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.