John has died. Yesterday morning, before he was officially gone, I sat with my morning coffee and thought about him in a way I never have before. You see, I never really accepted him as a member of “my” family. Never before had I explored the reasons why I felt this way.
As I thought about John and my mother, I remembered something she said to me recently as she dealt with his failing health. “I always thought I’d go first. You see, he was nine years younger then she whereas my father had been seventeen years her senior. She buried my father in December 1983; he was eighty years old. My mother and John married on January first 1985, just a little over one year after my father died. I remember feeling shocked and hurt when they married - kind of a betrayal to my father. My mom said at the time she had not wanted to have sex with him until they were married. I never, in the over twenty years of their marriage, sent them an anniversary card.
My mother is a woman who has always been “taken care of” by those around her. She was nineteen when she married my father. I have a black and white photo of the two of them hanging in my hallway and my friends always remark about how much in love they look. I also have a photo of my sister and her family that includes my mother and John. John is on the far left, and before I put it in a frame, I carefully folded his image to the back, out of the picture.
The last time I saw my father he was in the hospital, waiting for death to come. He told me he was proud that he had always taken care of my mother. John was also a man who took are of her. He paid off her credit card bills when they married and encouraged her to retire - which she did enthusiastically. You see, my mother never wanted to work outside the home, to have a career. She was not of that generation. The first day she went to work full-time at a large insurance company, she cried all the way as she walked to work.
Soon after they were married, John found some property in East Otis, on top of the mountain, which they bought. He completely renovated the small house and once it was finished they moved to the top of the mountain. I worried that my mother was isolated and in danger. I see now these were my own fears and projections not the reality of her life. John liked to be in control and his language was crude, but he was not a violent man. John always welcomed me with open arms; it was I who held fast to the wall I built between us. It was only in recent years that I allowed a stiff hug at greetings or departures.
John’s health began to fail over the past two years. He had retired but still worked occasionally on jobs no one else at his former shop knew how to do. You see, he was a master machinist with a talent for abstract thinking enabling him to “see” how to fix complex systems. Although he left his tools at the shop he became less physically able to go down the mountain and make those fixes. The same was true for the upkeep of the land and house on top of the mountain. John would take a chair with him when he went outside to do something in order to sit and rest as he worked. Last summer he told my mother that he did not think he would be around this summer.
This past winter John was diagnosed with lung caner; this was in addition to the emphysema he’d been living with for years. “He has no breath.” my mother said when talking about John’s health. But the lung cancer brought with it severe pain to add to his inability to breathe. He reluctantly agreed to radiation treatment and then a stay in a nursing home for physical therapy. John desperately wanted to “go home” and die on the mountain. My mother stayed with my older sister while John prepared to go home. When the day came, my brother in law helped my mother get John up to the mountain. “John’s come home to die.” my mother told the folks in their small community. My mother took a photo of John and one of his long time buddies sitting in their chairs with their oxygen tanks, on top of the mountain, waiting to die.
John spent a few days struggling to stay on the mountain, but finally asked my mother to call 911 to transport him to the hospital because he just could not catch his breath. After four day of treatment in the hospital, John again returned briefly to the mountain for the last time. The day he came home he told my mother he wanted to go to the hospice. Arrangement were made quickly by a wonderful VA nurse whose job was to help with home care, not make arrangements for transport or admission to hospice. John made the decision to stop all medication and therapy and to let his body determine his fate. He was concerned about my mother; he knew she would not care for him and wanted to make his own ending as easy on her as possible.
Once John made the decision to spend his final days in hospice, his children came to say goodbye. His youngest daughter and her three children arrived from Main the day before he died and spent some quality time with him. John was still able to communicate with them - hugs and smiles, but as the day wore on, it was clear his body was failing My mother received a call in the middle of the night from the hospice that John had limited time left so she and my sister and brother in law went to the hospice. John’s daughter arrived in the morning. John was now unresponsive, although still technically alive.
John departed this physical realm late in the afternoon on July 12. I received a phone call about an hour later. I was surprised at the level of sadness that engulfed me. I wept, not only because he was gone, but because I never told him that he was a good man, a man who took good care of my mother. Today I still feel the ebb and flow of grief, similar to the waves in the ocean hitting the shore. I am strangely comforted when I remember how much John loved my mother, how concerned he was about her even as his life ebbed away. As I finish writing about my mother’s husband, John is still in control of his fate, even though his physical being has departed. I carefully unfold the photo to include him in our family.
