One result of the pandemic and our extended quarantine is that I find myself seeking to do a deep clean of the house, a full-scale reorganization of our stuff — kind of a long-term nesting thing, I guess. It started with our storage unit over on Main Street, and it has now progressed to our rather large filing cabinet in the basement.
Today, I pulled out a file of things from my father which I had forgotten were in there: his college transcripts; arrangements of songs in his distinctive notation; a capstone assignment from his Master’s program at Columbia Teacher’s College; a resumé of the various bands he played in from 1942 to 1956 before he began working as a teacher; a complaint he wrote to the superintendent of schools about the devastating effects of an austerity budget back in 1972; and nude Polaroids of him and my mother standing in front of an aluminum Christmas tree, back when they were young, fit, sexy, poor, crazy confident, and very happy.
But two items really leapt out for me as I scanned through the various documents this afternoon:
First, there is the photo of my father jamming with President Bill Clinton at a fundraiser for Hillary back in 2002.
Dad sent me the newspaper clipping with the photo. In the margins, he noted, among other things, that “Bill had to put his glasses on, and I had to take my glasses off to read the serial number on my Selmer tenor. He said that the serial number shows my horn was made in 1937. We played three arrangements of mine. He’s a good reader and he played good improvs.” That is high praise, indeed, from my dad.
Second, there is a tiny spiral notebook he used to keep in his breast pocket. He carried one of these everywhere he went. They included diary entries, grocery lists, to do lists, lists of the instruments he needed for various gigs, phone numbers, and the like. He also always had a page noting what my current academic and job titles were.
The one I pulled out this afternoon begins as follows:
MARCH 2005
Sun. 13
Just finished Guys and Dolls at the Delaware Academy in Delhi. Exhausted. Played 1st Alto, Alto, Clarinet, Flute, and Piccolo.
Thurs. 10, Fri. 11, Sat. 12. Rode back and forth 3 snowy days in a row. Playing a difficult show. Leave 5 pm. Playing 4 hours of show and returning home in the snow at 12:00 pm
Mon. 14
Starting a week of Chemo.
*******
I did not know about this, about his getting chemo. I had no idea he had been this sick. It hit me pretty hard this evening: What might have been different if I had known he was this sick?
Dad was 80 at this point. He died one month later on April 18th.
Other questions followed: Why didn’t anyone tell me about this? Were they trying to protect me? Did they think it was not a big deal? Or did they tell me and I somehow managed to obliterate the memory?
I contacted my sisters this evening, and they both say Vince had a blood disorder, not cancer, that his long bones were producing bad red blood cells that could not carry oxygen, and the chemo was supposed to kill off the bad blood cells.
What happened instead is that he got pneumonia again soon after this and ended up in the ICU in Binghamton. He had been getting pneumonia for years, actually, a lovely long-lasting effect of his many years of cigarette smoking. The doctors said his endless cardio workouts of playing his horns helped him fight it off. But not this time.
There were multiple complications; he was on a respirator for a while, tied to the bed, and drugged out of his mind on anti-anxiety meds and sedatives to keep him docile; he got other infections while he was there; the care he got in the ICU was robotically cold. When we realized he was not going to get better, at least not in that facility, we got him sprung, against doctor’s orders, and brought him home. “This changes nothing,” the head of the ICU said as we wheeled him out. “He is going to die.”
I slept on the couch near his bed, and he had a very rough time of it at first as he detoxed from all the psychotropic meds. He was super agitated and utterly incoherent. He and I listened to a great jazz station from Binghamton until early, early in the morning, and that calmed him down a bit. We found his soprano saxophone and gave it to him, and he tried to play along with the radio despite the tracheostomy in his neck.
He died two days later. He always said his life began when his brother Benny gave him that soprano sax when he was 13. It was with him at the end, too.