FGF... A Pretty Lucky Man!

    This week may have a little different tone, as my father was recently in the hospital for several days and the news that we received was not very good.
    He has congestive heart failure, and this has created problems for his kidneys. The numbers indicate that his kidneys are shutting down, and his only hope appears to be dialysis. This has always been a possiblity, and he has always said that he would not undergo dialysis.
    That was, I am sure, an easier decision when it was only a hypothetical. It became a much tougher decision after it became a reality. He has decided that he will not undergo dialysis. The result is that the end is very near and he is now home with Hospice Care.
    My parents have been together for sixty years, and I cannot imagine what has been going through their minds.
    On one hand, I know that my dad does not want to leave my mom alone, but his quality of life is poor. On the other hand, she would love nothing more than for him to live for many more years, but loves him so much she is willing to let him go.
    This has been coming for several months, but no matter how much you expect bad news, when you finally hear it from a doctor, it feels like someone has punched you in the stomach.
    It is especially hard because my dad has always been the toughest guy in the room. I know a lot of sons say that that their fathers are the toughest guys around, but my dad really was.
   The stories are the stuff of legends.
    Ask the Washington Post picketer that grabbed my mom as she entered a K-Mart... or the man that threatened his elderly father, not knowing that my dad was upstairs, home from the Merchant Marines... or the kid that chased my dad (as a kid) home to his older brother with a broken bottle only to have his brother throw him back over the fence to go and "take care of the bottle.....and the kid"... or the guy who kept heckling my brother during a high school basketball game. There are too many stories to tell, but each one seemed to end with a concession or a knockout!
   Because my own kids are so young, they have, for most part, witnessed a very fragile grandfather. With that being said, they still think he is the toughest guy to ever walk the Earth. My son once went shopping at a school Christmas bazaar, and bought a painted railroad spike for his PapPap. He explained that he did not know what that oversized nail was supposed to be, but it was the toughest thing he could find.
    I have told my kids that PapPap did not start a lot of fights... BUT... he did not walk away from a lot either. They ask, Dad, who would win in a fight, John Cena (a professional wrestler) or PapPap?  Honestly, I tell them that Pappap did not win every fight, and I think that Cena would win. I am sure they think, Big deal... PapPap is eighty three years old with congestive heart failure!... But back in his day....
    I think that even today, if PapPap lost, he would go back day after day and fight this Cena guy until he was convinced that he finally got the better of him.
    In some respects, I guess that I still have the boyhood belief that my dad can do anything. I still expect that he is going to get up out of his bed and take a stance with his hand out, so I can throw jabs as he moves his hand away. When I drop my right hand to throw a punch, I expect him to pop me with his free hand and tell me not to drop my hand when I throw a right.
    He once bought us 16 ounce boxing gloves that were just a notch below a pillow. I think it made him proud when we took rope and created a boxing ring and landed a few shots against our friends. On a side note, I accidentally knocked out one of my girlfriends, but I don't think he was all that proud of that punch.  
    Or perhaps, he might jump up and grab the fat of my leg or squeeze my knee like he did when we were kids and had the courage to sit in the middle of the front car seat. If we tried to stop him, he would pinch or squeeze harder until we raised our hands in submission... A temporary ending as the next squeeze would come seconds later.
    We acted like we hated it, but could not wait to get that middle seat---or if it was just any two of us in the car, we would dare him to do it while we sat all the way over in the passenger's seat. By the way, that was not as difficult for him as one would imagine. It is a miracle that we never crashed.
   He was an awesome father that always reminded us that he was not our buddy. I can still hear him saying that a friend will never tell you no, and it is my job to tell you no. He did not always tell us no, but when he did say no, he meant no. No asking a second time and heaven help us if we went and asked our mom after he had already given his answer.
   He did not have a lot of set rules, but the ones he did have, we had better follow. One of the biggies was that we had better treat our mother with respect, and never talk back to her. I must admit, that I violated that rule from time to time........ but only once in his presence. Who knew he was still home? As he squeezed my face up against the wall, he asked me why I would ever talk to my mother like that. Panicked, I could only think of one answer... I did not know you were home. The squeezing got a bit tighter after that idiotic response.
