writemuch: Friday with Daddy

writemuch: Friday with Daddy: daddy never went through the front door of our house. always through the back, by the carport and into the utility room where he might sca...

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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Friday with Daddy

daddy never went through the front door of our house.

always through the back, by the carport and into the utility room where he might scale a fish (much to my mother's chagrin) where the dog sat and scratched at the door during our supper, where he stitched up a rabbit my sister found injured in the yard. where one morning when he was in his 40s he collapsed into my mother, sobbing because his friend had died at home while reading the paper in his wing chair and daddy had to pronounce him dead.

the front door was reserved for prom dates and the rare trick-or-treater, for strangers stopping by. but when daddy came home on last friday — april 19 — they brought him through the front door. 

he came home the same way he left town way back in february, in a giant transport filled with fancy machines, a blue tulip-like flower emblazoned on the side. 

we had made the decision to bring him home two days before, my family and his hospital team crowded around his bed. he'd been asking to go home for more than a month, to leave behind the machines and tubes and take his rest in his bed at home. pat, my father's pa, carefully listed off the options for a man who could no longer breathe completely on his own. a long-term care hospital. palliative care or Hospice. 

when i heard the word 'home' i looked to my mother, praying she would choose that option. in a wheelchair herself, she would be going home herself the next day, to 24-hour caregivers my sister would meet later in the day. my brother leaned into mama, asking quietly: what do you want to do?

'home,' she said. 'let's take him home.'

a week ago now, the transport team pulled up in front of our house drew him out into the crisp spring air. and i was waiting.

'you're home daddy!' i shouted, and he looked around. home, his wish finally granted. i stood there— my family waiting just inside the front door — watching him look around at the sky. they wheeled him into our front hall where the Christmas tree stood in december, down the hall he had walked so many times in the middle of the night in his pajamas toward the back door and a patient waiting. down the hall, toward the linen closet, that when i was five i was convinced held a witch. they wheeled him to his room, to a bed he had last slept in on february 5, the room he had shared with my mother for 50 years. 

it felt like a long ride to me, down our hall. across the creaky floorboard that gave my brother's Christmas morning crawl away. past my childhood room. a mile it seemed, as they shifted the gurney to make room for this 6-foot-two man, squeezing him through the door into a room softened by carpet and soothing blue.

daddy brought with him a host of people. the Hospice doctor and two nurses. a respiratory therapist, Pat, who had been caring for him all these weeks. a priest who's liberal views challenged daddy's conservative ones, but in his years as their minister, the two had become good friends. 

the team to settled him, and my mother's caregivers helped her into place beside him. it was mid-afternoon.

by the time we gathered next to him, daddy wore his familiar pajamas, sat propped against his favorite pillow, talked to us. i took hold of his hand, and he said something i couldn't grasp... what, daddy?

he looked straight at me and said: your hands are COLD! he wanted chocolate milk, but we had only vanilla ice cream.  i spooned it carefully into his mouth, he swallowed, not seeming to care that we could not grant his original wish.

the day before he came home, daddy talked to all of his grandchildren on the phone. somehow, after all these weeks of quiet, he had much to say. it was a miracle, really. i talked to him, too, as did my mother and sister, all of us overjoyed at hearing his voice again. 

last thursday was her first day home as well, after her fall. we had fixed her crab cakes — the best meal she had ever eaten! — and watched as she pulled herself up on her bed, straighten out that broken leg, beginning the first steps toward her recovery.  

+++

when we gathered everybody around in the room, daddy said: we didn't plan for all these people.' for daddy, it has always been about the plan. each day i visited him in the hospital, he would ask: plan. toward the end, when we had no idea, i'd shrug my shoulders — one of his exercises — and say, 'who knows? that's the plan.' which seemed to satisfy him.

this time we had one. we all joined the priest for last rites from the good ol' Book of Common Prayer. and then daddy thanked everyone for coming. thanked them, which is so what my father would do. later on, he FaceTimed with my daughter and my niece. strange, that, this 84-year-old dying man saying when asked by his granddaughters how he felt, he said:'pretty good.'

