{Prompt: Describe your father’s death}
My father died right in front of me, suddenly and unexpectedly, on a cold winter day, in 1977.
I was twelve years old at the time.
It was February second, a cold and bleak winter day. We lived in a tiny, drafty bungalow in west Raleigh, heated by an oil furnace, but on the coldest days we supplemented its all-too-intermittent output of warm air with an electric radiator, which could be moved from room to room. My father, mother, brother, and I were sitting in the living room, with throw blankets here and there, trying to warm our insides with a hot meal.
I was eating my dinner from a bowl, sitting on a handmade walnut stool, with my family sitting nearby. My brother was sitting on my left. My mother was sitting to my right. My father was sitting in a chair across from me. We were just sitting in a circle, having a homemade dinner on a dark, cold winter evening.
Then my father stopped eating his dinner. He grimaced, and he looked down at the floor. He looked sick. I said, “It’s not that bad, is it?” meaning the food—it was sarcasm.
And then he collapsed. My mother went to his side, helping him to the floor. She asked him in a shaky voice, “Gerry, what’s wrong?” He didn’t answer.
She begged him to respond as he lay on the floor. He didn’t move. She pleaded. She prayed for God’s help.
My brother and I looked on in disbelief. She told us to call 911. So we ran to the phone in the kitchen, around the corner, a room away.
And that’s the last time I ever saw my father. Lying on the floor with my mother cradling his head, wailing in anguish.
My brother and I made the call for emergency services together. I don’t know who did the talking. I don’t like to think about it, because I was scared, and utterly helpless.
We gave them all the information that we could. One of us said, “My father is lying on the floor. Something’s wrong. We need help.”
“…We live at 2807 Wayland Drive.”
“…Gallup. G-A-L-L-U-P.”
“…The number is 919-787-9373.”
“…Please hurry.”
None of us knew CPR.
None of us knew what to do.
None of us knew what was happening.
Someone on the phone told us to go to the bottom of our driveway to flag down EMS when they arrived, so the paramedics could get inside as quickly as possible.
So we ran to the bottom of the driveway, skittering gravel along the way.
We heard the sirens and saw the lights a block away.
When they arrived, they grabbed their bags, colored with fluorescent orange and yellow reflective tape. They hurried up the driveway and through the screen door. The room filled up with rescue workers in uniform.
There were medical questions and bewildered answers. “He just collapsed.” “…He wasn’t feeling good today. He left work early.” “…He went to the doctor’s office this afternoon, but they didn’t find anything wrong.”
And before we knew it, he was in the ambulance. And he was on the way to the hospital. My mother went with them. My brother and I stayed home, stunned by the whirlwind of chaos and destruction that had just occurred.
The shock was profound. The next time the phone rang, I answered, hoping to hear that my dad had survived — hoping to hear that the rescue efforts were a success.
Instead, it turned out to be an ordinary call — completely unrelated. It was a call from a customer on my afternoon paper route who was calling to say that they hadn’t seen their paper.
It wasn’t the call I was hoping for, but at least it gave me a purpose — a reason to leave the house, to try to set aside the anxiety that was roiling inside of me — to think of anything else — to do anything else.
So I grabbed a paper and told my brother, “I missed a house. I have to take them a paper.”
This is what I remember next.
I remember the bitter cold air of the falling night as I pedaled my bike up Gordon Street and back home again.
I remember walking through the front screen door, and spotting my mother with a man in the hallway, inside our house. The hall was unlit. I walked closer. She was with the pastor and my brother.
My brother, his cheeks wet with tears, blurted out, “He’s DEAD,” like a kid screaming and weeping in rage in a schoolyard fight.
I don’t know what happened next. Nothing else mattered.
I remember lying in my bunk, in my bedroom, while people talked with my mother… in hushed voices… in another room.
I lay in my bed. I stayed in my bed, in a kind of delirium—alternately crying, sleeping, and remembering the things that I wanted to forget… the things that I wanted to be undone.
From time to time, I heard the dial tone as my mother picked up the phone. I heard the spinning and clicking of the rotary dial as she made calls to friends and family.
The following day I heard the BRRRING-BRRRING of the phone as people called back, and people called with their condolences. And the doorbell rang, as people came to the house. People came and went, but I stayed in my room.
The next day — a Friday — I went back to school, trying to be brave. Trying to act normal again. Hoping to feel normal again. But I fell apart… I lost it completely… when a teacher pulled me aside to offer her support. I started to cry… and I couldn’t stop.
