine, then started the last day of my dad's life.

I timed my steps with the audible in/out air pumping from the rhythmic respirator as I ascended the stairs to his room. I had grown to love the sound of the respirator, even though I'd initially hated it. Sure, it would beep, and it was heavy, and I would occasionally bare-knuckle-punch it and talk shit to it. But its noises had come to be the heartbeat of the whole household. In a few hours, we would no longer hear its sounds, and that scared the shit out of me. A silence would fall over this house as though it was Pompeii after the volcano. Would we all be left covered in ashes and blackened until someone dug us out? Would we be frozen in this moment and become a tragic tourist destination?

“Dad, wake up. Wake up,” I said as I wiggled his big toe dangling off the end of his home hospital bed. He was still asleep, amazingly. He looked as peaceful as I'd ever seen him. He even had a little smirk on his face. He was content.

My mom was curled up in bed with him, a frown on her face. She was not content. She didn't want him to go. She was clinging to him so hard that it looked as if she wanted to follow him to the grave. Maybe that'd be for the best: the two of them going at once. Maybe we could get a discount on the funerals, some sort of fucked-up two-for-one deal.

“Wake up, Dad,” I said again. “I made you a big breakfast.”

My dad slowly blinked awake. Last day on earth and he had to wake up to his fat son hovering over him, rubbing in the fact that he couldn't eat real food. “Made you eggs Benedict with a side of extra-greasy bacon and a big glass of freshly squeezed OJ,” I joked as I grabbed some cans of Promote and set them bedside for his last meal.

Tiffany, who had slept on the floor of her old room, appeared with her morning Starbucks. Jessica and Chelsea had slept in the bed next to my dad's. Greg wandered into the room in his morning robe. We were all there.

My mom slowly woke up as well. She had been completely knocked out by the Klonopin. The short hair that had managed to grow back in after the chemo was standing straight up. Her face was glossy from her body trying to sweat out all the toxins. She looked like the Grinch.

“You look like the Grinch,” I told her. “The Chemo Grinch.”

“Did you really make him breakfast?” asked the Chemo Grinch.

“No, it was just a stupid joke because he can't eat,” I explained.

“Well, I'm just going to have yogurt for breakfast,” she said.

“Changing it up a little. I like it,” I said.

I looked outside for the first time. It was rainy and gray. “Oh, perfect,” I muttered to myself. We had planned on taking my dad up Millcreek Canyon for one last family stroll alongside the river. But, with the rain, that plan was ruined.

“Fuck, I lost my rosary,” the Chemo Grinch said. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. I need that goddamn thing if I'm going to get through this.” The rosary was my grandpa Joe's, one of his only possessions through several years in a Japanese POW camp during World War II. She figured if it could get him through that, it could get her through this. She shot out of bed. “Quick, everyone look for my rosary. I need it. How am I going to get through all this without it? There is no way.”

“Well, there is no God, if that helps at all,” I callously said.

“Danny, I need that fucking rosary,” the Chemo Grinch said as she dropped to the ground to look for it.

As usual, I was being a real asshole. And my poor dad had to watch my awful display of behavior. But I was upset with my mom. Sure, I felt sorry for her, but I was angry that she had spent the last few weeks completely numbed out by drugs. I understood how hard it was, but still, I wished she would put her own needs aside for just today so that we could all focus on my dad.

“We'll find it. It's here somewhere,” Tiffany said. She wasn't in the mood to joke around. She got on the floor and started to look for the rosary with my mom. Tiff was always the leader—the one who took things seriously while Greg and I dicked around and made stupid jokes.

“Oh, here it is,” I said.

“Where?” my frantic mom said.

“Just kidding,” I said. “Oh, wait, here it is.”

“You found it?” said my mom.

“Just kidding,” I said, really racking up my asshole points for the day. What's the matter with me? Fucking with my mom on my dad's last day. We were supposed to have a very peaceful day that left my dad thinking that we'd be all right after he left us.

“Please. Stop that. This is very serious. I can't deal with today if I don't have some comfort,” she explained.

“Okay, I won't fuck with you anymore,” I said. “Oh, here it is. I'm not kidding this time.”

“Really,” she said.

“Just kidding,” I said.

Tiffany finally found my mom's rosary beneath my dad's hospital bed. My mom started to calm down instantly. I guess religion can provide some comfort, if nothing else. I told her to go take a shower and chase down a Klonopin with some yogurt to relax, so we could proceed with my dad's last day. She agreed.

*   *   *

Today wasn't all fun and games. Sunny from hospice was due to arrive at our house around 1 p.m. She would start my dad on a low morphine drip that would slowly leave him unconscious and unable to feel pain, or anything for that matter. Dr. Bromberg would arrive around two thirty. He would start turning down the respirator when my dad was officially deemed unconscious via the morphine. He would gradually die via loss of oxygen to the body, around four o'clock. Then we'd run to the window and we'd signal to the neighborhood kids to release the balloons. Creepy Todd had that all organized. That was his job.

The other people who were going to be in the room would arrive around noon. However, we got some bad news from Sam. He was supposed to spend the day with us, but, in an extra hard slap to the face by God's callused hand, Sam's father had passed away the previous Wednesday. So he was in Florida laying his dad to rest as we prepared to do the same back at home. He left a nice message on my phone that I played for my dad:

Hi, Dan. This is Sam calling from Florida. I know this is going to be really hard for you all the next couple of days. Tell your dad that I really wish I could be there. I'm so sorry that it didn't work out. Let him know that I'm thinking about him. I love him so dearly. I probably have two really close friends in the world and today I'm losing one of them. I'll miss him greatly. He'll always be with me. Yesterday I had a great run on Clearwater Beach. I thought about him. I don't think I'll have a run in the future without thinking about him.

It would have been great for Sam to have been there. It would have, at least, made my dad feel better about everything he was going through. Sam had been everything you could ask a best friend to be. The two ran six marathons together, and when my dad got ALS, instead of running the other way, Sam stood by his side. They didn't finish every race together—there was the occasional cramp or pulled muscle or bathroom break that separated the two—but I wish my dad had been able to finish this one with Sam by his side.

“You know I slept with Sam's daughter, Becca, right?” I asked.