++++ 

i will tell you that it's something, when your siblings gather round your dying father. 

my brother, a physician, is good with those who are critically ill. i have watched him with my father all these weeks. he leans in, speaks softly, but loud enough to jostle daddy awake when need be. this day was no different. i can't imagine how hard it is to be doctor, lawyer, indian chief, son, for he has been all these things since february, and again on this afternoon, our last friday with daddy. 

my sister brought the dog in, picked her up and put her on the bed with daddy, knowing just how long he had waited to touch her head.

we spent the afternoon and evening gathered around my parents, telling stories and praying and singing. After supper, i sat with him and read him the story of his life. 

we kissed him goodnight, leaving he and my mother alone in the room. she lay by his side the whole night, and ruby did for most of it. 

and then, a call, footsteps in the hall, my sister running toward the room where i had tried to sleep a little. 

it was over. 

we surrounded his body, talking and crying, naming all the dogs he was now getting to see. our grandparents. his friends. so many who have made this journey before him. 

and then we left the room, all of us, to wait for the next step.

in the wee hours, as we sat up and waited for the Hospice nurse and the funeral director to arrive in the pouring rain, we listened as mama told stories about him and their life together, their early years. Despite all the uncertainty and the trauma we've experienced these many weeks, what a treasure my father's last hours were to all of us.

dawn came, and we called all the children, made arrangements for them to join us in this new life without their Pop B. not one of us has wanted to go there, but at least we will travel together, his legacy to us that he was the magnet that drew us together, keeps drawing, even in his absence.

in the days since daddy died, we have heard a hundred stories from his patients and friends, many reflecting his wry humor, others his humble, caring nature. 

'he was quiet, but he was powerful,' the man, a patient, who has kept up our lawn when daddy no longer could told me yesterday. yes he was. 

my father was a great man, so many have said to us in the past week. but aren't all our father's that? 

"so with the sleight of his magician's hand, he will end the show,' i wrote back in 1997. and i don't know who will miss him more — his patients, or the doctor himself..."  those very words caught in my throat as i read them to him one last time just a few hours before he died.  words appropriate for retirement so many years ago, and, it turns out, for his last friday with us. 

i can't imagine now  how much i'll miss him. it still isn't real to me yet. but i am not alone, because i have a full family and a whole town gathered around me, and we are all holding each other up.

 bye daddy. guess it was finally your time to hit the road. be careful. and have a safe and happy trip. sbr

ps: thank you to all who have called and visited, who have sent food, cards and facebook messages, who had loved my daddy at times it seems as much as i did. your generosity toward my family is overwhelming. maybe now daddy understands just how much he meant to all who knew him. susan

read more about him here


writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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guest blog: Pop B's pencils

a note from writemuch: my nephew John Jenkins wrote a post for this blog last summer, on the occasion of my parents' 60th anniversary. While Daddy was sick, John came to visit and stopped by the Scotland Neck house on his way to the hospital. Here, are the lessons he found in that short visit.

Pop B's Pencils

by John Jenkins

I stopped by Scotland Neck before the last time I saw Pop B at the hospital. It was just me, my mom, sister, niece and aunt writemuch. Sometime during lunch, I decided to walk around the house I've explored thousands of times since I was born. I am not sure why I decided to do this, but it sure helped. 

I discovered something pretty funny. At least I thought it was funny. Right on top of Pop B's keyboard was a tiny pad of paper, and a pencil. On top of that pencil, like most pencils, was an eraser. Pink as a newborn, and so obviously unused, the eraser sat on top of the white pencil and looked more like a decoration than anything. That struck me as humorous at the time, but did not seem like an observation worth sharing. But then in every room I knew Pop B spent time in, I kept seeing these pencils. Perfect looking pencils. They weren't the pencils I used throughout school, eraser worn at the top or sometimes even nonexistent. His pencils almost looked elegant in an odd way. 

