By John Burtis
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
My old man knew all the words to two disparate works, Barbara Fritchie and the Navy Hymn. and they marked him as a student of the Civil War and a naval veteran, much as his moods denoted my childhood.
Not long ago, still in good health, he sent me his leather New Yorker fire helmet and his World War II scrap book, with his many photos of both theaters of operations.
Not unexpected at the time, these small acts marked the turning point, a finality in his life, the last personal gifts of a father to his eldest son.
We had been at loggerheads for years, ever since I quit his little league baseball team at 10.
It was too much for me, having the old man as coach, and I took the coward's way out. Though, in hindsight, I was never much of a baseball player, save as catcher, while he put me at first, where he had always played, a position I abhorred.
In return for this sleight, my old man never attended my football games or wrestling matches, and the hatred simmered.
He wanted me to attend an Ivy League college with one of the scholarships I'd received. I dismissed him and chose a school where I had none.
We grew far apart, with me living in Los angeles for many years and my father and mother residing in New York.
When I returned to New England to finish college, my folks moved to Texas. and still the anger boiled away.
When my mother passed away in the fall of 2004, the discord began to soften.
In the course of a number of recent visits to my father's home, he began to ask me those dreaded questions. "Was I a good father?" "Did I do ok as a dad?"
always wary, I came to recognize these small questions as his final surrender to me, to time, and to his final loss of control.
This past Saturday we received the call from his CPa who said the medics were coming for him because he could no longer write his checks or speak. Then his assisted living staff called with all the updates. Then more calls came in from the hospital, my brother, and the phone continued to ring for about an hour.
and like so many folks in our predicament, you worry, make plans, call the doctor, prepare to make the change from assisted living to the nursing home, pull the airlines up on line, and wait.
I remember the final scene in the movie Titanic, where the lone survivor is welcomed aboard the ghostly ship, now come alive with lights and people in the grand promenade.
and I picture the same return for my father when his time finally comes — his climbing to the bridge of his LST, the smoke and fire of Normandy, the planes overhead, the smell of battle joined for the liberation of Europe, and his long lost shipmates — those he has spoken of for so many years and whose pictures I now possess.
I can also see the old man in the jump seat of that perfect red '53 american LaFrance Custom in Port Dickinson, NY, gold leaf letters painted on its doors, racing to a fire, with his childhood pals aboard, in his striped coat and leather helmet, serving his community as he knew best for 42 years.
It's interesting to see how the generational torch is passed — first with the auto, then in care, in silence, then with the phone calls to a doctor I've never met, to administrators in his assisted living home, to the nurses on his floor, in conversations with his CPa, and with my kid brother, who lives in Fort Worth, not too far away. and soon to his attorney.
and now I'm waiting for another call from my brother, all grown up, now, with a son in ROTC, with the results of a cat scan and the reasons why my old man can no longer speak, and I realize that another member of the great generation is preparing for the calling of retreat and that final playing of taps.
My kid brother and I said we can hear my old man at the dinner table, between the meal and dessert, in one of his better moods…
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