   He used to whistle when he wanted us to come home at night. Occasionally, we would be playing with a new kid, and that kid would advise us to just pretend that we didn't hear him.  Crazy talk I tell you, that's just crazy talk---if we can't hear the whistle, we are too far away from home. Trust me, I have to go! If the new kid persisted, the other kids filled him in. It really was an ingenious plan on my dad's part. To this day, if my brothers and I happened to be in a stadium with 75,000 people and my dad whistled, all four of our heads would turn in that direction.
    He wanted us to be leaders, whether it was how we conducted ourselves on a ball field or in a classroom. However, we could make our own decisions up to a point. For instance when we were old enough to drive to get our hair cut, it was exciting because no more short haircuts. Unless of course he put the word out that we were to get short haircuts. Wait a sec, I said I wanted it to stay kind of long. 
    Yeah, your dad wants it short!  
    I suppose the barber understood the family heirarchy.
    He never struck me, but there was never a doubt that, if necessary, he would. I suppose that is because of the story of my oldest brother advising my dad that he was going camping for a weekend, and my dad telling him that he was not. The story ends with the two of them meeting in the front yard, both convinced that each was going to get his way. Actually the story really ends with my brother being helped back into the house, and staying home for the weekend. I was not a witness, but I was a believer.
    My dad treated anyone of any age the same, no matter who you were or what your reputation was. As long as you were respectful to him and to my mother, you were always welcome in our home. He thought that every kid needed discipline, and that every kid should treat adults with respect. I can tell you that he commanded respect from all of our friends, and without exception, he got it.
    All of our friends loved my mom and dad, and loved coming to our house because, in part, my father treated them no different than he treated his own kids---and as a special bonus, my mother could cook.
    Someone once said that an army could unexpectedly land on our front yard, and my father would invite them in, and my mother would somehow pull out eighty baked potatoes and a roast big enough to feed them all. My brother tested this theory out by unexpectedly bringing his basketball teammates home for lunch. They all went away with full stomachs.
    My father had a work ethic that was second to none. He was a paper hanger who went to work under the worst of conditions. He once fell from a ladder and would not go to the doctor. He became the proverbial one armed paper hanger!
    He made a few mistakes in his business dealings, but we always had everything that we needed and most of what we wanted. Our parents always provided the gloves, the cleats, the books or the college/law school tuition, no matter what the situation. I know now that that was not as easy as it seemed at the time.
   Finally, as my parents got older, they became the perfect grandparents. Although he still insisted on discipline and respect, it was clear that he had a different set of rules and standards for his grandchildren. It was comical when we would tell him something that our kids did wrong and how we, as parents, handled it, only to have him tell us that "they are just kids, so don't be so hard on them."
    Yeah right... just GRANDKIDS, maybe. Or my personal favorite comment, "it is hard to discipline your kids."
    Really... hard to discipline...  hmmm... as I recall, he made it look pretty easy.
    So now, he has made one request... to see or speak with every grandchild.
    It is inspiring to see that every grandchild has made the effort to make that wish come true. They have come from Virginia, Florida, Texas, and Washington. If they can't make it to Maryland, Skype will have to do. Each of them love and respect their PapPap.  
    On many occasions, he has said that the best compliment that you could give him was to pay a compliment to his children and/or his grandchildren. Now that I have kids, I agree.
    In fact, now that I have kids of my own, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what he did and said. The fact is that I became the man, the husband, and the father that I am because of him. I believe the same to be true of each of my brothers and sisters (not the man, husband, father parts but you get the drift). He and my mother gave us the tools that we needed to build our own great families, and I think that we have done just that.
    I know that he is proud of us all.
    He was not a perfect parent, nobody is. But he has always been a man that has made every decision in his life with his wife and children's best interests in mind. Without any hesitation, I can say that his family has always been the most important thing in his life.
    He now has the opportunity that most people will never have. He knows that he is dying and he has the opportunity to see and speak with every member of his family one more time.
    Have you ever thought that if you knew that today were the last day, there woiuld be one thing that you would definitely want to do?
    Well... he knows his time is near, and he does get to choose.
    In the end, just like every other day of his life, he chooses his family. In a lot of ways, he is a pretty lucky man.
    I know that many of the people who read this probably know my parents, but if you don't, they really are two of the finest people that you would ever meet.
    Please say your prayers for both of them. From where I sit, I believe that they have earned them.
   God Bless you Dad!