But now as I look back at that short visit to my grandfather's house, I think my pencil and eraser observation reflects Pop B more than anything else I could think of. He was so cautiously perfect in ever single way throughout his life. After 84 years, he had to know that he was never going to make a mistake drastic enough to use the other side of that pencil. But there the eraser sat—just in case. Pens— now those are for the reckless and mistake-prone people like myself. That's why my papers have always looked like a crazy, mistake-ridden mess.  Marked up, crossed out and confused. Pop B wasn't any of those things. Ever. The notes he took on the songs he was learning on that keyboard weren't like that, his conversations weren't like that, his life wasn't like that. And that's rare. His notes were as eloquent as he was. Pop B was well spoken, easy to follow, helpful. He had no need for any of that flashy stuff. He didn't need to impress anyone with his presentation because his delivery, his accomplishments, his whole life really, spoke for itself. Navy veteran, beloved doctor, even more beloved father, grandpa and great-grandpa. 

Another thing I noticed during that exploration of his home was his pictures. Of course he was in some, always seemingly nodding in approval of everything going on around him and everything he helped build. But what was on display most was his beautiful and headstrong wife, his uniquely gifted children, and his whole mess of grandchildren. This set up was also how Pop B seemed to live his life. Not once was it ever about him. Whether it was spreading health among Scotland Neck or spreading his Atticus Finch like knowledge to us grandkids, it was never about him. It was how what he learned and what he knew could help us every day. 

And that brings us back to the pencils Pop B has left behind at the house. I know I won't be needing one, because Pop B's influence is certainly never going to be erased.

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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writemuch: masters at it.

writemuch: masters at it.: daddy loves golf. is not very good at it, but years ago, when a group of men formed a small country club a few miles outside of town, we no ...

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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masters at it.

daddy loves golf. is not very good at it, but years ago, when a group of men formed a small country club a few miles outside of town, we no longer had him at home for Sunday dinner.

i don't know if he had every played before the club started up, but he played most weekends when he was off. i am not athletic, so i never took it up, but i remember playing once with him, taking about 30 strokes to get to the hole, then putting what felt like a long way to me to to the hole on the green, and sinking it.

but what i remember more was sunday afternoons when he was home, and i watched golf with him.

daddy went to wake forest when arnold palmer was there. they didn't know each other, but when i was growing up, Arnold felt like family. he was one of us, a demon deacon, about the same age as daddy, and whoever was playing in a tournament that week, well, we were pulling for arnold. it was just right.

daddy and i last watched the masters together with any vengeance in 1980.  i remember sitting in our family room during those final moments as seve ballesteros sank the putt that would win it for him, and i actually said to daddy: i wonder where i will be during next year's masters?

that master's for us was one more benchmark that another year had ended — the long winter over and new life just about to begin. 

that spring, i was hoping for some sort of new life myself. i was searching — just a year out of college — for i didn't know what. after graduation, i'd found a job at a small daily newspaper, but as a photographer, not as the writer i longed to be. so when the job grew stale i pulled together my pitiful resume, typing it out on my trusted olivetti, sending it out blindly to the n&o, the atlanta paper, charlotte, anywhere to get myself out of eastern north carolina. i'm sure if i could find it now i would be embarrassed.

that summer of '80, i called (yes, people actually called other people in those days) the placement office at the j-school at carolina, asking if they had anything — i might even scrub floors to get out! — i could apply for.

oh, yes, said the woman on the other end of the line. a classmate of mine was working in augusta as a feature writer, and her department was looking to add a writer.

augusta. my mind thought back to that sunday afternoon in april when i'd watched the tournament with daddy and it felt like fate. the azaleas! the green lawns! the clubhouse! what fun!

i whipped out the olivetti and banged a new resume out, pulling together the very best clips i could find. (aka those with as few typos as possible) put a stamp on it, dropped in in the mail and prayed.

some days later, i got a call from the editor. could i come for an interview?

three weeks later, there i was, a working writer on my first assignment. wouldn't you know the husband of the woman i was interviewing for my story had once been an assistant football coach in my home town?

