Thursday,
January 1, 2009

Where I've Been

At the beginning of December I'd gone to Chicago to perform a baptism. The evening I got there, we were sitting at my sister's table, drinking and just gabbing about random stuff, when the phone rang and I answered it.

It was my dad. He had bad news -- he'd lost 24 pounds in the last four weeks and hurt all over, so his doc had a CAT scan done. They found masses on Dad's lung and stomach, and it looked like lung cancer. Dad went into Sunrise Hospital that Monday, where they did a raft of tests. It was definitely lung cancer, and it had metastasized all over his body, in more than 20 locations including his spine, skull and liver. His oncologist was honest with him -- it was too widespread to treat with surgery or radiation, and chemo had a less than 30% success rate in cases like his. Dad was 70 years old and hated the idea of chemo, having seen four of his older relatives go through hell on it, so he decided to forego treatment, sustained by pain meds as needed.

They then discharged him that Friday, despite the fact that he lived alone and couldn't walk by himself, much less care for himself. My language upon hearing this is not suitable for polite company. Luckily a friend took him home and got his pain and sleep meds filled for him. My sister, brother-in-law and I flew out to Las Vegas the next day, took one look (he was tiny, completely white-haired and frail, nothing like the man I remember) and my sister said, "You're coming home with us." He finally agreed after some grumbling, and we booked him a ticket on their flight home. Sunday was spent packing him up, grabbing all his papers, closing up the house (what will happen to that and his car was a whole 'nother story) and getting him out to the airport.

Southwest was good about everything -- I called and found out that we could just pull up to the curbside check-in at LAS and get a wheelchair right there. The Special Services guy was very careful about getting Dad in the chair, so I gave him, Stacy and Mike (the brother-in-law) a kiss and waved them off (the Las Vegas airport is set up so that Southwest and American fly from different sections and there's no access between the two of them once you're past security), then took the car back to the rental place and headed for my gate.

Stacy called just as I was getting out of DFW -- they got him home in one piece (the weather gods were cooperating, and it warmed up to 50 F in Chicago). He was thoroughly exhausted by that point, however, so they put him to bed with a pain pill and let him crash. I spent the evening researching hospice options and emailed Stacy a list, and made calls in to Dad's doctors to let them know where he was and to get his scrips transferred to a drugstore neat my sister's.

The next day, Dad consolidated all his money into his checking account and wrote a check for the entire amount to my sister so that she could pay for his hospice care and funeral costs. That week he got progressively worse, and had two really bad days (he'd torn a muscle in his jaw and couldn't open his mouth, and the pain meds he'd gotten from the hospital were making him throw up) before hospice workers arrived on Thursday and got him set up with really good painkillers and anti-nausea meds. I have to say right now that the hospice folks were brilliant -- he wasn't even in the system yet, but Stacy called them in desperation and they swung into action, getting a hospital bed over to the house and a nurse with all the necessary meds.

Stacy slept in his room that Thursday night, and he woke up in the middle of the night in discomfort. She got him his pain meds, and held his hand for awhile until he pushed it away and gestured for her to go back to sleep (he'd been doing that all week -- he'd be gagging and retching, but he'd tell her that she needed rest and to go back to bed). She went back to bed, listening to his chest bubble as he breathed, and finally drifted off. Friday morning, Mike woke her up before heading off to work -- she went to check on Dad, and he was cold. She flew down to the driveway and screamed for Mike, who was just leaving. He came back in, checked Dad and confirmed that he was gone.

The hospice worker came over and pronounced him (Stacy told me, "She said, 'He's expired,' and I could just hear Dad saying, 'What am I, a gallon of milk or something?'"). The hospice office swung into action one last time and arranged everything for Dad's wake and funeral -- as he had been a Marine, he was eligible for a free burial service at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery, and a local funeral home would host the wake.

It took two weeks from diagnosis to death. It just happened so damn fast. Stacy had called me on Thursday and told me he wasn't doing well, so instead of flying in on Christmas Eve I changed my flight to Friday evening, hoping to see him before he died. I missed him by 12 hours, dammit.

The wake took place on Sunday and was very nice -- the Fraternal Order of Police sent a lovely flower arrangement, as did a number of other people, and a buddy of Mike's who was a Catholic deacon came out to do a nondenominational service. I saw a number of family members I haven't seen in years, and my best friend Patrick drove up from Bloomington just to spend a couple of hours with me. Lyndon couldn't come, as his boss had scheduled him to do a switch cut Sunday night/Monday morning, but called me a number of times to find out how I was doing.

