Death in the Family

My father died July 29 of leukemia. He was 84. The doctor gave him three weeks to three months to live and he died two days later. I think, facing a specter of death he could not hold off by any of his usual methods, he just surrendered to it. He managed to cheat death during World War II by always being late to the apocalypse. He arrived in Pearl Harbor days after Dec. 7, 1941, and arrived in Europe days after D-Day. He was with Patton, but far enough behind with the radio repair units to always just miss the battles. His youthful heroes were Charles Atlas and Jack LaLanne. He believed in exercise and eating right. Long before Dr. Atkins, he dismissed what he called “mooshy white bread.” He espoused yogurt and wheat germ. He would stand on his head to improve his circulation. He practiced yoga positions decades before it was fashionable for urban career women. He had no bad habits, didn’t smoke and seldom drank alcohol. He was immensely proud of keeping his hair and maintaining his weight. He continued to take long walks and go to the gym up until a few months before he died. With all that going for him, and all the things he did to ensure his good health, in the end he didn’t make it as long as either of his parents. His father did nothing but watch television during his last 20 years. His mother, who smoked all her life, passed away in her mid-90s of natural causes. After my mother died of complications following a stroke when she was 57, he remarried with 24 years to go in his own life and vigorously maintained his health. A lapsed Catholic who never went to church when I was growing up, a man who feared offering a prayer before a group almost as much as he feared death, he suddenly decided, with the encouragement of his new wife, to become a holy rolling Pentecostal, and they rolled with the best of them I really lost my father when he remarried because his new wife’s family became more his than his biological one. That often happens with remarriages. This newly and enthusiastically religious man was a stranger to me. It seemed so out of character, but he threw himself into it as determinedly as he did good health. If he could not live forever one way, he was going to live forever another way. At the very end, he went from perfect health to a chronic backache to a diagnosis of bone marrow disease that was quickly rescinded. The doctors weren’t sure. Then there was a heart valve replacement and a gall bladder removed in quick succession and nothing was the same after that. I never got another letter after the last one cheerily reporting the doctors had changed their mind about the bone marrow diagnosis. All his time thereafter was spent recovering, which he ultimately did not. His stepdaughter thinks they were actually seeing the beginnings of the leukemia when the bone marrow was suspected and the two operations threw it into high gear. You wonder why he would submit to any surgery at his age if he wasn’t still hoping to buy himself another decade or two. And when, despite all his efforts, he was told he could not, he made a few phone calls to the people he knew would not freak out (not to me, I am relieved to report), said he was at peace with it, took a nap and died. His final gift to me was no funeral I had to attend, although family members are aghast that I passed on the memorial service. He didn’t like funerals or anything to do with dead bodies. He had both my mother and his mother cremated quickly without viewings. My sister drove through the night to arrive in time to see the body before the funeral home cremated it. She declared it “peaceful.” I suppose that was something she needed to do.

While cleaning out my email, I found a letter from my father dated Dec. 3, 2003, eight months before he died. "I have good news," he wrote. "I do not have cancer, praise the Lord. The doctor made a mistake. Yesterday I got the wonderful report. The doctor was sorry for the mistake. The second report said I had myelodysplasia, not multiple myeloma. There is no cure for it, but the doctor said it doesn't need treatment. Some people have it because of old age. He said for me not to worry about it. However, I still need to take my Procrit shot every two weeks to increase my red blood cell count. That's the good news. All our prayers have been answered." He died of leukemia in July, the logical next step to myelodysplasia. After looking it up on the Internet just now, it sure seemed a much more grim condition than his doctor indicated. Was his doctor stupid or just misleading him about a hopeless situation so he'd be happy? His sudden death two days after the leukemia diagnosis really caught us all by surprise.