From Tom’s diary, a visit with Dad at DePaul hospital on Jan 1, 2001, about four months after the series of ministrokes that started a new chapter in his life.
Dad was getting ready to eat, more docile than before. Looking handsome in his gray sweater. Not agitated or impatient or angry. Kinda sad to see him toned down like this.
We talk a long time. I stay until about 8:15. Tell about stuff I saw in barn. He interested but starts to cry. “Are these sad memories?” I ask. He says, “They’re beautiful memories!”
About Ruth, he said in low voice, “There’s a very, very slight chance I’d be interested in her. She’s got too many problems — with her kids.”
He was interested in trying to piece together how many days he’d been there exactly. Not having hallucinations now, he said. But also said he doesn’t dare mention the word depression around there because they’d give him electroshock. I try to reassure him that’s not gonna happen.
Curious if I found the ads he ran in Hemmings Motor News during the mail order days. Didn’t find ‘em. Lord, think I mighta thrown em away when cleaning out his Washington house in Sept/Oct. Hate throwing away his things but feel as it is I’m saving too much!
He’d like to have his Science and Health red books.
Told me about his back healing. He and Berg and Denny Elkins were building the new house. He and Denny were carrying the metal posts out of the yard — old drain pipes he’d gotten somewhere, do I remember the spiral ridge on them? Only weighed 100 or 150 pounds, he bent down to pick up his end and out went his back. He went down on the ground and couldn’t move. Denny put a brick under his head, said, “What do you want me to do, Bill?” Dad answers, “I can’t sleep here!”
“I had that old 19?? Falcon, Denny said Bill let me bring that over here with the tailgate down and see if I can get you up on that. That’s what he did. He dragged me in the house and I had to crawl up those steps. I think it took me an hour to get up those steps to my bed.”
“What was Mom doing?”
“Fretting. She probably helped me up. She helped me crawl up the steps, letting me lean on her.”
Dad lay on his bed for three days. Christian Science practitioners came and worked with him, including a couple from...where? Vermont? Jim Carroll went out and got Dad a urinal but he never needed it the whole time. He was dreading needing it ‘cause he knew he couldn’t get upright enough to use it. On the third night all at once he knew he was healed. “I’m healed!” He got out of bed, put his pants and shoes on, and walked down the stairs. He went outside, down the three steps, and walked around and around the driveway. Mom came out, she must have noticed that he wasn’t in the bed, and she said (and here Dad really evoked how she sounded at such times, almost angry with concern): “What are you doing?”
And Dad cried as he told this part. “I’m healed,” he told mom.
Said Clifford Birdwell had gotten him into Christian Science. “Do you remember Clifford Birdwell? He built that little house up on the corner. Well, before that he lived down in the house Charlie Goll’s living in. I used to go down and visit with him, and he’d tell me about Christian Science. He had a growth on his forehead as big as that orange, and he got healed. At that time he hadn’t had his own healing yet, though.”
Dad was disappointed I hadn’t had time to bring him a s supply of blank casette tapes and so was I. He was looking forward to recording more memoirs.
He wasn’t hungry for what they’d given him, so I ate some of his pork and noodles. He asked for ice cream instead of jello and liked that. I noticed that from behind he looked like a very old man — his neck thin from that angle, the back of his skull very round and bare.
He said, “You said you’re coming back in the Spring? When?” I calculated and said May. “May? Good. You do that, now, Tom.”
The nurse wouldn’t take a picture of us — they’d put my camera away when I came in. “We can’t because of the confidentiality,” she said.
I was crying listening to Dad, thinking I won’t have many more times with him. Ever.
He told me again about the time he made that emergency airplane landing. This time he added that as he turned the prop, he had to do it from the cabin side and had to push up. Went he got back to the airport, the guy came out and saw the peach leaves in the landing gear. “Did you have any trouble?” he asked Dad.
“No!” Dad said. “If you have trouble in the air you don’t come back and land, do you?” But the guy was wondering how those peach leaves got in the landing gear.
Dad was easily emotional. Interesting what got him choked up. When he told about his landing—his successful emergency landing—he started to cry, though he was telling it as a funny story (”When I pulled up to that house there were people all lined up on that fence like crows.”). I think what he was feeling was the pride and joy of himself as a young man again and was reminded of his loss of that.
Wish I’d had the tape recorder.
Leaving that place alone, going out into the freezing night, the strangely bright statue of the saint out front. Driving around that driveway, seeing the building where Mom died, remembering being outside there and trying to wave to her in the window, me and Deb? Laughing about it, a small pleasure. Mom liked the view she had. Suddenly remembered how it was leaving dePaul at night, heading home with Deb, after another late visit to our dying mother.
Now Dad.
In that very place, Mom, dying, asked a favor of us: “Take care of Deb. Take care of Dad.”
A Note from Later On
Sun Aug 02, 2020 — I am adding this note almost 20 years later. Although I was very worried and sad at the time of this visit, which took place shortly after Dad’s series of mini-strokes, Dad actually had many more years to live. He would recover his speech and mental clarity and have several more years of living independently and semi-independently. Several thousand more days of driving cars, cooking up new business ideas, buying and selling vehicles. There would still be many visits like this one both with his kids and grandkids, many more times when we all got to enjoy his humor, his interest in our lives, his busy and interesting mind, many more times of sharing family memories and making new ones.
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