Like Drowning In Your Own Body

September 13, 2009.

In April of 2006, my father died of congestive heart failure. Congestive heart failure is like drowning in your own body. The body produces more and more fluids and cannot get rid of them. This puts strain on the heart, which lacks the power to pump all the blood, causing more fluid to collect, making the heart work even harder, until finally, the day comes when it can work no more, and you drown in your own body.
From 1979: (I was mad at dad when I wrote this poem)

the heart: it chokes the lodger in my throat
the father a man but not a family man
his love his company his children his interest
his use of vocabulary was economical
his power unconscious
he was not a bank,he said.
he said he was not a bank.
dense milt 1979

Despite the feelings this poem recalls from almost forty four years ago, my father and I had grown close as he neared the end of his life. My sister and I had travelled to visit him on what turned out to be his last day alive.

His knees were the size of thighs, and his body was heavy and full of fluids. His breath was laboured, and he drifted in and out of full coherence. Still, he knew we were there. I don't remember him smiling, or having words of wisdom to impart. He was in pain, and he knew that he was dying.

At one point, he wanted to go to the bathroom, so we helped him up and started to guide him to the toilet. He was really out of it though, and started to stumble. I was trying to hold him up, but he ain't heavy, he's my father. The weight was simply too much for me to keep him vertical. This is why they call it "dead weight". My sister went to get nurses to help, and it took about 4 or 5 of them (and these were all big overweight American nurses) to lift him and get him back to his bed. From then on, they told him that it was bedpans or diapers as he would not be allowed to go on his own.
Knowing the force and pride of this man, I knew this was not in his plans. It seemed that he would not be long for our world. We said our goodbyes. He held my hand and thanked us for coming. I remember the feeling of my father's hands. Like other hands of his generation, they were the hands of a man who worked with his hands.They were bigger, and meatier than hands today. Our relationship, which had not always been so close, had changed (for the better) with the birth of my daughter.
Growing up, my dad was often "not there" for me. I grew up thinking that somehow this was my fault, but after he died, when I had the opportunity to spend some time with my second oldest brother, I found that my father had not been there for him either. He related stories of my mother getting him up to go for hockey practices on the other side of town in the nether hours of the morning. He would take the bus on his own. Where was my dad in this? Probably in bed, although it was entirely possible that he could have been active in coaching other people's kids as he was always more comfortable in the company of strangers.
About a month before he died, I woke early in the morning to the type of dream where you are almost conscious. Your dream plays like a movie, and you are the director. My dad had become a very good grandfather; he was much better at that than being a father to us. He was always telling his grandkids wild stories of his youth.

We would listen as he told us how he was taking this girl home up on Dunbar St, then discovering he didn't have fare for the bus, and had to walk all the way back to east Vancouver. He stopped at the Aristocrat on Broadway and Granville, as he had enough money for a coffee, and met up with a neighbourhood celebrity who was a prize fighter. The prize fighter asked Freddie (my dad) what he was up to, and my Dad said he was on his way home. The fighter said hang with me for the rest of the night and I'll get you home. He then gave my dad a giant roll of money to hold for him, as they embarked on a crawl of epic proportions through the many afterhour places of ill repute.

Another one of his stories was when he met Johnny Cash. He was with a buddy, and they were at The Cave, a long gone nightclub in Vancouver, designed to look like a giant cave with stalactites hanging from the ceiling. “Like something from the town of Bedrock, The Cave was decorated with stalactites fashioned out of burlap and plaster, and the walls were made similarly cave-like. In the early days, it was a supper club with floor shows and so-and-so and his orchestra. Any alcohol that was consumed was discreetly brought in by patrons because liquor laws at the time forbade the sinful combination of drinking and entertainment.” Lani Russwurm Jan 29, 2014.

In my Dad’s story, he and his buddy were watching Johnny Cash. After his show, Johnny came over to their table and they all talked. Johnny asked where they could go to get more drinks. My Dad suggested The Penthouse, an after hours club with burlesque, strippers, and spaghetti with Mama’s secret gravy sauce. Johnny said great, and they all went to the Penthouse. They were standing in line to get in, and some guy ahead of them got into an argument with my Dad. Johnny Cash pushed ahead and punched this guy in the face! That was my dad’s Johnny Cash story.

My father had many stories, and they seemed to improve upon each telling. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, he said. ( So did Mark Twain, as I later learned.) As my father neared his death, I worried that his stories would die with him. I thought what about all the great stories that he had yet to tell.

In my dream I was filled with a sadness that no one would ever hear them again.
As I lay dreaming, I reasoned in my dream logic, that I was created by my father. His DNA would have been passed on to me. I wondered if memory could be stored in DNA. If I could just concentrate hard enough, then maybe I would be able to tap into his DNA memories which were inside of me, and I could “remember" all the stories that he knew. The stories that he had not had the time to tell. I remember in my dream I was trying very hard to drift back in time, vainly trying to get in touch with my ancestral memory and the lost stories of my father. The memories started to flood back and I was drowning in his memories.

Just then, I awoke and once again they were gone, just like my father.

On that day he died, my sister and I drove back home from Olympia, Washington where he lay dying. It was raining heavily, and we were crying, listening to some cds that I had brought along for the road. In particular, I remember we were listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, and Billy Corgan’s song Disarm.

“Disarm you with a smile
And cut you like you want me to
Cut that little child
Inside of me and such a part of you
Ooh, the years burn
Ooh, the years burn

I used to be a little boy
So old in my shoes
And what I choose is my choice
What's a boy supposed to do?
The killer in me is the killer in you
My love
I send this smile over to you”

The rain came down, the anthemic bells chimed in the song, the road was blurred, yet somehow, we made it home. Later that night, about midnight, my father-in-law came and woke me to say he just received the call, and my Dad was gone. Michelle and I got up and I must have related my memories of my father. We raised our glasses and toasted him and his life.

Here I am seventeen years later. It is about five in the morning. The dog is pacing, my wife is snoring, and I am drowning in these memories of my father, still trying to connect with his cellular memories, still trying to tell those stories once again.