Heather Song

by Michael Phillips

  I stepped forward and hugged him. It was a little stiff, made more awkward by the briefcase he still held in one hand. But it was a beginning. And often the first step, especially in relationships, is the most important of all.

  “I ordered pizza,” said my father as we walked toward the house. “It should be here in half an hour. You do still like pizza?”

  “Of course.”

  “Half pepperoni, half Hawaiian, thin crust?”

  “You remembered—that’s exactly what I always ordered! I haven’t had pizza in four years. It’s not one of Scotland’s specialties.”

  “Good—you will like this. I get it from a little place on twenty-third—​best pizza in Portland. Come on in!”

  The first evening went okay. You never know what to expect in such situations. We ate the pizza—my dad was right, it was one of the best I’d ever had!—and chatted and caught up…superficially in a way, but it was necessary to get past the opening pourparlers of trying to reengage together.

  He showed me my room, and I must say it was more than I expected. The bedroom was spacious, with an easy chair, full cable TV with TiVo and all the trimmings. I wasn’t a big TV addict. I hadn’t watched as much as two hours of TV in four years, but I could tell that my father was trying to make me comfortable. The room had its own bathroom with separate shower and bath, a full-sized desk, and a lovely queen bed. There was even a little counter along one wall with a water boiler, hot plate, wet bar and sink, and minimal kitchen service in a cabinet above. I could be as independent as suited me. It was not just a guest room but a studio apartment. Much of the interior and furnishings were clearly new. My father had obviously gone to great lengths and expense to make my stay enjoyable and to put me at ease so that I could feel independent. His consideration touched me, though I felt bad that he had gone to so much trouble for a short stay.

  I went to bed that evening emotionally worn out. I felt a sense of relief to be past the first evening, yet was filled with an array of mixed feelings. I didn’t know where to put them all. My long-​comfortable psyche was shifting wildly about on its emotional axis.

  I had been dreading coming here as an ordeal to be faced. Yet as I laid my head down on the pillow and tried to pray and say my good nights to God, all I could think to say was, Thank you, Lord…Maybe this isn’t going to be so bad.

  Maybe seeing another’s weakness and vulnerability opens your heart to them in different ways. Especially toward one’s parents. You harbor so many images from childhood and your teens, and even from your twenties when you flatter yourself that you’re finally an adult and are capable of seeing life and the world with such maturity and perspective…Then you reach your forties—and probably your fifties, too, though I wasn’t there yet—and you begin to realize how little of life you really saw accurately. What is called the hubris of youth isn’t really a hubris limited to youth at all, it is the hubris of life—we think we know more than we really know at every age.

  I wonder if it’s only on your deathbed that you begin to see with anything resembling true perspective. I couldn’t know that yet. But I did know that suddenly everything about my father seemed different. He was no longer strong, indestructible, tall, handsome, powerful, intimidating, fearless…no longer a man I both feared and longed for, loved but resented, wanted to be close to yet wanted to avoid…a man whose praise meant everything yet whom I had ignored for twenty years.

  No wonder this was confusing.

  Whatever annoyances and resentments and uncertainties sons and daughters heap in their imaginations upon their mothers and fathers, surely most of the relational schizophrenia between the generations lies on the child’s side, even the adult child’s side.

  My father was just a person, an ordinary man—and suddenly vulnerable, weak, uncertain. I even detected fear in his eyes—fear of the future, the unknown, fear of death…even fear of what I might think of him. What a realization for a child—humbling, awesome, frightful. He was still enough of a man that he tried to put on a macho front. But I could see all these uncertainties in the occasional dart of his eyes.

  Such realizations plunged into my heart with emotions I had never felt, like I was being zapped by a spiritual defibrillator. It was shocking first one and then another region of my emotional and human sensitivities awake to changing realities in this most foundational of all human relationships to which I had been blind for over forty years—the relationship of a child to his or her own father.

  My dad was up early the morning after my arrival. As I walked into the kitchen I found him preparing a lavish breakfast. It was ten times what I was accustomed to, but he was playing the part of parent and host, obviously enjoying himself, and I couldn’t deny him that.

  “Good morning, Angel!” he said. “Coffee…or are you a thorough Brit now?”

  “I’m afraid so, Dad—do you have tea?”

  “Of course! I bought every kind I could find, hoping that one would suit your aristocratic tastes.”

  “I’m no aristocrat!” I laughed. “I just happened to marry one. But all that is over now. I’m just plain old me again.”

  “Hardly plain—you’re a beautiful woman. I had forgotten how stunning you are.”

  His words silenced anything I might have been about to say. He had never said anything like that to me in my life!

  “By the way, Angel,” he went on, “how did you become a duchess? It sounds like it must have been a real fairy tale.”

  I smiled. “I suppose it was,” I said. “Actually, it all has to do with a certain little redheaded girl—the duke’s daughter. I guess you could say I stood up for her, maybe a little like you and your hard-luck cases, Dad.”

  “That reminds me,” my father said. “I am sorry, again, about your husband, the duke. It must have been terrible to lose a second husband.”

