It's an odd thing to say the least when a parent dies. The world changes in an instant even when you have been preparing for the moment.
My brother and I were out making the funeral arrangements, my mother was home with my dad when his sister phoned to check on him. We had been with my father around the clock and I had taken to sleeping on the floor near his temporary bed in the family room. There was almost never a time that at least one of us wasn't by his side, but he found a very small window and he passed. This surprised none of us, and affirmed his strong will up to the very end. My mom called on the cell phone and said "He's gone" - we were nearby and made it home within five minutes. He was gone. For some reason I still remember reaching for the front door handle, turning it and knowing that behind the door was my father, but yet my father no more. I felt his absence as a huge hole in my chest, I felt a void that is hard to express, I turned the handle and stepped into our house.
I was living in Colorado at the time and had been home for weeks. No one wanted to tell us how long dad had and finally I asked a hospice nurse to please tell me how long she thought he had. She said he was close, and that sometimes when people are stubborn God sends someone to encourage them. She said he would likely get quieter and quieter and then become non-responsive. From there it might take one to three days.
This conversation was out of earshot of my father, but the next day while I was with my dad, he asked, "Joe do you see her?" and pointed out the open family room window to our snow covered yard. I answered, "no, who do you see?" He said that he saw a woman and that she was motioning for him to follow her. I asked my dad what he wanted to do and he indicated that he wanted to go with her. I told my dad that it would be ok and that he should do what he felt he wanted to or needed to.
A few days earlier my dad commented to several of us, "do you see that?" pointing at the wall... "he said there's writing on the wall" and then he kind of smiled. It hurt, but we all laughed to keep back the tears. At around the same time he told me that his brother-in-law Jack Perry had come to call at our side door right next to the family room (only one person in 30 years had used the side door to the house). He also named a short list of dead friends inluding Irv Goto and said they were going fishing. I told him to have a good trip and say hello for me. He said, "Do you think it works like that?" I asked what he meant and he went on to ask if we could talk to the dead. I said I wasn't sure, but hoped so and he said he say hello for me.
When the priest came to read his last rights, I stayed upstairs as I hadn't slept all night. I heard my father cracking jokes and making the priest and my family laugh even at this most serious of moments. Soon after the conversation with the hospice nurse and my dad's vision in the backyard of the woman motioning for him to follow, my dad became more and more quiet. The last thing he said to me was "I love you" in response to my whispering I loved him in his ear. He stopped eating, drinking and his breathing became more and more irregular.
I cannot say with any certainty if the surreal events surrounding my father's death were of his and our creation or if something non-physical was playing out. The hospice workers said that believers and non-believers alike followed a very similar process of visits from dead friends and other seemingly paranormal activity. Whether collective projection of our archetypal world view or paranormal reality, it was a very thick time and yet thin as well. Thick with emotion, memory, tracking of how much food and fluid dad took in. Thin in that the past and the present seemed artificially separated, mundane concerns seemed less important.
I slept little at that time and was in something of an altered state, or more like a hyper real state. I remember the taste of the 1,000 calorie Ensure shakes we were making for my father, laughing that we were going to get fat drinking the shakes he wasn't drinking. I remember the gut wrenching cry of John McInerny, one of Dad's oldest friends from the pew in church as I read the eulogy before gathered friends and family. Mr. McInerny told me that my dad had told him a few months back, "well, I won the race." Mr. McInerny didn't know what Dad meant at the time as my Father had not yet been fully diagnosed. My dad knew.
I recall one of the last times my Dad was up and about other than going to the hospital. We went to get his car washed, we visited McClorey springs in Palos Park and we returned a Christmas gift at JC Penny's and otherwise went about mundane activities. He asked me to drive. I look back now and see my father watching me from across the store, he had a strange look of appreciation on his face. I know now he knew he was not long for this world. But he said nothing, he just watched me from across the store and waited patiently for me to return to him.
February 2, 2002
Almost as soon as I heard of my father’s suspected cancer I began preparing for this moment, when I would stand before the people who knew and loved my father and attempt to convey all that he was and is.
Thoughts ran through my head night and day, memories of a man that has left an indelible imprint on the fabric of my life. And now here I stand before you today, knowing I cannot possibly do justice in words to the memory of this good man, the unique character whom I was fortunate to know as my father.
