My Father (part three)

To illustrate how well-known my dad was in town, as we were driving to the hospital in the ambulance, the driver and I were talking. He started to piece things together and then he exclaimed, "Is that Coach Pucci back there?!?!", and he stepped even more down on the gas pedal. It turned out he had played for our cross-town rival high school, John Marshall, in the early 90s.

The last thing about Saturday that I forgot to mention in the previous entries was the hour plus some my mom and I spent on the phone that evening, verbally filling out and approving the organ donation process. I wholly support organ donation and have it marked so on my driver's license, I don't know if my father did. But regardless, some unlucky guy at the hospital had the job of calling us and going through a detailed medical history, "recorded for legal reasons" and all of that. My mom wanted me to do it, so I started out the conversation, but then the questions were getting to the point where I kept having to ask my mom what the history was, so I just gave her the phone. The whole point is it was just an overall exhausting day. Between my work schedule, working those soccer games starting Saturday morning, all of the business that ended up being Saturday, and then just shocked to the point where I couldn't sleep, I later realized I only got 5 hours of sleep those first 3 days. And I lost 10 pounds in a week (but that's a good thing).

Sunday morning at 10am, my mother and I went to the funeral home. We went through the long process of answering all of the director's questions, as well as picking out a casket. Even though my father would eventually be cremated, we'd decided on a public service, and I guess you have to cremate right away or else you have to embalm the body. So, news to me, they now have a line of "cremation caskets". We picked out, in the funeral director's words, "the updated version of the old pine box", mostly because it looks a lot like the woodwork at our family cabin, and Dad would have liked that.

I'll spare you the details, but I was absolutely shocked at the cost of everything related to a funeral. Is that "industry" regulated? I imagine the processing of the remains is regulated, but what about the costs of everything???

I realize now that I was totally thinking my dad would be with us for a long, long time. His father lived until 95, and just passed away a couple of years ago. My dad's mom is still with us at 92, as I mentioned. So in the back of my mind, I realize I thought 70 was very young for my father, relatively speaking. Also, with my grandmother (and her mother before that) having Alzheimers, I actually was worried that I would someday be caring for my father in that condition. You never know, do you? I picked up the death certificate the other day and the primary cause of death was listed at "Ischemic Heart Disease". The doctor told my mom that my father had an "electrical storm" (that's what they actually call it) in his heart. In other words, every circuit fires off at once, and unless you are practically wearing a defibrilator (or have a pace maker installed), you're out of luck. The doc said people that this happens to drop instantly, and there really isn't anything you can do. I guess it's quite common. I guess doctors have lots of names and varieties of heart attacks...like Norwegians have 40 different names for types of snow. The good news is that it was pretty instantaneous. I guess when my time comes I don't want to see it coming and don't want to know it's happening to me.

Today now I am actually a bit pissed off about it all. I just miss him. Not even so much as a son, but just as a guy. He was a great guy, and always fun to be around.

Enough of Saturday. Sunday morning we were finally able to get a hold of my brother. We had thought we was out in California on business (he travels a lot for work), but his plans had changed and we didn't know it. So we were only trying his cell phone, not his home phone or cabin phone. Eventually we got a hold of his wife's parents in Colorado, and they said, "oh, they're at their cabin this weekend". Duh, we should have been trying all of his phone numbers anyway, I guess we were just a bit blinded by the shock of it all. I had the misfortune of waking my brother up and telling him the bad news. I think he just went silent for about two minutes, before we started talking a little bit. He then flew in on Monday. One of the nice benefits of this whole experience was sharing a whole week with my brother. He's 9 years older than I am and with life and all, I haven't gotten to spend more than a day or two with him since I was 9 years old.

The other surreal event on Sunday was picking out a picture for the obituary and funeral pamphlet. After a while, we decided to go with one of his coaching pictures, near the end of his career, after a big victory. My dad has a big grin on his face and is surrounded by celebrating players. I know I didn't want one of those somber, stiff, official portraits, so I'm glad everyone was of the same mind. Since I am the only one in the family who is computer savvy, it was my job to scan and crop the photo and email it to the funeral home and the newspaper. Like I said, so surreal.