  “Thank you. It wasn’t easy.”

  “When you’re up to it, I want to hear everything about him and your days as a duchess and the castle—every detail. And while we’re on the subject of apologies, I am sorry, too, that I wasn’t more supportive when Edward died. I don’t suppose I was a very good father in those days—I’m sorry. Edward was, or at least he seemed, so self-sufficient, I didn’t want to push myself on him. We just never seemed to click. I should have done more, I see that now. But I didn’t and I deeply regret it. Can’t make up for it now, though. The years went so fast. I always dreamed of you and I getting together more, of taking a trip together, maybe a cruise down the Danube or on the Med or something. But I never pursued it. Again…I am sorry for not being more attentive as your father. That’s why I feel like a heel asking you to come now. I hardly deserve it. But I had no one else to turn to. It means the world to me that you came.”

  “I’m glad you asked me, Dad.” I felt totally disarmed with his being so open and appreciative.

  “I know you’ve got your own life to live, and I’m not expecting you to stay long. Just to know I can call you is a great relief to me. All I want is for you to be familiar with my affairs—but I won’t burden you beyond that. I’ve named you executor of my estate. I hope you don’t mind. If you do, I’ll get one of my partners to do it, but I’d rather it was you.”

  “I guess that’s okay.” I nodded. “You said it’s not complicated. I don’t know that I’m much of a businessperson.”

  “You won’t have to be. No, it’s not complicated. I have enough money set aside—not a fortune, but two or three hundred thousand, plus the house, which should be enough to get me into a decent care facility when the time comes. There are plenty of good ones in the Portland area. I won’t be able to afford the luxury ones with the insane buy-ins that rip off wealthy elderly people and make lots of money for their owners. Don’t get me started! All lawyers have a little Don Quixote in them, you know. I’d love to take those guys on, but I’ve already got more windmills than I can handle, and time is running out. Anyway, I will be able to afford a reasonable place that cares for people more than pro
fits.”

  He paused and drew in a breath. “So when my time comes,” he went on, “and this nuisance of a cancer finally gets me, all my needs should be taken care of. I’ve also made, you know, my final arrangements with a funeral home, so that’s another thing you won’t have to worry about. Cremation…that seems best…buried with your mom. I don’t want anything to be a burden for you.”

  I could hardly stand to hear him talk so bluntly. But he was obviously trying to be straightforward and not dance around it—which was probably good.

  “I have to go into the office this morning, but I’ll be home by one or two. That will give us a chance to spend some more time together. Thank you again, sweetheart, for coming. I can’t tell you what it means to me.”

  “Are you…How long are you going to keep working?” I asked.

  “As long as I can. What am I going to do, sit around and wait to die…walk the dog, feed the pigeons? I don’t have a dog, and I don’t like pigeons. That’s always the hope, isn’t it—stay active. There is still a lot of good I can do, so I will keep trying to do what I can.”

  “But surely…other people, the rest of your law firm…they will take your cases.”

  He smiled. “There’s really no one else that does what I do,” he said cryptically. “I don’t mean that boastfully, it’s just a fact. I have what you might call a unique niche in the legal profession. I like to think it is a ministry. It always has been to me. My own personal windmills. Jones helps me—he’s my right-hand man, so to speak. Most of my other colleagues think I’m nuts. But how much of it will continue is a serious concern of mine. That’s why I am devoting my last efforts to trying to ensure its continuation.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about. But if I needed to know, I would surely find out in time.

  True to his word, my father arrived home about one-thirty that afternoon. I’d slept half the morning and hadn’t really done much of anything. He took me out and we drove through part of Portland and walked awhile along twenty-first and twenty-third streets. He took me by his office and introduced me to his three partners. After we were back at his house he pulled out his will and asked if I wanted to see it.

  “Do you want me to?” I asked.

  “I just want you to be familiar enough with things so that it’s easy on you when the time comes. I know we won’t have a lot of time together and that you have to get back home.”

  I looked through his will, but most of it was in legalese I didn’t understand. He pointed out the sections that specified what he had already told me.

  “And then…I don’t know if you’d mind,” he went on, “but would you maybe want to drive around with me tomorrow and look at a few of the care places I’ve narrowed it down to and tell me what you think? I’d like you to help me with the decision. I don’t want to presume on your time and your kindness for coming, but it would be a big help to me.”

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” I replied. “I guess that would be fine.”

  Driving around the following day with my father was sad and gloomy.

  We visited four care facilities. Though they had rooms and apartments and whole buildings for self-sufficient retired people called “independent living,” my father was focused on the “continuing-care” and “assisted-living” facilities. His situation was obviously different from that of someone moving into such a place with ten or twenty years left to live. My father’s final diagnosis was already in—he was on a predictable timetable that would lead to his death, and he knew it. He would not even move into one of these places until he could no longer take care of himself. So he would go straight to assisted living when that time came.

