Here he comes chopping and reaping
Hear him laugh at their cheating
And time waits for no one
And it won't wait for me
-- Jagger/Richards
There was always going to be time.
At the end, when they found the cancer, his sons conferred. "He has to fight this," we agreed. "We need to keep his spirits up. We can’t let him quit."
And so the last time I spoke with him, on the telephone across 1,500 miles, I cracked jokes. They had started him on steroid therapy to prep him for the radiation and/or chemotherapy that everyone, even his doctors, thought he would soon undergo. They’d have to run scans first, see how extensive it was. At 81, they probably wouldn’t cure him, but maybe they’d buy him some time.
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"So, you’re juicing, eh?" I teased him. "I should start calling you ‘Barry’."
He mustered a laugh. Roughly 36 hours later, my brother found him unconscious on the floor. Less than 24 hours after that, they shut down the machines and let him go. I had booked a flight that morning that would leave the next day. I thought I’d at least have the chance to say goodbye, to say all the things I had always wanted to say – all the things that I was going to say when the time was right.
I ran out of time.
My friend Bill is the best editor I’ve ever worked with, bar none. He’s way smarter than me; and he has better timing.
Bill took his Dad to the Masters.
I think his dad must have been a huge fan of golf. I never asked him, but it makes sense. First, Bill is a terrific golfer. And second, when he decided to make that Big Gesture, the big role reversal moment for sons and fathers, he took his dad to the Masters. They shared special moments at a one-of-a-kind event in a one-of-a-kind place.
I wanted to do that, too. And the Masters would be the perfect place. Amen Corner. Azaleas. Rae’s Creek. The Sarazen, Hogan and Nelson bridges. Tiger Woods obliterating the sport’s racial elitism. Jack Nicklaus, the lion in winter, making the most inspiring charge in sports history in 1986 at the age of 46.
After all, Dad was the kind of Yankee fan who bled pinstripes. When you grow up the son of Italian immigrants, you root for the team with players named DiMaggio, Rizzuto and Berra. He had taken us to Yankee Stadium on countless occasions, from the days of Mickey Mantle right on through Thurman Munson and Reggie, Bucky Dent’s Boston homer, Derek Jeter. He was there with two of my brothers – but not me – on the Fourth of July when Dave Righetti threw a no-hitter against the Red Sox. He had taken us to Cooperstown. No, there was nothing undone in the world of baseball.
We had done Penn State and Eagles football, too. Golf was the game he played, well into his 70s, but he had never been to a PGA tournament. No, the Masters was it. I would do just what Bill did.
One of these years.
Dad spent most of his life on his feet, mostly on unpadded, uncarpeted floors. He was a pharmacist. And no, it’s not heavy lifting, but all those years took their toll on his back, his knees and his feet.
We found that out from little clues here and there – the support hose he would wear, even with shorts; the back exercises we would catch him doing on the living room floor; comments my Mom would make now and then. But he never complained. He was the ultimate stoic. This, after all, was a guy who would routinely quit smoking for Lent, and then light up again on Easter morning.
I will never forget one of my trips back home to visit, after his retirement, when I saw him literally crab walking on his hands and feet up the stairs to the bathroom. The doctors had told him, years earlier, he needed knee surgery to repair some damage in his ligaments. He kept putting it off, until it reached the point where they told him it was too late. Now, he needed knee replacements. He didn’t want to be bothered with that. He did, however, break down and agree to have a toilet installed on the first floor.
You’d think that would have been a signal. You’d think I’d see my father creeping up the steps like an elderly version of Spider Man and recognize that he didn’t have too much time left. No, not me.
There was always going to be time.
The night comes so quiet
So close on the heels of the day
-- Robert Hunter
In his later years, he developed a case of myasthenia gravis, a condition that causes weakness in voluntary muscles. For a while, it briefly blinded him by preventing him from opening his eyelids. He responded well to medication, and that was that.
So, when he was having trouble swallowing, everyone assumed it was the myasthenia acting up again. When that proved not to be the case, they scoped his throat and esophagus. They found "spots" and biopsied them. They were malignant. They scheduled extensive scans for the following week to see if there was cancer anywhere else.
He collapsed and went into a coma before that could happen. They ran the scans, and the cancer was everywhere – in his lungs, his liver, his bones. A tumor had grown so large it had broken his sternum. And he complained of having trouble swallowing. Like I said, the ultimate stoic.
I can’t say I didn’t have my chance. I never got around to pricing a Master’s trip, but I figure it can’t be cheap. But in 2002, it was within my grasp.
I got on a TV game show, and won $13,000. If I was ever going to take my Dad to the Masters, that would have been the year. But I’m a Dad, too, as well as a son. And my daughter, in the summer between eighth grade and freshman year of high school, was offered the opportunity of a lifetime: three weeks of summer enrichment study in England at Cambridge. We spent the money on that trip – and on a new driveway for the house.
After all, there was always going to be time.
I don’t begrudge my daughter the trip. It was truly a life-changing experience for her. The pride I feel every time I see her or talk to her, in her maturity and her intellectual curiosity, tells me it was the right thing to do.
And that new driveway? Well, my wife is a nanny for three children – two school-age and one toddler. And that driveway has become the neighborhood gathering place for what seems, at times, to be a dozen kids or more. They make chalk drawings there, and ride skateboards, and chase soap bubbles and revel in the joy of a place where they know they are safe and welcome. So that was the right thing to do, too.
But there are a million other things I could have done without – clothes, trips, fancy dinners, bottles of too-expensive wine. I should have taken my Dad to the Masters. I should have taken the time to thank him, to tell him how much he meant to me.
My father would have been 82 years old today. I didn’t get to wish him a happy birthday. He, and I, ran out of time.