(a side note, though this i not part of the story: i met a rakish reporter my first night there. a year later we married, celebrating at a reception in my parents' back yard.)

that next spring i found myself standing in the clubhouse at the master's, and there they were, all of daddy's friends: arnold palmer in his hot pink golf shirt, gary player, jack nicklaus. even sam snead. all of them close enough for me to touch. my job that day was to report the color of this storied golf tournament, and all i could think of was the story i would tell daddy when i got to see him next.

that afternoon at sunset, i sat with my editor on the front lawn at augusta national, gin and tonic in hand soaking in the sunset on one very pinch-able day.

+++

when the hospital speech therapist first put the speaking valve on daddy's trach she asked him what he like to do now that he was retired. 

'read. play golf.' he said. 
'what kind of golfer are you?' she asked.
'not a very good one,' he said.

on saturday, daddy and i watched the masters together again for the first time in a very long time. as the old guard — player, palmer, nicklaus — teed off to open the tournament and new names took their places on the greens, i asked him if he remembered that day in 1980 when we watched balesteros don the green jacket. he shook his head, and so i reminded him, then shared my story of the 1981 clubhouse crowd once again.

'i think tom watson won that year,' i said and his eyes told me he didn't believe i could remember it right after all those years, so google answered the question for us. 

on sunday, when adam scott sank his putt in the pouring rain to win this year's event, i was back at home, imagining daddy's eyes glued to that sudden death putt. it was among the most memorable tournaments in master's history, the pundits all said the next day, and it was indeed. but for very different reasons to me.

daddy's old clubs are collecting dust in the storage house that holds all of his tools and the blue wagon he used to tote the grandkids around in with the riding mower. though he has not played golf in a good long while and he has a newer set, these are the ones i remember. 

tomorrow daddy comes home, a place he hasn't seen for 67 days.

i think about his homecoming, and in my mind, i can hear the crack of the wood against the ball, see it soar through the air toward a perfect line drive. hear the whir of the golf cart as he heads up the fairway to take that next shot toward the green.








writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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i will always love my mama, she's my favorite girl

my mother sits in a wheelchair beside my father, her gloved hands holding his. she wears a brilliant blue dress just the color of her eyes, though it's obscured by the yellow gown we all have to wear now when we visit daddy. i watch the two of them, their eyes meeting as they nod to each other and speak a silent language only those who have been married for almost 61 years can understand.

she has been here at his side, most every day since that first day — february 6th. before the day that changed so much, i'd see her walking down the hall in her crisp denim pants and neatly pressed blouse or tailored jacket and i'd think: wow, i wish i could be that beautiful. in these weeks since daddy has been in the hospital, mama has seemed to grow more beautiful. she waves at the nurses in the hallway, the members of the lift team, the care partners —  by now she practically knows all their names and they know her, a quiet but kind woman whose beauty they see, like i do, in how she cares for my dad. 

now though, she can't get herself here, has to depend on others and on someone else's schedule to see the man she has been married to since she was 24. 

it seems impossible to think that they are now both on such difficult but parallel paths. daddy works each day to regain the strength he had when he walked into the hospital so many weeks ago. mama works to walk again, too, but for entirely different reasons.

in the middle of our day-to-day journey, there is something to celebrate. mama turned 85 years old today, and we had a party, just like we might any other birthday, with a picnic lunch in a side room and with yellow roses requested specially by my daddy, with cards. but we also celebrated by watching her learn to wheel herself down the hallway toward my father, so together we could cheer him on to lift his arms, shrug his shoulders, breathe on his own.

this might be a new challenge for mama, but it is not the first. 