  We spent our time touring apartments and rooms and medical facilities that looked more like hospital wards than care homes. It was genuinely depressing—people in wheelchairs and on IVs, sitting staring blankly ahead, some walking up and down hallways pushing walkers and talking gibberish to themselves, many lying in beds motionless with mouths open, looking like they were already dead. An atmosphere of gloom and impending death pervaded everywhere…the smell of antiseptic and oldness, unpleasant bodily odors and medicines and alcohol…and occasionally the faint whiff of stale urine in the air…and worse.

  Was this how we were all destined to end up? But my dad was cheerful and upbeat, visiting with nurses and all the residents, asking questions. He had obviously come to terms with his future better than I had.

  We made no decisions, but my father seemed pleased with the day, and from his comments succeeded in narrowing his choices down to two of the four places we visited. That’s how we left it when I returned to Calgary two days later.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Decision of Privilege

  I wish, I wish, I wish in vain;

  I wish I were a maid again.

  But a maid again I’ll never be,

  Till an apple grows on an orange tree.

  —“Will Ye Gang Love?”

  I tried to convince myself that I still had plenty of time to accustom myself to this new role in my dad’s life that had come upon me so suddenly. I told myself that nothing would change immediately, that I had time to adjust.

  But it weighed on me. I knew more and bigger change was coming.

  However, I was not prepared for how quickly it came.

  A month later I received a call from one of my father’s partners. My dad had collapsed in court and been taken to the hospital in an ambulance.

  I gulped and braced myself for what might be coming next.

  “Is it…I mean, is he—”

  “He will recover,” said Mr. Jones, a man in his mid-fifties whom I had met and who was obviously devoted to my father. I would later learn that my father had been his mentor in the legal profession and had financed most of his years in law school. “Actually, it’s not the cancer,” Jones went on. “He also has congestive heart failure and they think he may have suffered a mini heart attack. They want to keep him for another few days, but it is doubtful he will be able to keep working much longer. Nor live alone, for that matter. I know you and he have talked about arrangements—it might be time for some decisions.”

  “I see. Well, I appreciate the call,” I said. “I will be there as soon as I can get a flight.”

  When I walked into the hospital room two days later, my dad was sitting up in bed and looking fine, joking with a couple of nurses who were reading various monitors attached to him.

  “Angel!” he exclaimed. “Look, ladies, here is my gorgeous daughter I told you about. You’re just in time, Angel…They’re getting ready to release me from this prison!” he added with a wink to one of the nurses.

  “Please, Mr. Buchan,” she said, laughing. “We have to work here!”

  The hospital discharge coordinator was blunt when we met with her two hours later.

  “You do realize, Mr. Buchan,” she said, “that you will not be able to remain alone indefinitely. Both of your conditions are progressing. As your body weakens, you will need care.”

  “We know—yes, it’s all taken care of,” said my father. “We’re looking at a couple of places where an old worn-out attorney can live out his last days, aren’t we, Angel?”

  I nodded, but it was still hard hearing him talk so.

  “And what is your situation, Mrs. Reidhaven?” the lady asked me.

  “I live in Calgary,” I replied. “I just flew in.”

  “Oh…right, I see. Well, just make sure you don’t delay a decision beyond the point where the change becomes unnecessarily difficult.”

  I had rented a car again. As I drove my father back to his house, he continued to sound the optimistic note. But there had obviously been a change. The fall…an ambulance…a hospital stay. These were serious developments. The inevitable was approaching.

  I was thinking hard as we drove.

  When I had him comfortable in his own bed at home, I sat down on the edge of it beside him. “Do you want to live in a care home, Daddy?” I asked.

 
“Nobody wants to. But you have to go someplace. After your mother was gone I figured that’s how it would end up for me, and so I made plans accordingly.”

  “What if you could stay here?” I asked.

  “You mean in the house?”

  I nodded.

  “Sure, who wouldn’t want to stay home? Believe me, I’ll stay as long as I can. But with terminal cancer, and this ticker of mine giving way, like the lady said, it’s about time when I will need help. It won’t be a pretty picture. By then it will be impossible for me to be alone.”

  “But what if you could stay here…even then?”

  “I’ve thought of the in-home-care scenario. But do you know what round-the-clock nursing care costs? Probably five or eight, maybe even ten grand a month. It’s outrageous.”

  “You could afford it.”

  “For a while, but not for long. And there’d be nothing left at the end. What if I got lucky and held on longer than they think I will and ran out of money? That’s the thing…timing it so you have enough for whatever care you will need. That’s why I dismissed the home-nurse thing—I can get into a facility for a third or fourth of what nursing would cost.”

  “But what if it was possible?”

  “Well, of course, that’s the dream, isn’t it, to die in your own home in your own bed? But not everyone has that luxury.”

  When it was that I realized I would stay in Portland to be with my father—to be his caregiver until he died—I can’t say. I think the possibility began to play around the corners of my subconscious that first day of my previous trip. I had come to Portland having never considered the possibility. The moment I saw my father, my whole outlook and attitude began to change—about my own life as much as my father’s.

  Probably the final decision was made on the airplane that same morning as I thought of him lying in the hospital, then thought of the various places we had visited. I didn’t know it, but I think the die was cast by the time I landed at the Portland airport.