The funeral was on Monday, and was beautiful and extremely moving. We drove out to Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, IL, where an ice storm had turned all the surrounding woods into diamond sculptures that glittered in the winter sunlight. We assembled at an outdoor shelter (and in an aside, oh, dear Glory, it was COLD -- 5 degrees F, with a light wind. My niece decided to sit on my lap because it was warmer than the bench, and I was grateful for the extra heat) while a well-bundled bugler played Taps, the Catholic deacon read the graveside ceremony and two Marines folded the flag from my father's coffin. One then knelt in front of my sister and presented it to her, thanking her for Dad's service to the United States and the Marine Corps, whereupon she promptly burst into tears ("I just couldn't get over the fact that this MARINE was kneeling to ME," she said later). The cemetery officials took charge of Dad's coffin for burial later, and we got back into the cars and headed back to Orland Park for the post-funeral lunch. Dad's headstone should be placed in a couple of months, and I'll come back this summer to see it. Considering how much he always liked being with the guys, I think he'd be very pleased with his final resting place.

Lyndon arrived in Chicago on Christmas Eve, with only a minor bobble (his plane was about to land, when suddenly the engines went back to full, the plane tilted up at a 45 degree angle and banked, and everybody held on for their lives. Turned out that another plane had reported debris on the runway, and the pilot had to take emergency measures to get the plane back into the pattern and out of the way of other descending planes. Whee!). After checking in at the local hotel and stopping off at IHOP so that a very hungry Lyndon could grab some carbs, we went back to Stacy's for a turkey buffet and a fun evening with Stacy, my brother Michael and his wife Cheryl.

Christmas Day turned out to be surprisingly pleasant, considering the situation. Nifty presents were exchanged, much food and Bailey's was consumed, and some very necessary naps were taken prior to traveling out to the far end of nowhere to watch my nephew and his girlfriend run an open mike improv night.

December 26, we were supposed to fly back to Dallas. I say "supposed to" because it didn't quite happen that way. The temperature in Chicago had warmed up significantly above freezing by the time we arrived at the airport, melting a great deal of the ice and snow around the area. What happens when lots of water vapor gets into moderately cool air, kids?

Yep, you guessed it -- fog. Lots and lots and LOTS of fog. Fog that cancelled Lyndon's flight home tonight and threatened to strand him in Chicago until Monday morning. Aie. A number of flights have been cancelled due to the weather, so there are LOTS of stressed people storming around O'Hare this evening.

Since we were on different flights due to my changed arrival date (he was flying out on United, I on American), I threw myself on the mercy of the ticket agents at my gate and asked if they could get Lyndon on my flight. Impossible, they said -- too many people waiting on standby, United would have to transfer his ticket, yadda yadda--

And then, I Had An Idea. What if we BOUGHT a ticket, I asked, smiling sweetly. A brand spanking new ticket, and just ate the United ticket cost? (This, by the way, is why I carry Amex.)

And suddenly, that which was impo$$ible became $mooth and ea$y. There was one available seat out tonight, on a flight that was originally supposed to leave two hours after mine but is now leaving an hour earlier. I slapped down the Amex for the truly stupendous seat fee, received a ticket for Lyndon, and texted him to stay in the secure area and get over to Terminal 3, Gate K19 pronto.

From Terminal 1, mind you. Even for Mr. Power Walker, this was going to be a challenge.

I then did a forced march from Gate H14, at the opposite end of the H-K gate fork, to K19 to deliver his ticket. Lyndon made it from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3 in about 17 minutes. I can only assume he jogged all the way, judging from the color in his face. I sat him down before he fell over, ran to get him some water and a sandwich, and got him rehydrated and fed before leaving for my own gate. He texted me that he was on board and the plane was leaving before we were asked to turn off our electronics.

And we waited. And waited. And waited some more. Then the flight attendant got on the horn -- our crew never arrived due to fog issues, so we couldn't take off, thus the flight was cancelled. Ha. Hahahahaha. I got my computer bag and jacket, got off the plane, got myself rebooked on a connecting flight Saturday from ORD-St. Louis-DFW, scored a reservation at a nearby Residence Inn and convinced a very surly cab driver to take me there through the pea soup fog. After I checked in and settled down for the evening, I got a call on my cell -- American had cancelled the Saturday flight tomorrow and was going to rebook me on an exciting airplane route on Sunday, with no guarantee that it would take off (and that was increasingly unlikely, considering that the temp was supposed to drop back below freezing Saturday night) or that I would actually get on it. Whee!

At which point I said screw this and called Alamo to reserve a car. The next morning I got up, checked out of the hotel, caught a shuttle to the airport, caught another shuttle to the Alamo rental place, got my car, and proceeded to drive from Chicago to Dallas. The drive took 17.5 hours (would've been 16.5 but I stopped for an hour in Bloomington IL to have lunch with my best friend Patrick), and was fairly straightforward. The weather was miserable in Illinois -- cold, foggy and absolutely pissing down in Chicago, then just pissing down for the rest of the state. The rain finally tapered off about an hour and a half into Missouri, at which point I cranked it up to 70, put on the cruise control and sang along with the radio.

A phone call from Lyndon near the Oklahoma border gave me grist to chew for the rest of the trip, keeping me awake nicely, and I arrived home around 3:00 AM Sunday morning. After a couple hours of sleep the rental car was returned to DFW, my bag liberated from durance vile (aka the Terminal 1 bag storage), my car liberated from the parking structure, and I returned home for four more hours of sleep.

So that's where I've been.

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