The Last Dead Week, 1989 (30 years gone)

(Rambly this time–mainly because it’s a quite personal reminiscence.)

So…30 years ago this month, I received my bachelor’s degree.  It was a minor moment for me, overshadowed by the two weeks that came before it.  The week before it was Finals and the week prior to Finals was called ‘Dead Week’.  It was a point where the residence halls enforced Quiet Hours 23 hours/day in preparation for finals.  That other hour?  Well…it was loud.   In ’87, that’s where we developed Hallway Football…such a magnificent sport or had swordfights with pool cues.

In ’89, I was a senior with my graduation paperwork filled out.  Finals were a formality.  I had one.  One.  That meant my last two weeks were set up to be a lot of fun–and a lot at the expense of poor schmucks who had tests.  Oh. Well.  It’s not like I was alone in that.  I had a lot of friends graduating or who had easy semesters that spring.  Because of that, I was hanging out on Lowe House (Friley Hall) killing time…for full disclosure, Lowe was women’s housing.

I was down in my roommate’s (Ron) girlfriend’s room (I don’t remember her name now, though I know the face). I was with her, Brian Olsen’s sister and his sister’s roommate–who was cute, a Cub fan, and if I remember right, liked Brian (and vice-versa).  In the middle of all that, right about what would’ve been the start of the hour of loudness, Ron called down–said I needed to come back up to the room ASAP–like *ASAP* because my mom was on the phone.

It took a couple minutes to get up there–Friley Hall is massive.  Ron handed me the phone.  It was weird that she’d waited for me.  Weird, too, because she was supposed to be on-shift at the hospital.  The thing was–she was at the hospital.  She was on duty.

She called to tell me they’d brought my dad (my parents divorced when I was 13) in.  He’d collapsed during dinner, had an aneurysm.  I immediately said I’d grab Debbie (my sister) and head home.  She said no.  He was stable and the prognosis was good.  Okay…I talked with Debbie and we headed home the next morning.  No further call meant things were all right, right?

When we got back, I knew that wasn’t true.  We walked in the house to use the bathroom before walking over to the hospital (we live across the street from it).  Mom and my stepfather were there.  Waiting.  Overnight it seemed he took a turn for the worse.  Sometime in the wee hours, he’d gone brain dead.

Over at the hospital, we joined my aunt and evil stepmother (evil is an understatementunderstatement; this was a woman who skipped her dad’s funeral because it interfered with a cruise she wanted to go on, a woman who broke up multiple marriages…for all the bad people I’ve met in life, she is worse than any of them, any–and that includes Father Leo or Tyler B.)  My stepmother didn’t want to make any decisions.  Perhaps we can call that shock if we are nice.  It meant that day got worse for me.

I wound up being the person who had to sign the papers authorizing Dad’s removal from life support.  I didn’t pull the plug, but I authorized it.  You could argue I killed my own father.  Or not.  He’d been without brain activity nine hours at that point.  It was necessary–with it, it meant consent for the hospital to use any organs they could for other people.  Time was important (they were able to use his eyes, kidneys, and some skin, I believe).

I remember saying goodbye alone with him in that ICU room.  It was the first time I’d seen death.  It has not been the last, but it has been the worst.  They’d shaved his head, done surgery to try and eliminate pressure/fix the aneurysm.  It didn’t work.  Without his brain giving direction, etc, he’d retained a lot of fluid, so that his fingers looked like balloons filled to bursting.  They were hot and dry.

The worst of it?  The last conversation I’d had with him had been an argument–it ended with a loud exchange and me telling him to ‘fuck off and die’.  That had been two weeks earlier.  I’ve lived with that guilt for 30 years.  It’s no way to have a last conversation with someone you love.  I didn’t mean it and I suspect he knew that–but I’ll never know, not for sure.

The lesson–tell the people you love just that.  “I love you.”  Don’t regret saying it, don’t feel awkward for it or worry what other people are thinking if you saying it in public.  Fuck them.  You *never* know if it is your last opportunity to share that feeling. *** That’s important.  Trust me.  The last conversation with my mom?  It ended with those words.  It involved me harassing her about driving to see Debbie–drive the speed limit, make sure you have clean underwear on, call when you get there…all the crap parents tell their kids…always good to pull that in reverse!  She talked about her love for the grandkids, how proud she was of me.  I can still stand in the spot in our driveway where we shared that conversation and the final goodbye hug/kiss.  It makes my eyes water still, but they are tears of boundless love with no regrets.  It was as good as final conversations go and she was blessed to be one of the few who truly die in her sleep. ***

Anyways, that Finals Week incident shaped me in so many ways, gave me blessings, too.

• His death changed my life path, led me to Illinois where I found volleyball and then Julie.

• I learned patience.  In time, working through the issue, I learned how to control my temper.

• I learned that money is irrelevant for determining my worth as a human being.

• I learned the value of great friends.  One friend (Dave) couldn’t make it away from his classes at State, so he asked his parents to come instead and to see if I needed anything.

And now, I’m older than he was when he died.  I have two children of my own older than I was when he died.  Time has moved on and fewer people every day remember my Dad, his success as a businessman, or who he was.  No one remembers the days of Big Jim and Little Jim (or when those didn’t work as descriptions any more…so it was back to Jim and Jimmy).

30 years–and yet the pain still feels like it is only days old sometimes.