Generations

My father, Arnold Cannon, 1930-2004

As another Memorial Day Weekend approaches, and I see American flags waving here and there, I immediately think of my hero - my late father, Arnold Barry Cannon, who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars. I miss him terribly. He often talked about his days in "the service." Oh, the stories he would tell.

I'm sure my youngest brother, Joseph James Cannon, another of my heroes, is familiar with plenty of these stories, too. As I write this, Joe (the baby of the family, there are six of us kids) is out there somewhere in the world, on another tour of duty for the U.S. Navy. He's an electronic warfare specialist or EW as they call it. As I understand it, he helps crack codes and disrupt signals.

Joe's due to return to San Diego in September, where he lives with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Quinn. He also has a son, Rylie, who will graduate from high school in Indiana next month and plans to attend college in California.

Joe's deployment and Rylie's high school days will soon end, yet these life events will point the way toward new beginnings - making up for lost time with family, embarking on a college education, each generation constantly learning from the other. Now those are some damn good reasons to wave a flag proudly.

That's my brother, Joe, standing at far left.

June 2, 2004

Dad and me, 1968. "You were perfect," he'd say. "Not a blemish on you."

I remember how loud silence can be.

The night "it" happened, I was lounging on my parents' sofa - the same sofa they had held onto from my childhood in Indiana but had had reupholstered. It now competed for living space with a hospital bed, oxygen machine and catheter.

My two sisters and I worked in shifts, helping my Mom care for Dad after his body had betrayed him. He had Parkinson's Disease and diabetes - a cruel combination considering he'd honorably served in both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. Where was the justice? Still, I never once heard him complain about his illnesses. I know he often suffered in silence.

Dad could no longer walk and required 'round-the-clock care. Just months before, we had made the grueling decision for him to be looked after at a rehabilitation facility, a nursing home. After a short time there, he pleaded to return home. Home was where my mother could tend to him. Heaven to him was anywhere she was. He'd often tell me - as if telling a secret - that the nursing home was "a completely different place at night." The wailing, mournful voices of dementia echoed in the hallways, found their way into his room, kept him up all night. It was hell.

"The Devil Wears Prada." That's the book I was reading the night of June 2, 2004, when I noticed the hissing of the oxygen machine had stopped. It was like the sudden, eerie quiet that arrives after a power outage. Mom was taking a bath; I could hear the occasional splash of wet washcloth on skin.

I bolted to my father's bedside. He was completely still. I could tell by his bluish-white pallor he couldn't breathe. His lips were slightly pursed, letting out a low hiss that soon became a low, horrifying moan. How long had it been? Oh my god.

"Mom!" I cried out, before scrambling for the telephone. The 911 operator asked me a few questions. I can't remember what they were. I hung up and ran back to Dad, administering CPR, blowing with all my might into his mouth. His lips were incredibly dry, his breath wreaked of vomit. This and the adrenaline made me gag.

The paramedics arrived. It seemed like an army storming a fort, death the enemy they were hard focused on destroying.  A swirl of uniforms, equipment, emotionally detached focus, Mom pacing back and forth, pleading, hysterical. "He's going to be OK, right?! Right?!"

Dad being Dad. And me enjoying every minute of it.

"Does he have a health care directive?" the medic in charge asked me after trying to console my mother. "Yes," I told him. "He wishes to be resuscitated if possible." Then out came the defibrillator and paddles, the familiar apparatus from all the medical dramas on TV - the ones I now never watch.

"Clear!" I looked over at Dad as his body succumbed to the powerful jolt, the swarm of medics gathered around him searching for signs of life. He now had a long plastic tube protruding from his mouth. When had they put that in? How did I miss that?

The chief medic told us there was a small pulse, but they needed to rush him to the emergency room. Mom and I jumped into her car to follow the ambulance. We didn't talk. My legs shook so much it was amazing that I even got us to the hospital. Once there, we were escorted into a private waiting room. I don't think there were any windows. It felt like a tomb. It was dimly lit. Just the kind of room we really didn't need to be in. But what kind of room would give us comfort at the time?

I sat and waited, holding Mom's hand. I can't remember who else was in the room. Maybe a bereavement counselor? I don't know but a doctor soon emerged from nowhere. He didn't have to say anything.

"You are welcome to come see him one last time," he told us.

I called my partner. I called my sisters and brothers. I called Aunt Patty, my father's only living sibling.

My sisters, who lived an hour away, arrived as soon as they could. We were allowed to go in, one at a time, into the emergency room, where beyond a curtain and under painfully bright lights lay my father's still body, the plastic throat tube still inserted, his eyes partially opened, a look of disbelief washed over them. I didn't want that to be our final memory of him, but it often is. I curse myself to this day for not demanding they remove the tube.

My father's passing will always weigh heavily on my conscience, but I've learned to embrace it, accepting that the dark moment will revisit me whether I welcome it or not. I often question why was it me, out of all six children, who had to witness his departure. Perhaps it would have been much easier to cope with his death if I weren't there. Then at other times, I feel honored that I was sort of the chosen one.

He was my father and friend - a gentle giant of a man who tucked me in at night, gave amazing back scratches, fought tooth and nail to put food on our table, remained devoted to my mother for 53 years, and who loved me just the way I am. Thank you for everything, Dad. I love you and miss you more than words can say.

Roots

Oh, these bones, how they keep me bound in this bed—a bed I once found so comforting and protective—a cocoon of cotton sheets, layers of quilts (sewn by my daughter), and pillows that comforted my sore neck following an afternoon crouched on the lawn, gazing down for too long as I extracted root after tender dandelion root from the earth.

