Never the same…

37 years ago today, I lost my daddy.  I was only 22 years old when he died. He was literally here one day and gone the next. Thanksgiving week of 1983 started with my father and I sitting down that Monday evening to watch “The Day After” – an unprecedented TV movie about nuclear holocaust.  Not one for that type of story, my mother went out to go play bingo, I think. The next evening, my father came home from work saying he wasn’t feeling very good. My dad was never one to take over the counter medication. When he had a bad cold, for example, he would drink hot tea with honey, lemon – and whiskey – and go to bed and “sweat it out”.  I remember him sitting down to eat dinner that Tuesday night, but he just wasn’t himself. He went to lay down but got up a little while later, saying he had some strange pains in his abdomen. Thinking it was just a stomach thing, he probably performed some more self-medicating and went back to bed.  Much later in the evening – around 11pm as I recall – my mother and I were both still awake and in the kitchen.  Mom was ironing a few things, as she was known to do late at night, and I was sitting at the kitchen table and we were talking. Suddenly, Dad came out of the shadows in the little hallway that led to the kitchen. He had a somewhat pained look on his face, and he was rubbing his hand around the middle of his body.  “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Now I’m feeling it in my back too.”  Still, he never said he was in such excruciating pain that he felt he needed to go to the hospital.  He might have taken some aspirin or something, and he went back to bed again. My mother may have said before he did, well if you’re still feeling bad in the morning, you should go to the doctor.

The next day – Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving – my father went to work. I don’t know how he was feeling that morning when he woke up, because I didn’t see him – but he actually went to work.  My father was the type of man who was very conscientious when it came to his job. He never missed a day of work, no matter what was going on. Considering how he had been feeling the night before, did it make sense not to go to work? Of course.  But that’s not who my dad was. He may have felt a little bit better and thought, tomorrow is Thanksgiving, there’s a long weekend coming up – I’ll just go in, suck it up, and I’ll have the whole weekend to recover, and I’ll probably be fine. 

I had a half day that Wednesday at my job, and had probably gotten out around 1pm. I went home – my mother wasn’t there – but I found my father laying down in bed. Okay – this is definitely out of the ordinary. Dad would never leave work in the middle of the day. I gently shook him awake and asked him how he was feeling. Not good, he said. I don’t remember where my mother was, and there were no cell phones back then, but I remember somehow getting hold of her. I relayed what was going on, and she said she was coming straight home. When she arrived, she got my father up, made him dress, and told him, “We’re going to the doctor.”

To this day, I know for a fact that if my mother hadn’t done that, my father would have never gone to the doctor.  He was a proud albeit stubborn man who wanted to take care of things himself.

In the late afternoon/early evening of that day before Thanksgiving 1983, I was waiting at home for my parents to get back from the doctor’s office and find out what the diagnosis was. Suddenly, my mother was at the door to our apartment. I opened it, and there she stood – alone. I said, “Where’s Dad?”  Her unbelievable response:  He’s in the hospital.

At the doctor’s office, it was determined that my father was going into shock, and that he could be suffering from any number of things – from gall bladder to something with his kidneys. The doctor immediately called the hospital he was affiliated with – Doctors Hospital, which was just a few blocks down on the street from where we lived – and said to my mother, “I just hope they have a bed for him…”

Mom had come home to get a few personal items for Dad and to collect me. We went to the hospital and entered my father’s room. He was still feeling very uncomfortable – tossing and turning in the bed. They had already done a number of tests to try and determine what was going on inside him. My mother had asked the doctor, “Why aren’t you operating on him?”  The doctor told her that putting him on the operating table not knowing exactly what was going on first would be like playing Russian Roulette. His symptoms weren’t specific to any one obvious problem, and that’s why they were doing the tests. My father was uncomfortable but not in distress. He was sitting up in the bed, joking around here and there, as was his way, and talking to me and my mother. When a nurse came in to give him a needle, I remember turning away because I just can’t watch that. We talked some more with the doctor who told us that he would contact us in the morning, as some of the test results wouldn’t be back until then. We said goodbye to my father – I remember leaning over the bed and kissing him on the cheek – and saying, “See you tomorrow, Dad.”

The next morning, the doctor called and told my mother that they were taking my father in for emergency surgery. It was Thanksgiving Day, so we knew it had to be serious for them to be performing an operation on a holiday.

My father’s appendix had torn – but not burst – hence why he wasn’t experiencing the typical pains associated with it.  This was why they couldn’t immediately determine what was wrong with him and what was causing the uncomfortable feelings in his midsection.  As soon as they determined what was wrong, they got him into surgery.  The doctor had indicated that he would call my mother as soon as they were done.

It was probably around 11am on Thanksgiving Day when we got the follow-up call from the doctor.  I cannot explain to you why my mother and I weren’t at the hospital, waiting there for my dad to get out of surgery.  It seemed like an emergency, and yet also seemed routine, so perhaps we thought there was no need. We could wait at home the same as we could wait there, and the hospital was within walking distance, so it wouldn’t take long for us to get there once we got the call that he was in recovery.  That is the only explanation I have for our decision.  Things didn’t seem frantic.

