A day of firsts and lasts

Chapter 11

June 21 marks the first day of summer.? It is also my dad’s birthday.? When I was young, it seemed that the whole year would build to a crescendo that marked a delightful seasonal shift and the day that my gentle giant of a father came into the world.? Occasionally, Father’s Day would also land on the 21st which would add an extra layer of distinctiveness to the day and guarantee that all the tentacles of our?extended family would come together to celebrate.

During my grade school years, it was a time when both the previous and future school seasons were well out of site.? By mid-June, the Wisconsin weather was finally warm enough to be outside with shorts and without the burdensome weight of a coat.??If Dad’s special day fell on the weekday, or if he decided to skip work, we would have a picnic in the yard or plan an excursion to the beach.

His birthday signaled the start of countless summer adventures. It was a time when relatives or close family friends would come to visit and trips to the zoo or the Lake Michigan shoreline were much anticipated certainties.? The days would be peppered with weekend fishing trips led by my grandpa, county fairs and corndogs, occasional stock car races, morning swims at the Plymouth pool, sitting under giant oak trees to watch 4th?of July fireworks, and Little League practice.??

Dad never wanted a traditional birthday dessert with frosting and candles. Instead, mom always made his favorite . . . strawberry shortcake.??In preparation, we would sometimes pick our own fruit at a local strawberry farm.??The shortcakes were more like biscuits and created from a recipe in mom’s Betty Crocker Cookbook.??The best part was homemade whipped cream.??I was always fascinated with how the electric mixer could turn what looked like milk into a soft and delicious fluffy topping.?

As it turned out, June 21 also marked the last day that I saw dad alive.??A few weeks after the two of us celebrated his 69th?birthday with a picturesque drive through the winding hills of the Kettle Moraine Forest, an early dinner at a favorite Irish pub tucked in the Wisconsin countryside, and his usual strawberry indulgence, he was killed in an auto accident.

Early in the morning on July 6, he was driving on a four-lane highway heading up a slight hill toward the still rising sun. He had a doctor’s appointment in Sheboygan.??As the first light began to crest over the hilltop in front of him, an 18-wheel flatbed truck was attempting to cross all four lanes of traffic.??The police told us that the truck had stopped when it was halfway across the highway.??My dad never saw the empty flatbed trailer against the sun.??He slammed his little Hyundai directly into the side of the stalled trailer at 60 miles per hour.??There were no skid marks or signs that he tried to brake or swerve, which meant he never knew what was coming.??If there can be a blessing in such ugly tragedy it is the peace of mind in knowing that he was killed instantly and never had to suffer.

In the hours and days that followed, I along with my siblings, Rick and Dawn, had to identify his body, notify relatives and a lifetime of friends, plan a funeral, write an obituary, and find space to process our shock and grief.??My older brother and sister nearly killed each other in the process.??Resentments and misplaced anger were running at an all-time high.??As always, I tried, unsuccessfully, to play the role of intermediary and peacemaker.??It is a role that I learned from my mom.

My dad’s cat, Brett, named after Brett Favre, a famous NFL quarterback who played for the Green Bay Packers, would eventually need to find a new home.??However, in the short-term we just needed someone to care for Brett for a few days while we took care of business and tended to funeral arrangements.??As it turned out, my dad’s neighbor and close friend, Hazel, volunteered to take Brett into her home for the rest of the week.??Hazel was an 82-year-old brandy drinking, chain smoking, sweetheart.??

Father Stoudemire, the priest who officiated at the funeral and Mass, was dad’s basketball coach in Catholic high school during the 1940s.??Now, at 94, he again stood behind the same altar in Sacred Heart Parish where he married my parents and baptized me and my two siblings.??During communion, I kept thinking how we were witnessing a full-circle experience.??It was eerily beautiful and indescribable to have the same priest who mentored my dad as a teenager and wed my parents to be at the center of his farewell . . .? surrounded by the same stained glass and stone walls that sheltered our young family years earlier.

Following the funeral and the hours-long reception at my uncle’s home, I headed back to my dad’s house to spend the night.??It was about a 90-minute country drive from the day’s events.??The landscape on the way home was every shade of green and smelled of fresh cut hay and the sour scent of manure from the scores of dairy farms that line most country roads in the state.? It was a smell that is familiar to every Wisconsinite. The sun was beginning to dip below the rolling hills and tree line, transforming the western sky into a muted watercolor of tangerine, raspberry, and lemon.? I was bone tired and just wanted to sleep.??Once I pulled up the gravel driveway and walked through the screen door that led from the garage to the kitchen, the phone rang.??It was Hazel’s son.??He said his mom was admitted to the hospital that morning because she broke her hip.??Brett, the cat, was still in the house and a bit traumatized from the paramedics who came in to take Hazel to the hospital.??He wanted me to catch Brett and bring him back to my dad’s house for the night.??By this time it was already 9:30 p.m.

