Saturday, September 20, 2008
My father died 12 years ago today. I was in Athens, Greece standing in the basement of a dark gay bar when it happened.
Daddy had a stroke in 1991 and was partially paralyzed. He had gradually gone almost blind, a side-effect of 14 years of diabetes. The last time I talked to him on the phone he assured me he was going to live a while longer, "The doctor just gave me 100 days worth of pills."
It was my first trip overseas. I went to visit Yorgos, arriving in Athens on September 18th. Everything was strange and exotic and my travel journal is filled with observations about how different things were, observations that I cringe to read now. On that Friday, the 20th, Yorgos and I walked downtown from his apartment, passing the original Olympic stadium. We had lunch at McDonald’s (Yorgos loves American food) and I have the placemat from that meal stuck into my journal, in Greek with occasional English words sprinkled in.
The previous June I had flown back to Michigan and driven to my parent’s house in the upper peninsula. My brother had announced that he wasn’t going to run the family dairy farm and that he wasn’t going to run the buffalo farm either. At 35, he had suddenly developed a backbone. My parents had to move in with my mother’s mother. My father was distraught, it must have been embarrassing for him at his age to live with his mother-in-law. But what else could he do? For the last five years he had been an invalid and when the farm sold, there was about $17,000 left over. $17,000 after 22 years of work. He had never been a good businessman.
That afternoon Yorgos and I walked around the base of the Acropolis. There were excavations underway, but no opportunities to see them up close. In one spot the ground was covered with pottery sherds and roofing tile fragments. I had once wanted to be a classical archaeologist, but my brain was not wired for foreign languages. It was certainly wired for foreign men, I was busy admiring all of the swarthy, hairy Greek men. Yorgos suggested that we go out to some gay bars that night.
My father had not been feeling well that day. A couple of days earlier a friend had stopped by and afterwards that friend had called another friend and told him he needed to go see my father, that he wasn’t going to last long. Daddy had been depressed since moving in with my grandmother, and I suppose his health was deteriorating, although my mother and sisters hadn’t noticed.
So Yorgos and I had gone out to a gay bar in Athens, late that night, many times zones away from Michigan. The second bar was in the basement of a building- dark, a backroom that men kept wandering in and out of. I stood next to Yorgos and on the wall opposite up a projector projected porn, a movie with black men, titled "Black & Hung 2." I was surprised to see that someone had subtitled the porno. Yorgos was helpful and translated the captions, "Homer, the black man is going to dance.... Homer, the black man is getting excited and now he is going to masturbate... Homer, he is coming!"
Back in Michigan it was early afternoon and my father wanted to take a nap and my mother took him to the bedroom. Long ago it had been my grandfather’s, I remember sitting on his bed as Grandpa dressed and asking him why he wore boxer shorts instead of the kind of underpants I wore. Such a strange memory. My father sat on the edge of the bed and without a word suddenly fell onto the floor. My mother tried to get him up, but he was not responsive.
My mother does not react well in crisis situations. Calling 911 is generally not an option, I’m not sure if it is because of denial or because it is embarrassing or if she just doesn’t think of doing so. So on that afternoon she picked up the phone and called my brother, who worked on a farm nearby, and asked him "Your father has fallen down, can you come get him up?"
My brother, not yet Amish, drove down the road to Grandma’s house, which was perched on the hill at the corner of Long Lake and Zimmerman Roads. He took one look at Daddy, who was busy turning blue in the face, and told my mother, "He’s dead." Afterwards, someone called 911 and the paramedics and a police sheriff came and they tried to revive him, but he was very dead.
We walked home from the bar sometime after 2 AM, I hadn’t met anyone, as I noted in my journal, I was being shy. I went to bed not knowing that thousands of miles away my mother was taking my father’s favorite crazy quilt to a funeral home, for some reason she wanted him to have it when he was cremated.
My father hated funerals, and so my mother decided that they would have a party instead on that Sunday. So they arranged family pictures up on the fireplace mantle and dozens of people crowded into Grandma’s house while in Greece I drove with Yorgos, Filios, and Mike to the town of Nauplio on election day. My mother had decided that I was to remain in the dark- she didn’t want to ruin my trip to Greece. Even if I had known, there wouldn’t have been time to get back to Michigan for the wake party.
On October 1st, eleven days later, I arrived back in Tucson and my roommate Randy picked me up at the airport. He asked me if I had a good trip and I said yes, it wasn’t until we got into his car that he suddenly got serious. "Do you know?" he asked. "Know what?" "Oh Homer, your father died while you were gone, he said. All I could say was "Oh!"