Sunday night we'd spent some time trying to contact some of the far-flung friends of my father. I'd actually left a message with the Buffalo Bills for Marv Levy (I wasn't sure if I'd navigated their automated message system correctly) that night. A rare treat for me was Monday morning, when I got to talk to Marv Levy at the Buffalo Bills headquarters. For those that don't know, Marv was my father's college basketball and football coach, and later hired my dad to be one of his assistant coaches at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia (where I entered this whole picture). Marv went on to be the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs for a while, and later on, directed the Buffalo Bills to 4 straight Super Bowl appearances. Marv is now the general manager of the Bills, so he's a busy guy. Two years ago he released his autobiography and mentioned my father in it, which was pretty cool to see. Anyway, I got to talk to Marv for about 10 minutes. I had always heard and felt that he was a great guy, and that impression was only strengthened after our talk.

The main family event on Monday then was the private family visitation. And a part of this was decorating the visitation room with pictures and other objects from my dad's life. At first, we'd just thought of putting a few pictures up, but eventually we made up 3 large poster boards of snapshots, brought every single football team picture between 1972-1997, along with some formal pictures, like my parent's wedding photo. We also had a section dedicated to his college days. As I will detail later about the public visitation, I am glad we went all out with the display (and thank my brother for that). I won't talk much about the private family visitation, it was tough. It was the first time for the family to see my father like that, as only Tricia and I had seen him at the hospital.

a bit of incoherence

Work has been slow the last few days. I've taken 12 hours of PTO (personal time off) this week, so I haven't had a chance to be online too much. I'm going to finish writing about the week I lost my father...sorry for taking two long blogs just to cover Saturday...Day One. I think the rest of the days will go faster, as far as my writing about them is concerned. I think a positive sign at the moment is I have continued working on a musical project I had started before my father's passing. It's a 30 song, 3-CD box set with lyric book, to be called INCOHERENCE. Basically putting a certain period of my life to rest. Funny how I was starting to let go of a certain daydream...looking towards the future and trying to be more realistic...and then my father died, thus causing me to realize I need to take on more responsibility, live in the moment with my family, as opposed to forever seeking out some idealistic dream world. Synchronicity.

www.tonypucci.homestead.com/inco_main.html

Well, as you can see the lyrics are all written, although I am reserving the artistic right to change anything up until the last minute. All of the guitar tracks are done. By the end of tomorrow, I hope to have all of the bass and vocal tracks done. After that I'll add synth where I feel it is necessary, sequence the drums, and mix the whole thing. Believe it or not, I wrote all 30 songs in one week...that's just how I work. There are some very cool vibes going on, and I am really looking forward to hearing the finished CDs. But what a fucking mountain to climb! It's bad enough trying to finish off 10 songs...but 30???!!!?!?! I can tell you it takes about 4 hours on the average per song to take it from start to finished track.

So, I just need to get paid for this, and it'll all work out, right?!?! Haha, if only it could work that way...
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On a sad note, last night I attended the visitation for a friend. The brother of one of the football coaches I work with passed away at age 30, very unexpected. It's been a bad year for the team, huh??? Man, you just never know. The visitation/funeral is actually at the same place my father's ceremonies were held in, so afterwards I "killed two birds" with one stone and picked up my father's ashes and death certificate. This is the second time now in a few years that I have had to drive a loved one "home" in this state. Life is very surreal sometimes.
And I got word this morning that the husband of one of our fellow Hotelwombers passed away on the 22nd....only found out he was sick last month...

Enough death, please. Let us live for a while and reinforce our love and resolve.

Hugs, everyone.

My Father (part two)

It was very surreal to be working on my father. Most people don’t know that I'm a Minnesota-licensed First Responder. It is one of the things outside of music that I am been proud of. Whenever an emergency calls goes over the speakers at work, the adrenaline spike is amazing. How I can be casual, working, listening to The Church or whatever, and the next moment, I am totally focused. So there on the sidelines with my dad, half of me was all business as a responder, and the other half of me is thinking, "holy shit, this is my dad!!!"