The memorial service took place a day or two later. I remember sitting in the second pew of our church as the sanctuary filled with mourners, and the memorial service went on around me.
And I remember the bitter cold during the small service on the side of a sloping hill in the memorial gardens, when his remains were buried. Mike and me, my Mom, and her parents were there.
I remember these things like the end of a book about my childhood, like the page that you reach just before you clap the book closed for good.
How Death Changes You
The death of a parent is a source of unspeakable pain… for anyone. Whenever I tell someone, for the first time, in the course of a story about my past life, that my father died, invariably they say, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”
And truly, they are sorry! They are sympathetic. And I’m grateful for their sympathy. But that doesn’t make me feel any more whole… any less wounded… any “better.” The death changes you. It hurts you. It takes away from you. It never gives back.
In a thousand ways, you might remember your happy childhood — your loving parent, and each time the bitterness of that absence grinds you down — it wears away the semblance of what you were — a “normal” person — into a depressed, distracted, morbid, and more cynical version of the normal person who no longer exists.
You feel completely changed. Your mood is out of your control. People who know you — your friends — don’t really know you the same way anymore. So, you feel a little like a stranger to your friends.
And among strangers, you feel like you have a hole in your heart. You feel like something is missing. Something vital is gone, but it isn’t visible. It’s an invisible affliction. No one can tell that you have been mortally wounded — that your (broken) life and their (unbroken) life are fundamentally different. The stranger can’t necessarily tell that your world view is so completely altered. You feel like an imposter.
The Aftermath of Death
When someone dies… in a nuclear family… everyone is affected. They say that children who lose a parent to death, lose not one parent, but two. Although I lost my father to sudden death, I lost my mother in ways that were just as sudden.
For a week or two, we mourned with our community. Our family came together with the church for the funeral and the burial. My mother’s family assisted her in making arrangements and making decisions. Her church family helped her find resources to deal with the legal requirements and provided emotional and spiritual support.
My mother was wounded by her husband’s… my father’s… death, just as much as I was. There were times when she sat in a chair with our pet dog in her lap, and she stared out the window. She just stared, off into space, seemingly forever.
But she didn’t have the luxury of time to process her grief. She had to sell my father’s business — a hobby shop, settle his affairs, open new bank accounts, and find new sources of income.
She had to apply for social security benefits to support her two children while looking for part-time work. That part-time work came in the form of a morning newspaper route, originally run by my brother. (When he later went to college, she took over his route, with me as a helper.)
Even with Social Security and a part-time job, money was tight. We did some shopping at thrift shops. We split wood for a wood burning fireplace in the winter. We collected Green Stamps that we used to redeem for small rewards after shopping at the grocery store.
My mother had all of the responsibilities, now, that had been so judiciously divided before. She had to relearn how to pay all the bills that my father had been paying until then. She had to cook the meals and clean the dishes. She had to encourage our good behavior and discourage the bad. She had to maintain the house, both inside and out. She had to make household decisions, all by herself, sometimes with no help at all.
I give her credit for what she accomplished. I really do. I’ve been told more than once that I should appreciate all she did for me and my brother. She did what she could to raise her children, to maintain a normal family, to take on the role of both mother and father.
A happy occasion - possibly the purchase of a new car.
But still, it’s hard not to miss the time before that awful day — the day that my father died. We were a happy family. We watched TV and played games. We did our homework and our personal chores. We celebrated birthdays and holidays. We planted a garden. We went on summer vacations to the “farm”.
I was a happy kid. I loved to read and to learn. I enjoyed exploring the creek and riding my bike with my brother. I did arts and crafts with my Mom. I went camping and I joined the Boy Scouts, with my Dad’s encouragement.
I was twelve… turning thirteen in the May of ’77. My childhood was already coming to an end, but it ended prematurely… on the second of February 1977… on the day he died… on Groundhog’s Day.
Finding a New Normal
Although my grief was deep and wide, it didn’t last forever. I still had friends that I could hang out with at school, and we would go to movies, like the first episode of Star Wars and the wildly popular musical, Grease.
I had friends in the neighborhood, and we would go bowling, or play Avalon Hill board games while songs from Saturday Night Fever were playing over and over on the radio.
I took up soccer and practiced juggling for hours on the street. I did the morning paper route with my mother. And in 1980, I applied for the School of Science and Math.
Gradually I recovered from the grief of my father’s death, but of course it never left me. From time to time, the feelings returned — a sudden surge of emotion — or a vague sense of uneasiness, as if something was missing. The feelings of love and of loss.
Maybe a birthday for Dad (June 20) - with a CB radio.
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