December 7th…a day that will live in infamy and in my mind forever.

December 7, 1985 was a Saturday.

It was nice outside, sunny and blue and cool with just a little breeze at Stanford where I began my day. I was stiff from sleeping in a chair, but as I ate some toast and had my morning coffee looking out the windows onto a lovely little garden space, I seemed to unwind some. I remember watching some sort of fuzzy-topped plant gently moving in the breeze and being captivated by it for some reason. It’s odd what small things one remembers sometimes.

Behind me the room was silent.

I enjoy quiet most of the time, I think the world is way too noisy, but I’d lived in this silence for a few days and it was beginning to become heavy. Even when people came into the room, the silence seemed to remain unbroken; hushed tones, light steps, quiet smiles. The door never made the least bit of noise, either opening or closing…odd what we remember.

My toast mostly eaten, the remainder of my insipid coffee now cold, I stayed at the window…staring. The silence of the room behind me seemed to shove me toward the window and press me hard against it.

In bed behind me my dad was dying.

I poured some more coffee from the insulated pot the nurse had brought me, turned around and took my seat next to his bed. Errant rays of sunshine from the window played across his bed and seemed to cut into me, hot and deep. My dad lay motionless, sallow, eyes taped shut, he seemed small, not that he was a big man. There were no longer any tubes down his nose, no respirator taped to his face, no IV’s, no medications…I had signed orders to take all of that away four days earlier. The staff, attentive, empathetic and tender, didn’t understand what was taking him so long to die. No, they didn’t put it that way…He’s fighting, he’s still so strong...but that’s what they meant.

The day before Thanksgiving, my dad had cardiac by-pass surgery at one of the best hospitals in the country…and something had gone wrong. One of those possible side-effects, less than a one percent chance, had roared to life and wreaked havoc in my dad’s brain. I had made the decision to let him die with some dignity, if that’s what it’s called, instead of wasting away in some inferior rest home for two or three years and finally dying of pneumonia or some other insulting malady. And in this bed in front of me, with sun warming his cold Italian face, my dad was silently fighting for a life that had already abandoned him.

I had not been out of the hospital at all since I checked my dad in the evening before Thanksgiving. I was wearing the same clothes I was when I brought him in. I hadn’t had a shower, though I had been washing up in his bathroom, and though I don’t remember, I probably didn’t smell too good. I had made the decision to wait until my brother got there this morning and then I was going to make a quick trip to my home in Redwood City, just a few miles away, shower, change, and be back in a couple hours. I couldn’t stand myself any more.

My brother got there about nine, we stepped into the hall and talked about dad a little and the fact that nothing had changed overnight. I got my sweater off the back of the chair where I had been sitting, forced myself to look at my dad and squeeze his ice cold hand, kiss his forehead and tell him I’d be back in just a little while.

I never saw him again.

While I was taking my nice hot, refreshing shower 20 miles away, my pop quietly stopped breathing. I can still hear my brother’s voice in my head coming out of my answering machine…No need to hurry back. Dad just died.

To this day I feel like I abandoned him in some way. I think I should have been there when he died. On the other hand, a part of me almost thinks he waited to die till I was gone, knowing that I’d not have taken it too well.

Both thoughts are foolish, of course. People die, dads die. That’s the way of things.

But on December 7, 1985, my dad died.

I loved you, pop.