So the doctors, they never got a pulse back. I realize looking back at the experience now that the only time I felt a pulse in my father after the heart attack was while the other coach was doing compressions. I think some solace can be found in that my father went quickly. And it's very poetic that the old coach went out on a football field. If you can choose such a place for something like this, as his friends said later, it would have been a football field, a golf course, or in a fishing boat. I can imagine that the initial moment it happened there was some pain, but overall I'm glad it was not a prolonged illness. I don't know what's better, a long illness or hospital stay, thus giving the family time to come to terms with what is happening to a loved one, or just going quickly like my father did. I think we'd all say we want to go quickly when our time comes. For whatever reason, it was my father's time. And I truly am glad my family does not have to go visit someone in the hospital for months on end, never knowing if or when they'll get better, what capacities, both mental and physical, will remain, after such a thing. So there is some comfort there.

As you can imagine, I have not been sleeping well at all. I get to sleep ok; I'm exhausted. But then I wake up a few hours later and my mind starts racing again. I know this is natural. I hope that as time goes by, I'll be able to settle back into some better sleep patterns. I'd take a sleeping pill, but I'm honestly too busy during the day to be drugged and drowsy all of the time. September/October has always been crazy/busy for me, what with working all of the high school games I do. In general, my only regret this time of year is that I LOVE autumn, I just really connect with the weather, the colors, the smell in the air. Which is ironic that I'm so busy, as I find this time of year inspirational, yet I have little time to pursue whatever ideas strike my fancy. And now I'm even busier, as I have to help my mom out, taking care of grandma and the yard work that my father would be doing. But it feels good to be unselfish and focus on others. More about that later on when I start wrapping up this journal thread and look to the future.

The grief I felt that Saturday was amazing. After my father passed away, I was led by the hospital chaplain to a private room where I could make some phone calls. First I called my mother. I didn't want to tell her on the phone about what had happened, but she had to know. She was waiting at home, taking care of grandma*, waiting for news. I will not forget the sound of her voice as she said, "Oh Tony..." Then I tried to call my wife, but I couldn't connect with her (I found out soon she was actually in the underground parking garage at the hospital, on the way to see what was happening). Finally, I called the current head football coach at Mayo High School, James Miller. He has been a good family friend for 20 years, and I know he considers my father as his mentor. James was as upset as the rest of us, and the support he showed over the next few days was outstanding. But my car was still at the youth football fields on the edge of town, and I needed a ride out there, and he agreed to come to the hospital and pick me up.

*-My grandma, my dad's mom, is 92 and currently lives at my parent's house. She has Alzheimer's, and she really needs monitoring 24/7. She's had some mini-strokes this past summer, and she's really started to slip in her memory. To the point where she'll wander off outside of the house if we don't keep an eye on her. My dad had actually put a payment down on a room in a new Alzheimer's home that is opening here in Rochester in November. But until then, we are going to have to spread the burden of care for her between my mother, myself, and my wife, Tricia.

Tricia arrived at the hospital and I took her in to see my father. Of course we'd have time for formal services later, but she wanted to see him. I promised him, as I would many times in the coming days, to live up to his example and take care of the family. We went out to the lobby just as James arrived. Tricia left to go to my parent's house, and James and I went to go get my car. As I eventually drove to my parent's house in the twilight, I can't believe I made it. I cried the whole way there. Again promising to do all I could to grow up and take my place as the man of the family here in town. I do have an older brother, Mike, but he's in North Carolina. So for the day-to-day things, it'll be up to me now.

In general, the next few days were just a blur, crazy, and amazing. As I pulled into my parent's driveway, there were already many friends of the family there. The phone was ringing off of the hook, and would do so for days. We recieved so much food that it filled up my mom's main refrigerator, the fridge in the garage, the freezer downstairs, and then Tricia and I had to start taking some of the food back to our house. Bless people's hearts, they just want to help and connect. No offense to my mother, after all, she'd just lost her husband of 48 years, but she was having a hard time making decisions. I don't blame her. Having lost my son 6 years ago, I know the official mechanisms had to be put in place.

It's one of the cruel jokes of our world that, when something like a death happens, all of sudden you are just busy with so many things you have to do. I called the funeral director at his home, as he knows our family well. His son played for my father, and later helped coach the team for a few years. I arranged a meeting with him for the following morning to plan the visitation and funeral services.