betty jean mccormick byrum was born on april 12, 1928 and raised to be strong. to stand up for herself when need be, to fight back, even when she didn't feel like it. she has shown this to me over and over as i have grown up. when my father was sick and dying at 39 — and yet he didn't — when her family presented her with challenges — and especially right now. 

she. carried. on.

i wish i had gotten that from her. the pick everything up and steady the load and keep on walking kind of thing. she did a lot of that, the mother of three and wife of a doctor who was often with other people's families. she picked it— us — up, and gave us a pretty wonderful life.

i tend to leave life all on the floor — as evidenced by my bedroom closet and my home for the past few months — hoping someone else will come behind me and make everything all straight. usually mama. when i was a child, she usually did.

there have been moments in my life though, when i called on my 'mama' instincts and took care of the impossible. all by myself. picked myself up and moved through what i didn't want to, because i come from her stock.

now it is my turn again.

you know i am a storyteller. this comes sometimes much to my parents' chagrin. might i tell too much? in their eyes probably... i hope only to tell the important.

mama is not one to share many stories about her childhood. i can remember, though,  times when she shared a bit. how roosevelt died on her birthday. how she met my father at a medical school dance. (and my, was she beautiful.) how they lived their first married year with a murphy bed.

my favorite betty jean childhood story is the one when my grandmother sent her to the store to buy a loaf of bread, but wouldn't you know it? a new movie — "the wizard of oz" — was showing at the local theater. the 11-year-old betty jean rode her bike to the store, got the bread, and several hours later  — maybe she sat through two showings — she emerged from the dark theater, too late for my grandmother's sandwiches, but she was a changed little girl.

weren't we all changed by that movie? our grayscale worlds turned suddenly into color by the wind?

in these past weeks, it feels like the wind has taken our colorful world and upended it, picked up our settled family home with it and crashed it down so rakishly that we don't know which end is up. and the whole world has turned to grayscale again.

we are not alone. a church friend one day this week said her 97-year-old father had the same injury as my mom, her own mother already in 24-hr care. she wept, telling me her story, and all i could do was hug her. i understand. add her to my now pages-long prayer list for families like my own.

my siblings and i have often joked that our family is just so beige. to the outside world i am sure that's how it seems. we tend to cling close, though i am the one who puts the story out there. neither of my parents have been comfortable with my writing about them from time to time, but i hope one day they will understand why.

today is my mother's birthday. all the grandchildren called her, and one even came to visit. she sat next to the love her life and held his hand. and he told her he loved her, one more time. 

it was an honor to be with them as they shared their own private celebration.

today we celebrated my mother and my father. brave souls, both.


ps: a favorite college song was 'i'll always love my mama' by the intruders: watch the video here  and dance!

writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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richochet, II

there is an apartment building in chelsea in NYC with a glass front (well, there are thousands), but a few years ago, the new york times magazine featured it in a photograph, which i can't find now. but in each backlit apartment in that small world, simultaneous living played out before the viewer's eyes. dancers practicing their steps. mothers feeding supper to anxious toddlers. a cellist leaning into her instrument. a lone woman watching tv. floor after floor, side-by-side, people lived out their lives unbeknownst to voyeurs, or to those who shared their walls.

i have been thinking about this for weeks, now, how on any given day at the same time of day, my children are doing one thing and i am doing another, far away from them, the walls between us never melting away. how when my son makes a phone call to a client in raleigh, my daughter walks the dog to doggie daycare on the upper west side in manhattan on her way to work, as my husband checks the drudge report for the morning headlines and i wipe up the kitchen before heading out to work.

parallel lives, it feels like. for this family who used to share the same space, once upon a time. now when we do, it's for usually for a few hours — on a church pew, around the kitchen table, opening presents on Christmas morning. a few hours. not nearly enough.

