the hospital my mom would be there the entire day and then she would call the night nurse every morning, very, very early, usually around 1:30AM to get a report about how my dad was doing. One time when I had left work a little early to go to the hospital from an appointment I had two hours north of Philly I happened to walk into his hospital room at the precise moment he was having an adverse reaction from the cancer fighting medications he had just been given. I stood at the door to his room stunned as doctors and nurses began rushing into the room to stabilize him, which they were finally able to do when a respiratory specialist came into the room. He was breathing in and out so heavily that his chest was heaving and was doing so quite rapidly. My mom was there watching, taking it all in, being strong, and holding on. Later after my dad’s condition improved and they gave him medication to help him go to sleep she seemed more concerned about me walking in and seeing my dad struggling for the breath of life, when it was she who was there day in and day out by his side. I guess when she saw the look of shock on my face her first instinct was to be concerned about me, when she, as my dad’s caregiver, had to deal with many such events without anyone being there to support her. There were highs and lows during my dad’s illness but when the lows came my mom and dad endured them together.
Growing up I was closer to my mom than I was to my dad. My was bitter about losing his business and felt that people who had success in business had good luck, and those who were not successful were the victims of bad luck. Whenever I would earn good grades in high school and college my father used to tell me the only reason that happened was because I had easy teachers. Later on in life, after college, when I went into sales and was earning more money than my dad ever earned, he would constantly tell me that the only reason I did well or won awards for the number of sales I brought in was because I had either an easy product to sell or else had an easy territory. To my dad it was never my ability and hard work that were responsible for my success, but instead, it was always something external to me that made success possible. Having heard this since high school, throughout college and graduate school, and then once I was in the work force had an negative effect on me. I began changing jobs, doing well wherever I worked but because I did not believe my success was due to my abilities, I tried constantly trying to prove myself, I initially thought, to me, but in reality, to my dad. I was in my early thirties when I finally realized that I was never going to change him, never going to make him understand me, and that all I was doing was hurting myself by the constant job hopping. My resume had so many jobs on it that even after removing a lot of them it still looked as though I was unstable and moved around much too often. If I did not get my act together I would soon approach the time when no one would hire me. I was becoming my own worst enemy but was fortunate enough to realize before it was too late that I was burning myself out and that I had to find personal satisfaction with myself and my life irregardless of whether my father approved or not.
There were times when my dad had temporary improvement, that even though my folks knew would not last and could change overnight, would enable my parents to make the most of whatever time my dad had left and they would go to dinner or a movie if my dad was able. Those times, unfortunately, were few and far between. During the early stages of my dad’s illness the doctors told my mom and dad that if they wanted to go on a vacation now would be the best time to do that. My folks went on a cruise to the Mediterranean and stopped in Israel where my two sisters met my parents at the boat and spent a day with them and their families. Several months later the cruise ship they were on became infamous for a brutal act of terrorism. The ship my parents were on was called the Achille Lauro, a ship that several months later would be hijacked by Palestinian terrorists, and an elderly Jewish man, Leon Klinghofer, was thrown overboard in his wheelchair by the terrorists in an act that horrified the civilized world.
I had appointments scheduled in the Philadelphia area and had to be about eighty miles north of the city the next day but before leaving for my hotel met my parents at a local restaurant for dinner. I remember this day because it was on this day that I sat at the dinner table with my parents and looked at my mother and saw a depth of sadness in her eyes I had never seen before. She was losing the love of her life, her companion, her best friend, her husband whom she deeply loved, and the pain and hurt in her eyes was so profound that when the dinner was over and my parents left to return to their apartment I got into my car to drive the eighty miles to my hotel, and found myself, for the very first time, crying. I saw two people that I loved, one that was dying and one that was trying in whatever way she could to be strong for him and her family trying to make sense of tragedy. I learned much later when my mom became ill what I observed that day, that the two worst things in life are watching someone you love suffer, and knowing that you cannot do anything to end their suffering.
My dad was in the hospital again because of a relapse. We knew things were not good and that there would no longer be any improvement, not even for one day. When my mom told me about this I was about to go into an appointment I had but since I had a few minutes decided to call my dad. I told him that I wanted him to know that I loved him very much, and that after all these years I understood that everything he said to me since I was a little boy and now an adult, all his criticisms and all his advice, were what he felt was best for me and that he only wanted to help me and that I was not angry with him and that I thought that having him for my father made me the luckiest man in the world. At the age of thirty five, for the first time in my life, I heard my father weeping, and then he had to hang up the phone. I drove to my appointment with a heavy heart but glad I had the chance to tell him that I loved him and that I forgave him.
In late September things got progressively worse for him and when the doctors informed my parents that the chemotherapy was no longer working my dad decided that he wanted to return home from the hospital, have hospice care at my folks home, and die in his own bed. I went with my mom to the hospital and when she told me she was going to the billing department to handle the check-out for my dad, I helped dress my father. Never before in my life did I have to do this. It was as though I was the father and he was the son. As I finished dressing him and he sat in the wheelchair he motioned for me to come closer. He could not speak very loud and was very weak. I knelt down close to him and barely above a whisper he said “I’m not going to let them take me into the apartment. I’m going to walk in by myself.” He repeated this three times. My mom returned and the orderly took my dad to the ambulance which transported him back to my parents apartment. My mom and I followed the ambulance in my car. When the ambulance arrived at my parents apartment and the medical personnel put my dad in the wheelchair and began wheeling him to the front door of the apartment complex my father held up his hand, motioning for them to wait. I watched this man, the pillar of strength of my childhood, struggle without success to try and lift himself out of the wheelchair so he could walk into his apartment. When he realized he was so weak and did not have the strength I saw a resignation and loss of hope in his eyes that I will never forget and that still saddens me to this day, almost twenty five years later.
CHAPTER FOUR
When my father returned home he began receiving hospice care with regular visits from a hospice nurse. Being a retired pharmacist he knew how medications worked and refused to take morphine because he insisted on being lucid and in control. He fought with every ounce of energy he had left not to take morphine, and it was only after my dad had passed away, after the funeral and after my sisters had returned to their homes in Israel that while helping my mom dispose of a number of things I saw the nurses logbook and went thru page after page of the number of days and number of dosages of morphine my dad had to have during his final days for the pain. I had been oblivious to what was going on and did not know that the last few weeks of his life things were so bad and that he must have been in excruciating pain. Around 11:30PM on November 20, 1985 I was lying in bed asleep and was awakened by a phone call from my mom. “It’s over” she said. The pain and suffering my dad endured had finally ended. My mom told me it was foolish to drive the hundred and fifty miles from my home at this late hour and that to instead, come the next day, November 21st.
I remember arriving at my parents apartment, walking in and seeing several of my mom’s friends there. I went over to my mom and held her close to me in a giant bear hug and could tell she very much needed me there at that moment. Her friends then
