My black lab, Wilbur, bone in his mouth, shakes the cold off at the door and proudly saunters into the house. I give him a good stroke and a scratch behind the ears. I always acknowledge his good steed and great fortune to be a dog. I wander back to my Easy Chair, pour a glass of fine red wine from the side table and plop myself down. Wilbur follows and plops down next to me and drops the bone with a thud. His pointed eyebrows project that worrisome look, like is there something you want to give me? I contemplate, how many more years will Wilbur outlive me? Seven to One, Eight? Oh, to be a dog.
I fire up a stogie. The acrid sweet odor of my Romeo y Julieta drifts into a cloud above our heads. R and J’s, as they are known, were also called Churchill’s, named for Winston Churchill, UK Prime Minister, war veteran, politician and writer. He was the profound outspoken British Imperialist whose passion for rhetoric and cigars barely outstripped his love for his sovereign nation, but one might argue his love of fine Cognac. The short fat little man had all the more reason to enjoy his vices: he held together a nation with courage and hope at a time of despair and disaster, but that was the good war, a time of unambiguous conflict and desire to eradicate evil we seem to be slithering toward today.
I swirl the wine in my glass and consider Churchill’s long noble life, and conversely, how quickly these things may kill me, that is, if the current wave of politicians don’t. That’s the thing about being old, we always seem to have an eye on things that might do us in. We’re always looking out the corner of our eye, on the periphery, the brief flash of white light that isn’t really there. In this aging process we learn to acknowledge the end may be near and face it boldly by —ignoring it. We joyfully indulge ourselves knowing the way of the world is all entropy anyway, and all I could hope for may be explained by Wilbur. So, dying of consumption is preferable to, say, being picked up off the streets of Minneapolis and sent to detention centers for waterboarding. I could think of a better vacation. I remember as kids my friends and I, casually walking for a soda, in our quiet moment of contemplation, would invite each other to invent the most horrible way a person could die, for fun, mind you. One would say, “Okay, how about a dive in front of a train, falling on the L tracks, or falling off the Empire State Building.” The best one: “Sliding down a razor blade,” you get the idea. I know some fair Christians fight their vices and pray to heaven for divine intervention thinking someone will save them. Some will be blessed, many others will die bitter and regretful. I take a drink and look down at Wilbur staring up at me with a face of mild disappointment. I ask him to give me the answer. His look says: the answers are hidden in how we face life, our bodies leaning into the wind and his quizzical expression asks, will it be better to point your head down and await the Scythe? I’ll take the former, Willy.
I began this diatribe thinking I would contemplate how we choose to live, the courage of heroes, the blessings of virtue, that Epicurean chord in life, but decided to write about dying instead. I was led to thinking about all that because the death of my father taught me how one should live with courage and die with dignity. My father was a witness and participant to the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, Second World War, Korean War, The Fifties, Sixties, and early Seventies. As a young man in Chicago, he had won CYO boxing championships, a diving championship at about 15, this around the same time Babe Ruth hit his sixtieth. Later, he ran booze for Bugs Moran and that taught him to drink and ride shotgun. His baritone voice sounded like an echo from Heaven when he sang jazz on the radio in the thirties. He opened a tavern (lasted a couple years, went broke, he was his own best customer), and by the Sixties raised 5 kids (three had died before him) and held and listened daily to his collection of over two thousand jazz and classical music recordings dating to his childhood, this he shared with us. He had never gone to university, but Dad simply took the best life had to offer, embraced it, often beat it down with his fists then slowly and courageously accepted the fate of so much living: Cancer.
Wilbur and me stare at the cloud of smoke above our heads. I think he pities me.
