Well, my father-in-law died at 8:20 pm CST, just a few hours ago.
No matter my personal issues with him, it was really hard to watch him deteriorate in a matter of weeks. Every doctor always tells you about how tough cancer is. I smoke 4.5 packs a day, my wife 2 packs a day, and we're going to go the full route--hypnosis, patches, gum, pills, group therapy--once the ordeal of her dad passing is behind her. I don't want to see Debbie looking like that, and I'd rather shoot myself than get to that point.
Going to visit him the last several weeks changed my feelings. Not my anger at what he had done thirty years ago, but what he has been the last couple of months: a father whose children have had to watch die in a day-by-day process that's just unbearable.
One regret I have is not having the chance to ask him if he was sorry for what he had done to my wife when she was just twelve, and to his wife for all the hell he delivered upon her. Maybe that question didn't need to be asked. I suspect he was thinking about all that while he was thinking about what comes next, as in meeting Saint Peter.
He seemed to be calm with the idea of dying. In fact, he told the doctors and the nurses to not do anything for him, either with feeding tubes or blood transfusions or anything else. He was ready to go.
In his defense, he worked hard for the City of Milwaukee plowing snow, running bulldozers, and every other type of equipment he could get his hands on. He worked for the city for 45 years, and never took a sick day. That's unbelievable to me. He had to be hung over a whole lotta days, but he still showed up for work.
He also served in the Navy, as a submariner, mechanic, and other jobs he was too bored to talk about. He was in the Pacific from 1944, and stayed through the reconstruction of Japan until 1948.
He worked hard, and could have bought himself one of the fancy cars he always talked about, ones that his friends bought. Yet he drove beaters so that all of his five kids could go to a Catholic school, all so his kids could get a better education. He and my mother-in-law paid $2000 a year for each of those five kids to go to a Catholic school.
He and I didn't really hit it off until he realized that I was a motorhead as well. One of the tests of being a real "Baker" boy was being able to tear a motor apart, put it back together, and have it run on the first spin of the starter. When Frank realized I was one of "those," we got a lot closer.
And I realized early on that he wasn't shy about getting me to help him work on his cars. I spent a lot of hours under his cars doing brake jobs, suspension work, tune-ups, and even exhaust system work.
Honestly, I don't know why I'm writing all of this except to figure out how I feel about his passing, short-term and long-term.
Short-term, I'm torn apart. All I can do is try to help Debbie.
Long-term? I really don't know. He brought to me (by fatherhood) an incredibly beautiful young woman, more well-read in the classics as well as the contemporary writers, more street-wise, and more charming than any young lady I'd ever met. And one who knew how to turn even the simplest times into a great afternoon. And, oh, yes, I'll be honest: she was the hottest-looking young woman I've ever seen.
How a drop-dead beauty like Debbie would marry a mug like me is a mystery.
At the same time, he brought to me (by that same fatherhood) a beautiful young woman so full of self-doubt that even today she has no confididence in her abilities. Never mind that she has hordes of former employees from when she was manager of a retail store still call her. They loved her then, and still do. Fellow employees from other jobs stay in constant touch. She has friends from California to New York who beg her to come visit. And these are friends of ten or twenty or even thirty years.
Her father died just hours ago, and I'm crying. So, just regard this post as one of those "I'm crying" posts, and move along. It's just much easier for me to write word-after-word here than it is to call my mother-in-law and tell her just how I feel.
All I'm doing here is saying in writing what I can or maybe can't say to the rest of the family.
Thanks, Oleg, for giving me a blank sheet of internet paper to whine on.