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Daddy had a stroke in 1991 and was partially paralyzed. He had gradually gone almost blind, a side-effect of 14 years of diabetes. The last time I talked to him on the phone he assured me he was going to live a while longer, "The doctor just gave me 100 days worth of pills."
It was my first trip overseas. I went to visit Yorgos, arriving in Athens on September 18th. Everything was strange and exotic and my travel journal is filled with observations about how different things were, observations that I cringe to read now. On that Friday, the 20th, Yorgos and I walked downtown from his apartment, passing the original Olympic stadium. We had lunch at McDonald’s (Yorgos loves American food) and I have the placemat from that meal stuck into my journal, in Greek with occasional English words sprinkled in.
The previous June I had flown back to Michigan and driven to my parent’s house in the upper peninsula. My brother had announced that he wasn’t going to run the family dairy farm and that he wasn’t going to run the buffalo farm either. At 35, he had suddenly developed a backbone. My parents had to move in with my mother’s mother. My father was distraught, it must have been embarrassing for him at his age to live with his mother-in-law. But what else could he do? For the last five years he had been an invalid and when the farm sold, there was about $17,000 left over. $17,000 after 22 years of work. He had never been a good businessman.
That afternoon Yorgos and I walked around the base of the Acropolis. There were excavations underway, but no opportunities to see them up close. In one spot the ground was covered with pottery sherds and roofing tile fragments. I had once wanted to be a classical archaeologist, but my brain was not wired for foreign languages. It was certainly wired for foreign men, I was busy admiring all of the swarthy, hairy Greek men. Yorgos suggested that we go out to some gay bars that night.
My father had not been feeling well that day. A couple of days earlier a friend had stopped by and afterwards that friend had called another friend and told him he needed to go see my father, that he wasn’t going to last long. Daddy had been depressed since moving in with my grandmother, and I suppose his health was deteriorating, although my mother and sisters hadn’t noticed.
So Yorgos and I had gone out to a gay bar in Athens, late that night, many times zones away from Michigan. The second bar was in the basement of a building- dark, a backroom that men kept wandering in and out of. I stood next to Yorgos and on the wall opposite up a projector projected porn, a movie with black men, titled "Black & Hung 2." I was surprised to see that someone had subtitled the porno. Yorgos was helpful and translated the captions, "Homer, the black man is going to dance.... Homer, the black man is getting excited and now he is going to masturbate... Homer, he is coming!"
Back in Michigan it was early afternoon and my father wanted to take a nap and my mother took him to the bedroom. Long ago it had been my grandfather’s, I remember sitting on his bed as Grandpa dressed and asking him why he wore boxer shorts instead of the kind of underpants I wore. Such a strange memory. My father sat on the edge of the bed and without a word suddenly fell onto the floor. My mother tried to get him up, but he was not responsive.
My mother does not react well in crisis situations. Calling 911 is generally not an option, I’m not sure if it is because of denial or because it is embarrassing or if she just doesn’t think of doing so. So on that afternoon she picked up the phone and called my brother, who worked on a farm nearby, and asked him "Your father has fallen down, can you come get him up?"
My brother, not yet Amish, drove down the road to Grandma’s house, which was perched on the hill at the corner of Long Lake and Zimmerman Roads. He took one look at Daddy, who was busy turning blue in the face, and told my mother, "He’s dead." Afterwards, someone called 911 and the paramedics and a police sheriff came and they tried to revive him, but he was very dead.
We walked home from the bar sometime after 2 AM, I hadn’t met anyone, as I noted in my journal, I was being shy. I went to bed not knowing that thousands of miles away my mother was taking my father’s favorite crazy quilt to a funeral home, for some reason she wanted him to have it when he was cremated.
My father hated funerals, and so my mother decided that they would have a party instead on that Sunday. So they arranged family pictures up on the fireplace mantle and dozens of people crowded into Grandma’s house while in Greece I drove with Yorgos, Filios, and Mike to the town of Nauplio on election day. My mother had decided that I was to remain in the dark- she didn’t want to ruin my trip to Greece. Even if I had known, there wouldn’t have been time to get back to Michigan for the wake party.
On October 1st, eleven days later, I arrived back in Tucson and my roommate Randy picked me up at the airport. He asked me if I had a good trip and I said yes, it wasn’t until we got into his car that he suddenly got serious. "Do you know?" he asked. "Know what?" "Oh Homer, your father died while you were gone, he said. All I could say was "Oh!"