I walked over to Hazel’s front door, turned the key into the lock and swung the door open to her perfectly-in-tact midcentury home with a sweeping view of Crystal Lake.??Green shag carpet, orange flowered wallpaper in the kitchen, dark paneled walls and beamed ceilings reminded me of my youth in the 1970s.??The house smelt a little musty and like decades of cigarette smoke permanently cured in the walls.??I proceeded to call out for Brett.??I made the usual swishy hissing noises that cats respond to and called, “kitty, kitty.??Here Brett.”??He poked his gray furry head around the corner and then leapt like a spaceship through midair right past my face and into the picture window.???He hit the pane of glass with a thud.??Partially dazed, he shook himself off and ran into the bathroom.??I followed and saw that he was crouched in the bathtub.??“Perfect,” I said out loud.??“I got you now.”??I reached down to pick him up and he attacked my hand like it was a rat.??His teeth sank through my flesh and down to the bone.? Blood started to spurt out everywhere.??The blood was pulsating from the flesh of my hand with the same rhythm as my heartbeat.??“Fuck,” I said.??“You little bastard.??You can die in here.”

I ran back to my dad’s house, wrapped my bloody hand in a towel and drove myself to the hospital.??By the time I arrived at the tiny village medical center it was 10:30 p.m.??A nurse ushered me onto a reclining hospital bed in the emergency department’s only private quarters.??As she began to clean my wound it occurred to me that I was likely laying in the exact same space that my dad was brought to after his car accident just a few days earlier.??I asked the nurse who was tending to my wound if this was indeed where they brought my dad.??“Oh, don’t think about that right now,” she said.??Her avoidant reply was enough confirmation for me.??Dad was pronounced dead in the exact same spot where I was lying.?

The doctor, a giant blond Norwegian looking guy, finally entered the little room to patch up my hand.??He said they had to report the bite to the County Animal Control Center because State law requires that the cat be caught and observed for ten days in case it shows signs of rabies.??In the meantime, he said he would need to put a needle in my arm and feed me antibiotics intravenously.??“It should take about 90 minutes,” he said.??I asked if he was being a little extreme.??Afterall, it was just a cat bite.??“Cat bites are the worst,” he told me.??“Just last month, a woman came to have her arm checked out after it became infected from a week-old cat bite.??She ended up losing her arm.”

“Oh great,” I said.??“Can my life get any more twisted?”??My dad was just killed in a car accident.??I’m physically and mentally depleted, my brother and sister are not speaking to each other, and after an exhausting 12-hour ride on a funeral day rollercoaster, dad’s cat bites me to the bone.??Now, Animal Control professionals are worried that Brett has rabies, but I’ll never know if we can’t catch him.? So the outcome to the day’s story is that within a week I’ll either have to undergo rabies treatments or catch and kill my dad’s cat.?

Around midnight I was finally able to leave the hospital and head back to dad’s house.??The sheriff’s office told me that Animal Control would be over in the morning to catch Brett so that he could be impounded for observation.

I poured myself a tall glass of brandy and crawled into my dad’s bed.? I could still smell the scent of his Polo cologne on the linens.? I quietly hoped that I could fall asleep and wake up in a different reality.? “Maybe this is all a really bad dream,” I whispered to myself.? Maybe everything will be better when I wake up in the morning.

Sunlight appeared through a giant skylight in my dad’s bedroom at 5:30 a.m.? I could hear summer birds begin to chirp in the thick woods that surrounded his house.? The gentle hum of a motorboat echoed off the lake.? I thought, “So much for sleeping in.”? Still, the waking noises were a nice change from the urban grind that I could hear daily in my city home that was sandwiched between the Chicago ‘L’ and an eight-lane expressway.

After showering the previous day’s sweat, grit, hospital germs, and bad juju off my body, I made coffee and sat on the deck overlooking the lake.? From my dad’s house, perched on a hill in the treetops, I stared off at a small island offshore.? There was an abandoned cabin surrounded by cedar and birch trees, and a rundown pier near the shore of the island.?? For a few minutes I imagined what it would be like to hide out on that little isle and live a secluded and secret life.? A life that would be hidden in plain sight . . .? invisible to the world that surrounds it.

Just then, a voice in my head whispered, “Isn’t that what you’re already doing?”?