I take a sip of wine, the swoon floods my voice, pickles my senses, and I inhale sharply in an attempt to regularize my breathing. Today’s events fade like like a ghost in fog and I return to memories, like little fissures in pavement, the weeds and detritus fill the cracks in my head. I don’t remember many things, but I remember my father. There was one special place in his head and his heart: Baseball. A south Chicago man, he lived and breathed Chicago White Sox. After all, his oldest son, my older brother, played professional baseball for a time in the early fifties and that made Dad the most unbearably proud father of the neighborhood. It wasn’t just that. It was a time when baseball was the flame in the hearts of all Americans. There was no color, no illegitimate foreigners. We of simple creed with our ethnocentric pride were fans, fanatics for the game. It was the symbol in our world ‘where everything once was good and just.’ W.P. Kinsella wrote:
“…the one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt, and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.”
After being away for several years I recall seeing my father: the muscular hard-cast gruff carpenter, the man with the hazel eyes and silent calming stare, hands of rock, hammers for fists, veins that bulged in his arms like road maps, the swaying athletic gait, the deep humble voice that spoke —there’s no bullshit here, the every man is equal, we are in this together, brother, the man who knew words, his face buried in a book, his face beaming fairness, intelligence — this man now was a remnant of himself. Now, it is a phlegmy cough, sunken eyes, and wheezy breath saturating his life. The COPD had gone south. His passion for cigarettes, the labor years, the ingested toxins, the hard worn envelope was fading. Like Hobbes’s state of nature: Roy’s life became nasty, brutish, and short. He mastered, then contained alcoholism. It nearly took his heart. His doctor had told him to quit the booze or die and he did, quit that is. That was years ago. But, the Chesterfields, Lucky’s, and Camels remained. I recall it was only a year after the death of my mother, Genevieve, that he spoke so fondly of his love for her. He revered her and regretted that perhaps hadn’t shown her enough love. He told me that she was so beautiful that when she entered a room a hush would fill it and become silent and people would stare at them when they walked down the street. He abandoned his heart to her. His one comment following the funeral was: “It’s really Hell to have loved and lost someone after almost 50 years.” So few words, but his face wrote volumes.
Wilbur is sawing logs. My tapping the keyboard has sedated him, but the limbs quiver in a chase for new bones. I refill my glass and remember that day. My brother’s phone call from Chicago. I was in North Idaho at the time:
“It’s Dad. He’s not doing well. You’ve got to come and see him.”
“What are his chances?” I knew there was no glimmer of hope.
“Well, just come here soon, get here quick.”
Like a fool, I sat at the table holding back tears that I was afraid my boys would see. Val alongside wanted to know the prognosis. I said, “I have to go.” The flight was long and tense. I met my brother at the hospital. I went in with all the courage I could muster. The doctor, in sympathetic tone suggested it was virtually hopeless, Cancer throughout. The man is only 62 years old I thought. Why, was the next question. He hasn’t yet met his grandkids. I started to go to his room then abruptly reversed and left the lobby, went outside and sat on the stairs and balled my eyes out. I sniveled and shook and mustered enough strength again to go inside. I tried to conceal the bog of tears washing down my face. I stumbled and knocked and went in his door. There lay on the gurney a semblance of a life once lived. Arms swollen and punctured with needles. More tubes exited his nostrils. The once proud vision of a man was grey/green and alien. The blueish hazel was draining away, but his eyes were glassy and alert. He was staring at something on the wall ahead and above. He dropped his eyes and saw me. For a second, it was like he had expected me. There was no exalted excitement, more likely I could have been the janitor come to fix the pipes. I was unsure how to react, the sullen sense of grief welling into tears, for respect, I crushed inside me. I stepped closer. He returned his gaze to a television on the wall. He glanced again at me and rolled his hand toward mine. I took his swollen hand softly and he spoke rather loudly toward the TV in a weak but stern voice:
“Don’t give me no fucking baby-talk, I’m watching the game.”
And, on the tube the White Sox were beating the Indians. I pulled the chair next to his bed. We were silent the full hour and then I was ushered away by orderlies to myself. The feeling that came over me was not grief or sadness nor pity, but a smile rose to my face. It was who he was and how he ended that left me bewildered, but relieved. It was his signal that it is alright. Courage is all we have left. That this is what remains of a life so entertained. Pity not this world in entropy. We grow old and die. I told that to Wilber, he smiled that Dolphin smile.
