My father, the lover

It's one of those weird conjunctions that doesn't come up very often. Sunday is both Father's day and my wedding anniversary.

My father died in 2003, on Valentine's Day. Many foresaw this unfortunate coincidence as being the end of Valentine's Day celebrations at my house. Au contraire. It was the perfect day for him to go.

As the third son in a busy family that had to work hard to make ends meet, I didn't get a lot of attention from my dad when I was a child. I got what I needed. He came to parent's night. He came to my band and choir concerts. Whenever he had a chance, he let me know that he loved me. He had a hard time finding the words, but he let me know.

My dad and I became much closer on the day he was diagnosed with the cancer that killed him. We sat together in his hospital room. I perched at the end of his bed, holding his hand. He had known for some time that there was something seriously wrong with him, and he had put off mentioning it to anyone. Finally, a few details slipped out in conversation with my brother, who lived in the US. My brother called me, alarmed, and I drove Dad to emerg. The tests began immediately, but we both knew what was up. It was fear that had kept my Dad quiet through all of those months of suffering, but not fear of his own death. You see, my mother depended on him. A lifetime of struggles with diabetes, high blood pressure, and too great a love of proper English food had left my mom legally blind and incapable of standing after a series of small strokes. She and my father lived together in a regular apartment building. They went out every day, often just to the local shopping mall to sit and eat a hamburger and listen to the sounds. My father, not a large man, would literally carry my mother from her chair to his car and then to her wheelchair. On occasion, he'd call me when he got into trouble.
"I've dropped your mother. Can you come help me?"
"Where is she right now, dad?"
"She's ok. She's under the car in the parking garage."
"Where the hell were you going?"
"Oh, she just wanted to drive around a bit and feel the sun on her face."
"On my way, dad."
When he couldn't find me, he'd wander the halls of his building or wherever else he happened to be and he'd recruit a stranger. He always found someone to help him. My mother should have been in a nursing home, but my father knew that she would die quickly there, and he wouldn't consider it. But when he realized that he'd be facing surgery, radiation, and chemo, he saw the writing on the wall. So he said nothing for as long as he could continue to get through the days of wracking pain. He said nothing until it was almost too late to do anything to help him. When he went out of town for radiation treatment prior to his surgery, my mother was placed into respite care in a nursing home. After his third night away from home, he told me that this was the longest he'd been apart from my mother for over 50 years. Surgery followed. Dad moved in with me to recover. He and I spent hours and days and weeks together, catching up on everything. I learned for the first time about his war experiences. I learned about the bridges he had helped to build to support the Allied invasion of Nazi-held territory. I learned that my mother had been his first, only and true love. While he'd watched his drunken comrades in arms march off to French brothels to stave off their fear of death, he'd stayed in camp to write letters to my mother.

We applied to have Dad transferred to a double room in a nursing home, sharing with my mother. We were declined repeatedly. Dad was not sick enough for a nursing home, we were told. Mom continued to decline. She would call him dozens of times per day. She was barely able to speak, but they would just sit and listen to one another breathe. My mother kept a photograph of my father on her chest. It showed him at his last birthday party, wearing a sombrero and a silly grin. She refused to allow her attendants to touch it, even when the dyes began to melt into her skin. Then, just before Christmas in the year 2002, our appeals were heard and a room was found for the two gentle, old lovers. Three days later, surrounded by her extended family, my father's arms around her neck as he whispered a farewell in her ear, my mother died a beautiful, proper English death. I held my father's sobbing body in my arms. I wanted to lift him in the air and take the pain away as he'd done for me so many times in the ancient past. But I couldn't.

My father continued in the nursing home alone. He sat in his room, surrounded by photographs of his life with my mom -- party-goers wearing silly hats on a Caribbean cruise, wrestling lovers on a mossy carpet in the forest. Under his bed, he kept the bottle of Scotch that she had given him for his 80th birthday. He didn't know what kind of event warranted opening it. Neither do I. I still have it.

One day, early in February, we were talking about Valentine's Day. My father told me he hadn't spent Valentine's Day alone for well over 50 years and he didn't plan to do so this year. I wasn't sure what he meant. I reassured him we'd all be over for a visit. On February 11, complaining that he felt unwell, my father was taken to hospital. On the evening of February 13, he gave me a hug, told me I'd been a good son, and said goodnight. Early on the morning of February 14, alone in his hospital room, as I raced cursing through morning traffic to reach him, he succumbed to pneumonia. I spent the morning sitting beside him, holding his sad, cold, hand and thanking him silently for teaching me how to love.