Frank was above all else, a character, a stubborn bull of a man, a stubborn bull elephant.
Frank always stood up for what he believed no matter if the stance was popular or not.
Frank knew the value of being silent and wasn’t known for his “small talk” or concerning himself with social nuances that lacked authenticity.
Frank also knew the value of making sound in the world, in his actions, but also, much to the chagrin of my mother, in his “Aighhs” and “Hooeees” that echoed throughout the neighborhood whenever he cut the grass or worked about the yard.
Frank was famous up to the end for his wit and dry sense of humor… out of a prolonged silence at a Thanksgiving dinner he’d let fly a few, dry words, brief commentary and the whole table would be laughing uncontrollably.
Behind his stoic outward expression was always his gentle compassion and generous self. All who knew him knew there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for his family and friends.
There are very few photos of my father smiling – he might be grinning from ear to ear a moment before the camera snap and then he’d become more reserved in an instant on the print. I still laugh every time I see a photo of my dad frowning, seeing the beauty in this without understanding why he did it. But, a character like my dad isn’t to be fully understood.
Children saw through his stoicism, they saw his gentle heart. Over the years, dad coached his sons on the playing field. He led several teams to championships, but more impressive than his record of wins and losses was the impact he had on young people.
He might tell another coach to go to hell, but he stood by the kids, knowing how to allow children space within which to grow while supplying enough rules and responsibility to guide us all on our journey.
His unorthodox coaching style included the practice of picking the players whom no one else wanted to coach. My father saw the character in the so called “trouble kids”, I think he respected them, I know they came to respect him. Years later I’d run into some of these kids now becoming young adults, and they’d light up and get teary eyed asking “How’s Mr. Cassidy?”
My dad wasn’t perfect, but real characters never are. They may appear rough around the edges to those too uptight to see the humor in life.
In times of the relative woe of my youth, my father would console me, “Joe in 100 years, no one will know the difference.” This captured his natural ability to not get caught up in what others thought about him, while adhering to a code of honor and decency which led him to a live a life that was at once both free-spirited and grounded by tradition.
My father saw the magic in life… he loved nature, feeding the birds for years, tracking in his bird book every species that visited his backyard sanctuary. And when the squirrels invaded his bird feeders he developed elaborate “catch and release” programs to remove them without harm. It became an ongoing joke that the squirrels would be back from the forest preserve before my father was… one tailless squirrel proved this theory to be true returning time after time to dine on the cornucopia my father provided. I think my father got a kick out of that squirrel.
And Frank saw the value in planting trees and nurturing and growing things. It seemed that everything father touched blossomed and grew. His roses and peonies are legendary. He even transplanted some Seattle ferns to his backyard… they’re still growing despite our colder winters. His care for plants and animals taught us all of his gentleness of his compassion, though my father did this without uttering a word. He simply did what was in his heart.
My father was a doer, a tinker, a project taker-onner; he wasn’t much for sitting still. In fact he drove the school bus up until Thanksgiving. He wanted so badly to make it till Christmas break … I told him, “dad, you made it, it’s close enough”. He drove the bus for 14 years or more beyond his first or second retirement. He worked some 25 years longer than most.
A man on the move, Frank was well suited for a lifetime of working in Transportation. He spent most of his time as Vice President of Operations for Mid-American Trucking and then later as Terminal Manager for Clairmont Trucking. Along the way he helped many people who needed jobs and did his best to run a tight ship.
Frank was a bull, a bull elephant, a mountain of sturdiness and a child behind or within the bold, no-nonsense man. A true character through and through.
After Christmas my father began having trouble getting up from his favorite chair. I said my goodbyes, not knowing if I would ever see him again…. I told my father I loved him for the first time in many years – the code of silence, of being an Irish male was broken wide open as his illness reminded me of what was really important. Tatiana and I said several goodbyes leaving dad in his chair, kissing mother at the door.
We were just about to pull away when my father appeared waving in the doorway. He yelled, “Look for me in the mountains.”
We pulled away with his words echoing in our minds, “Look for me in the mountains.” Dad closed the door.
Let me close by reading a poem I wrote several years ago about my father, a mountain of a man to me:
(click on image below to enlarge)
(click on image below to enlarge)