When the doctor called, he began explaining what they found when they opened up my father. I suppose another curious question would be, why didn’t the doctor tell us to come down there, rather than beginning to relay this all over the phone? In hindsight, I can only imagine that if he had done that, it would have tipped us off to the fact that something was wrong. I guess it really didn’t matter how it took place. What he had to tell us wasn’t going to be easy, no matter what.

They found that the torn appendix had leaked out its contents into my father’s body. The doctor told my mother that they removed the appendix and proceeded to “clean him out” – resulting in peritonitis not occurring. My father made it through the surgery. He had completely come out of the full anesthesia that he had been under. He was in the recovery room, laughing and joking with the nurses, when – as the doctor told my mother over the phone – “something very bad happened inside him.”

As I listened to my mother’s side of the phone conversation, she was finally told something that changed our lives and this day forever. The doctor said that suddenly my father’s blood pressure dropped and his temperature rose. His lungs were no longer expanding. He went into distress, and they “did everything that they could.” I had been standing right next to my mother the whole time, and she suddenly said to the doctor, “Say that again…?” It was both statement and question. Of course, I could not hear the doctor’s voice on the other end of the phone when he told my mother, “He expired. We lost him.”

What happened next, I will never forget. Somehow my mother was able to force the words out of her mouth that her husband – my father – was gone. I don’t recall if she even ended the call with the doctor, if she hung up – or maybe even just dropped the receiver. What I distinctly remember is both of us hysterical, with my mother saying over and over again, “Carol – What am I going to do?” And me turning to my father’s chair at the kitchen table behind me. I fell to my knees in front of it, grasping the seat with my hands, and crying out, “No – No! He can’t be gone!”

The next thing I did I am not proud of. I remember getting up from his chair and walking into my room. There was a crucifix hanging on the wall above the doorway on the other side of the room. I looked up at it and screamed “Damn You!” How could God have taken my daddy away from me?

To this day, I don’t know how my mother and I got dressed, walked out of the house, and down the street in a light rain to the hospital. We met with the surgeon, and the anesthesiologist – who was crying, because they had lost such a young man. I don’t remember how long we were there. What I do remember is being handed a manila envelope before we left, which contained my father’s belongings: his wallet…his reading glasses…his wedding ring…how did we ever make it back home, up the stairs to our apartment, to begin the process of notifying family and friends that “Andy is gone”…

I have no idea who we called first. I do know that I had to find a way to get in touch with my brother, who had been estranged from the family for quite a few years, and at the time, we didn’t have a phone number for him. That summer, he had written me a letter, saying that circumstances of his life had changed, and that he would be getting back in touch with us. When I read that part of the letter out loud to my parents, my father had gently but firmly pounded his fist on the kitchen table and said, “Good – maybe now he’ll come home.”

I wound up calling the New York State Sheriff’s office and, after giving them the info on my brother that I did have, asked them to tell him to call home as soon as possible; but to tell him simply that there was a “family emergency”.

When my brother finally called, I did not want to tell him the terrible news over the phone, but I had no choice. “Dad’s gone,” I said. “Come home – Mom needs you.”

Thanksgiving weekend 1983 remains somewhat of a surreal blur. I remember that very night that my mother’s brother and his wife, along with my grandmother, came over to be with us. The only other persons who were in our apartment that awful night were two priests from our local parish of St. Stephen of Hungary – one of which was Father Emeric, a Hungarian priest who had been with the church for a very long time. He had married my parents in 1954, baptized both my brother and me. I think we might have told the church that it wasn’t necessary to send anyone over to the house that night. But Father Emeric paid no attention to our suggestion. I can still see in my mind’s eye, after answering our doorbell that evening, myself standing on the landing outside our apartment door on the 5th floor, and looking down over the banister through to the floors below – and watching Father Emeric bounding up the 4 flights of stairs – two at a time – with a new younger priest behind him, trying to keep up. It’s what our people do.

The wake took place over two days and nights. My brother finally made it home after not seeing us or the rest of our family for a very long time. He had to borrow a suit from one of our cousins, who also drove him into the city and to the funeral home. I’ve been told that when he walked in and was reunited with our mother and I that there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. The three of us embraced, and as we approached the casket, my brother looked down and said, “I’m sorry, Dad.”

Someone else at the wake that night swore that my father had a slight smile on his face that wasn’t there before my brother arrived. He knew. Andy’s son had finally come home.

There’s so much more that could be said about what happened, the days and the weeks immediately following; what might have been, what could have or should have been. But I will save the rest for another time. My dad was 56 years old when he died. He missed out on SO much. I was angry at God for a very long time after that. Not fair. How could this be? How could He take my father away from me? I have grown spiritually since that Thanksgiving Day so long ago and may not have understood why it had to be then, but I also know now that God in His timing is not something that can be questioned. My son who died 21 years ago yesterday has had a treasure in Heaven since he arrived – his grandpa.  I also know that some day we will all be reunited. But until then, there will always be a hole in my heart and an empty chair at my table. Today and every day. I love you, Dad, and continue to miss you more than words can describe. I wish I could see your face and hear your voice. I wish I could dream about you. Sometimes I think that the reason I don’t is because in my subconscious, I have never fully accepted the fact that he is not here anymore. But there will be pure joy when I do see him again, and we can all be together again in eternity.