i will confess that until recently, i have not thought too much about the parallel life i had been living with my parents. every few nights i'd call home and find out about their days, and though i worried sometimes about them driving to and from the doctors office, or not having enough to do, i didn't picture them living life out in a lighted box next to my own lighted box.

in the past two months since daddy has been hospitalized, we have developed a new routine for our lives, all of us in our little lighted boxes. my brother works, my mother drives back and forth, my sister calls, comes home when she can. we have shared the lighted box at times, all of us converging in whatever glass-fronted room holds my father at that moment.

those back-lit boxes came back to me the other night, as i thought back to my wednesday, a week ago. how at lunch time, my husband came to my office to share a hot lunch of beef stew and green beans with me, while my mother sat in my father's hospital room talking to him, watching him breathe in and out. how my brother, at the same time, walked the corridors of the hospital to see patients as sick as my dad. how my sister, back in iowa was going through her day.

at 2 p.m., if you could hold up the glass box and look at our parallel lives, here is what you'd see: my brother talking on the phone with my mother. me sitting at my desk, sending emails, making lists for the rest of my day and another of what was in my father's doctor's bag years ago. my sister likely texting her daughter, who was on her third day back at work after the baby. we all stood in our separate boxes, miles apart. 

the moment i learned mama had fallen, i felt the walls fade away and suddenly we all stood in the same room again. this family who once-upon-a-time sat at the kitchen table and shared fondu on saturday nights. who themselves shared the church pew on Sundays, who warmed the seats as my brother played basketball in the old high school gym, who once rode all the way to newport, rhode island in a tiny ford torino, just to see where my parents had once lived. 

sharing the box these past weeks with my birth family has been something powerful, even in the middle of this very hard thing. in the box together, we make jokes, we pray, we look at old pictures, we cry. we laugh at the absurdity of what we face together, what my parents face.

this week, we have sort of retreated to our boxes again. my mother lies in a hospital room down long hallways and up elevators from my father. i'm back at work, as is my brother, and my sister moves between our parents, having her turn at trying to keep up with both of them, though neither is moving very far.

my sister-in-law told me the other day that i had to finish richochet, because it didn't end as most of my stories do. i have thought about that, too. but how to end a story that just doesn't have one yet? i wish i could invent something, but anything i dream up means i am just fooling myself.

and so i will just keep going in my own little lighted box, watching as the walls fade away every now and then when my family gathers. and i'll keep writing the un-endable story, until the words finally push me through.


writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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richochet

i turned the page on my calendar on monday as i sat by daddy's side. april. when we began this journey, the trees lining the highway looked as if they were shivering in the february wind as i drove east on those cloudy days.

there is a patch along the road i've been watching these six weeks. back in the beginning, i noticed a tinge of pale blue there and wondered just what it would turn out to be when spring came, though i never expected to be able to witness it. i thought i'd be traveling a different road, the one home. but in all this time i have driven back to where i grew up only twice. but i have come to know this new road well.

the patch is turning a crisp blue now, the flowers, whatever they are, reaching toward the sun like we all are. hoping for light. 

it's been a long, rainy, cold winter this year and we are all so wanting it to be over. wanting light to come.

when i dressed for work this morning i was looking for something bright. it's april, after all. i put on an old thin springlike sweater (no time for finding anything new this spring)  but the wind hit me and i came back inside and grabbed a scarf, hoping to hold off the cold. lunchtime i checked in with my mother, who was at my dad's side today, ever the nursemaid. all was well.

then a phone call from my sister that began: well...the same way it began in February. only this time, a different parent.

my mother had fallen. and now: both parents in the hospital. at the same time. i still can't believe it as i write.

How to react? my sister so far away, me at work, my brother at ground zero. It is unbelievable ... and not. we trade turns saying the good things: at least they are in the same hospital! we can trade out visits! life could be worse! yes, all of that.

but.

we all know the roller coaster has left the tracks. the car just felt the slick in the road and missed the curve. and Daddy sleeps, unable to tell us what to do.

 
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author.

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