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Every time Mike would get off the phone with his dad, he would turn to me and tease in mock-disbelieving tones, "Well! Isn't a certain someone just so fond of YOU! Apparently, you can do no wrong!" or "You sure have someone back home wrapped around your finger! Oh, on and on about how you write such nice letters! It's like he's your number one fan!" It has long been a joke between us that when Mike says something that aggravates me, I cry out, "Well, now! Let's just call your dad and see what he has to say about THIS!" or "I don't think your dad would care for the way you're speaking to me!" He told Mike a few months after we got married that just as he had "found [his] angel" with Mike's mom, he thought Mike had found his angel in me. An angel, I am not, but may we all be so blessed as to be so purely loved by someone.
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During the four days and nights we spent in the hospital last week, we kept the room's TV on the Turner Classic Movies channel, and the films' actors and characters already seem as much a part of the landscape of all those rich but draining hours as the many doctors whose names we in the family couldn't keep straight and consequently referred to amongst ourselves as "Richie Rich, with the Blonde Hair and Clogs," "The One with the Red Tie," "The Wrestler," "Frank-the-One-Who-Talked-with-Us-in-That-Little-Room," "The Grey-Haired Nighttime Equivalent of Frank," "The Research Study Guy," "The One With the Beard and Glasses," and "The Doctor We Liked Who Had All Dad's Info in Her Back-Pocket." I don't know if a day will ever come when I won't remember Paul Newman in The Hustler, an oddly-orange-skinned Jackie Gleason in Don't Drink the Water, James Cagney in Picture Snatcher, or, most memorably to me, Ann Sothern in a late night marathon of Maisie movies as people with whom we shared the horrible events of the past week and a half. Today it still seems like a glimpse of any of these actors will forever take me back to room 303 with its wall of taped-up family photos I'd brought in from home, Mike's navy knit Yankees cap resting flat on top of his dad's EEG-lead-covered head, and Mike and I in chairs on opposite sides of the bed, providing a sometimes-mocking commentary on the old movies while we held his dad's hands. The channel was only changed once last week, when Jackie Gleason was really hamming it up in all his wide-eyed, over-the-top glory and Mike declared that his dad would prefer the basketball game. I think Wednesday night was Maisie night, when I had sent Mike home to feed Stuffed and try to get some sleep and I volunteered to sit at his dad's side overnight. The Maisie marathon was, strangely, my last bonding experience with my father-in-law. The medical team told us all week that he was unaware of what he was experiencing and that he was feeling no distress, but when I realized, during one of the movies, that I'd been babbling at him non-stop for the better part of an hour, I joked that he was probably quite tired of the sound of my voice. As Maisie got her man, visited the Congo, had knives thrown at her during a circus act, and marched down a dirt road in a peplum skirt-suit while carrying her luggage, I held my father-in-law's hand and filled him in on the absurdities of the films, fully believing that he could somehow hear me and that he was there in spirit. "Oh, you'd love THIS!" I chattered. "Maisie's driving her car while carrying on a conversation with a policeman driving his own car in the lane beside hers. No need to look at anything but each other while they drive, of course. And you worry about ME on the interstate!" In the wee hours when I could no longer even pretend to concentrate on Maisie's misadventures, I talked until my voice was raspy about family news, updated him on Stuffed--he'd always loved Stuffed--and reported on what everyone had found to eat in the hospital cafeteria that day. "Everyone's taking good care of you," I heard myself saying multiple times that night and throughout the week. "And everyone's taking care of each other too. You don't have anything to worry about. Everything will be okay." And whenever I looked up, I'd see dear determined Maisie, hair curled in some sweet 1940s do, dusting herself off after her latest trials and taking on the world anew.
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"My good buddy" died as he had loved to live: With his family gathered around supporting him and each other. I have to believe that he knew we were all there with him and that he enjoyed our laughter as we shared funny memories of him in his final minutes. It was too beautiful for him to have missed.
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I found a number of hearts last week, as I tend to do, and I took every one as a hug from God, as I always do. Our first night in the hospital, I spotted a paper towel scrap-heart on the floor of the family lounge.
One morning at breakfast in the cafeteria, a heart-shaped potato "cube" tumbled out of my cup onto my tray.
I looked down as we prepared to enter my father-in-law's room as a family for the last time and saw another paper towel scrap-heart on the floor outside the intensive care unit's entrance.
One melted spot in the snow at the cemetery after the funeral was heart-shaped.
And a stunning heart-shaped knot stood out in a tree trunk there, as well.
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Almost twelve hours after the funeral Monday, after his mom had gone to bed, Mike and I sat together at his parents' kitchen table for a belated supper of Sloppy Joes and potato chips, occasionally sneaking scraps of lunch-meat ham to the stray cat his parents had recently taken in. All day, I had felt twenty years older than I had when the week before had begun, but eating Sloppy Joes beside my husband in his childhood kitchen was what broke me and made me feel too young for all we'd been through already, and soon we were off to bed too. We know, though, that life will go on and that the thoughts of Turner Classic Movies and the Yankees' Opening Day won't always punch us in the chest the way they do right now. Everyone's taking care of each other, as I kept repeating last week. Everything will be okay. While guiding our rental car down a steep and winding hill on the way to his parents' house the morning of the funeral, Mike mentioned that whenever his dad would drive down the same hill, seemingly flying out of control as the car gained speed, he'd call out, "Dig in your toenails! We're going up on two wheels!" Ah, my father-in-law. :) "Dig in your toenails!" became a catchphrase of sorts between me and Mike that day, and it continues to strike me as astute, albeit homespun, advice for all the heartbreaking days ahead this spring. Our plucky and unstoppable Maisie would concur: We're up on two wheels here, but everything will be okay.
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