Amazingly, even though this happened at 2:30 in the afternoon, it was a story on the 6 o'clock news. You see, my father was the head football coach at Mayo High School, for most of his time one of two public high schools here in town (there are now three). He was very well known, and from what I gather, word of this spread like wildfire throughout the community. The next day on Sunday, the TV news had a special segment on my father, with the coaches reminiscing about him. I have it on video tape and hope to find a way to post it online soon. And then that Monday as well there were three articles on my dad in the local paper, including a very cool photo of him I didn’t recall from around 1975. I’m going to scan those in and post them at a little website I’m making for my dad. I was quoted in one or two of the articles. I’m good friends with one of the reporters, and I talked to him Saturday night on the phone about what had happened. I had no idea he was going to quote me, but that’s OK, I didn’t say anything to embarrass myself or my father.

So, that was Saturday, one of the shittiest days of my life. To top it all off, I stayed for the next two days at my folk’s in order to help out with my mom, my grandma, everything in general, and the dog, Molly, a 13-year old springer spaniel. What I mean by saying “to top it all off” is that I stayed downstairs, where all of my dad’s stuff was. His office with years of football team pictures, that sort of thing. I can’t tell you how many times in my life I’ve stood in his office, even very recently, and just soaked up the history, how cool it all was. Of course on Saturday night, it brought many tears, but I had to go in there for a while. I myself have been working with the team, which I have done since 1993. I go to all of the games, hang with the coaches, and videotape the games for the coaches and team to review. I also run the team website: http://www.mayofootball.com/

My Father (part one)

My father passed away on Saturday, September 9, 2006. It was totally unexpected, a complete shock. He had seemed very healthy, walking the dog daily, eating right, all of that. He was only 70 years old. He was a teacher and a football coach for 40 years, and had retired in 1998. This autumn, he “came out of retirement” to coach my nephew’s (his grandson’s) 4th Grade (9 year olds) football team. I hadn’t seen him this enthused about an activity in quite a long time, it was very cute, to be honest. I had even helped him with getting the gear from the local youth football association.

So on the 9th, I debated about attending the first game of the season. I work overnights, you see, and I had worked the night before. That morning I had to officiate at two high school soccer games, and I thought that would be enough activity for one day. But at the last minute, my employer cancelled work for that following evening, so I decided, even though I was a bit tired, to tough it out and stay awake and go watch the football game. In a sad way, I’m glad I did.

The first half of the game passed by uneventfully, the score tied at halftime 14 – 14. My nephew, Andrew, scored one of the team’s touchdowns. When I got there, I walked up to my dad on the sidelines, patted him on the back and said, “wow, you’ve really got a dogfight on your hands!” “Yes, we sure do,” he replied, and turned his attention back to the game. I stepped back and let him coach, obviously it was not a time to demand his attention. My mother was there, so I stood next to her and watched the game.

Halftime came and the team grouped together in one of the end zones, the coaches instructing the kids on play adjustments, the usual sort of thing you’d see at a game. Near the end of halftime, my father jogged with the team down the field and coached them through a few 10-yard sprints. I thought it was great to see him in his element.

The 3rd quarter started. I believe there was the kickoff and then one play was run. Standing with my mother, I looked down the sidelines and did not see my father standing with the rest of the coaches. “That’s odd,” I thought. Then I noticed him sitting on the bench between a couple of the kids, his head tilted backwards. “That’s not right at all,” I thought, and ran to my father.

“Dad, are you OK?” I asked, and I got no response as he was shuddering and staring blankly at the sky. As I asked this question of him, on of the other coaches heard me a turned around. This man was a nurse, and together we got my father on the ground and started CPR. He was having a heart attack. I remember ordering some lady to call 911. I remember seeing my mother just standing there and staring. I remember seeing 50 kids in uniform on the field, staring at what must have been a new sight to most of them. I imagine there were many parents who had talks with their kids that evening that they weren’t expecting to have for a long time.

The ambulance arrived, and I rode in the front as we went to the hospital. In the Emergency Room, a large number of nurses and doctors worked on my father for about 30 minutes, and I was allowed to sit in the corner and watch. The look of frustration on the head doctor’s face is a look I will never forget. Nor will I forget the sight of my father in this state. Almost one hour from the heart attack, they pronounced my father dead. I could not believe it. I collapsed on his chest and cried unbelievable tears.