If these bones didn’t ache so much, I’d be in the kitchen crushing garlic, chopping scallions, adding powder from fiery-red dried chilis (in pinches) to enhance the flavor of my harvest. “You eat those?!” the neighbor (hand on hip, the other clutching a fly swatter) spatted to my daughter-in-law one sticky afternoon, her arthritic finger pointing at me a safe distance away. This portly, wrinkly woman with crooked glasses, hair the color of snow, and too little clothing for someone her age (72?) was overwhelming to my eyes, but seemingly couldn’t spare an ounce of respect for those who hadn’t been forced down the beaten path in life that she did. I didn’t have to comprehend her twangy words: Her body language was enough to offend. I would have insisted the hag sit down to lunch with us in our sunny, air-conditioned kitchen. I envisioned my chilled and pickled dandelion roots with a bit of freshly steamed white rice would win her over—silence her ignorance and release her from the chains of unwillingness.

I’m no longer bitter nor am I hungry for the distinct taste of those pungent roots even though my fewer meals now consist mainly of flavorless broths—easier to swallow since I have less teeth these days, and free of salt that the fast-talking man with the oniony breath advises against—the same man who presses the cold metal disc against my back. I see him more often now—and way more often than I’d like to because all he feeds me is the same old lines: “breathe in….breathe out…good.”

The last time I saw this man, the young woman with the lovely olive skin and face as round as a full moon accompanied me. She’d done so on half a dozen occasions, gently holding my scaly, liver-spotted forearm as we inched at a snail’s pace to the drafty brick building with the funny smells and frowning people of all kinds. Who was it that told me this young lady, whose smile slants her eyes even further, is my granddaughter? Ridiculous, I think, because I worked alongside this woman in the fields, under the relentless late-summer Korean sun. Her fingers were as agile as mine at plucking and bundling scallions by the dozen. It’s remarkable how she doesn’t seem to have aged a day, despite her deeply suntanned skin. Not a wrinkle in sight! When she pays me a visit (which she often does), I tell her to stay out of the fields as much as she can for she is getting too dark and won’t be able to attract a husband. She stares at me, a somber look crosses her face, she replies with pursed lips and a barely visible nod. I tell her to wear longer skirts, too, not the too-short one made out of the blue-jean fabric. I also ask her to ask the man with the cold disc why I choke on the broth every time I take a spoonful, but I never get an answer. I don’t remember to seek an answer.

Today, I’m too tired to take my broth—and much too tired to cough. I also feel remarkably light despite this peculiar weight on my chest—like an overly fed cat crouched atop my sternum. Funny, but somehow I feel at peace—an inexplicable easiness washes over me. I nod off, but not for long it seems before opening my eyes to glimpse a shiny gold ring, scratched from years of living hard, just inches from my eyes. How did it get there? I don’t remember it feeling loose on my left finger, beckoning the reflexes of my right hand’s fingers to grasp it before being swallowed by the abyss of warm, sour-smelling sheets.

Sleepy, so impossibly sleepy, I manage to place the ring next to my heavy head, the pillow filling in as some sort of ring bearer’s cushy prop. I think—or dream?—that the ring will fit the delicate finger of the olive-skinned, moon-faced girl far better than mine.

Nicknames

During my adolescent years in rural Indiana, my parents called me “Mr. Perfect,” because unlike most teenagers (and my five siblings) I kept my cubbyhole of a room neat as a pin; my closet, organized by clothing color; my hair—heaven forbid—not a follicle out of place. For me everything had to be just so.

This meticulousness and order for which I have always strived for in my personal life worked its way into my professional life. My first full-time writing job—copy editor at a small daily—proved to be the perfect match. At the paper, my cohorts referred to me as “Eagle Eye,” for I could spot grammar behaving badly only seconds after glancing at a page proof. I have a joyful habit of spotting typos on menus, in books, and even (yikes!) in the New York Times. Words, I discovered, were much easier to keep in check than, say, my nervous habits: gnawing at a corner of my mouth, talking rapidly when conversing with strangers, picking at the dry skin around my cuticles.

My Dad used to pick at his cuticles, too. He also used to refer to me as his “Sugar Plum Bum.” Over the years, I learned to adore and appreciate this unique term of endearment for its cheeky connotation that I could be sweet AND mischievous; although when I think of the expression today, I’m swiftly transported back to my dad’s bedside as he took his final breath—and the torture of telling my mom of his passing shortly after she emerged from the tranquility of her evening bath.

Oh, the torture words can deliver. Name-calling in particular packs that cruel power, pummeling the wind out of you with its brutality. As an awkward prepubescent teen who felt more comfortable around females than males and preferred volleyball to baseball, my year-and-a-half younger brother Joe didn’t help matters much by calling me a “Fag!” whenever we quarreled—usually over something as silly as him borrowing one of my Izod polos without asking. Of course if he did ask, I’d say no.

Hostile or kind, these nicknames offer snapshots into my past that have all helped define who I am today. That is their magic. Meticulous, sweet and gay - that's me. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Palpitation

“Oops,” my love nervously utters every time it happens. But before he says this, I can already tell his heart had just momentarily beat at a rapid, often terrifying pace. For the seconds that these cruel arrythmias pay him an unwelcome visit, he is frozen in place; his pallor goes pale; I can tell he's afraid and I grow weak with worry. I'm the sufferer on the outside looking in, helplessness confining me like the merciless stone strapped to the torso of an alleged Salem witch. I stumble with my “Are you OK?” I manage to squeak out. “Yeah,” he says, catching his breath, eager to reassure me while the color rushes back to his face--the face I first set eyes on (and grew smitten with) more than a decade ago. Another palpitation come and gone, then life, as we know it, carries on--until the next episode when the delicate threads of life momentarily succumb to the weight of the crosses we've been given to bear.