[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]For Pop, it is twilight, the wrong end of the day, the awful closing hours of clinging to the quivering thread that separates him from the world to come.
Yesterday afternoon, with two of my sisters at his bedside, one holding the telephone to Pop’s ear, I said my final goodbye.
He had receded to the stage where he no longer could respond.
When I mentioned hearing one of his favorite pieces of music, he smiled wanly.
That was the only detectable sign.
Otherwise, I will take it on faith alone that he comprehended my message.
I was working when the girls called.
If only I had prepared.
I should have been. Then I would have delivered more eloquently my love for the hardest worker I ever have known, a man who modeled for the seven of us through his admirable but not imperfect actions, never through his modest articulation.
Saying Goodnight
At 93 years, 11 months and 6 days, minimally educated but a Ph.D in the moral values of life, Pop never quite managed to say “I love you” to his children — when we were young — because men of his generation thought that was women’s work.
But he demonstrated his affection with his embraces, with his close-but-not-too-close hugs, with his close-but-not-too-close kisses.
Mainly, I remember encountering a day’s growth of unremorseful whiskers when I kissed him goodnight at bedtime.
A simple man of strictly moderate tastes, he was my idea of a father figure, an exemplary breadwinner, a devoted husband who worked 6 days a week, but was home like clockwork every evening, and, except for work, almost never left home without Mom in tow.
If you visited our home any weeknight evening after 7, Pop would be the fatigued blue-collar worker sprawled on the couch, his head hidden between pages 2 and 3 of the daily newspaper before he magically floated into the arms of Morpheus
When my sisters called on behalf of Pop yesterday, I wanted to go back 2 1/2 months to the last time we visited face-to-
face.
A Bucolic Breeze
We talked incessantly about old times across those several days, about family, living and dead, and about the memorable100-mile drive down two-lane country roads that we took three years ago this summer.
It germinated at 10:30 in the morning in the midst of my next-to-last visit.
My stepmother was leaving for the beauty parlor. In an attempt to gain precious private time with my father, I suggested that we go for a ride, a magic phrase that illuminated my childhood, especially weekends.
Just as when we were growing up, a ride still was Pop’s favorite form of recreation because it met two criteria:
Unending scenery, and it was free, except for gasoline, which was 20 cents a gallon when I was a boy.
We were gone 9 hours, touring farmland that was close enough to touch and pungently familiar because it scarcely had changed in the last 150 years.
The only sounds that afternoon, besides the engine of Pop’s 21-year-old car, were insects, birds and two occasional human voices, one that I will not hear again.
His puckish grin was his ID badge.
The boyish embryonic smile never dimmed as he aged. He still looked as if he had just done something he shouldn’t.
And now, selfishly I say, he has.
Dear reader, hug your Pop and Mom, often.
