The ringing phone jarred me from a deep sleep. It was nearly midnight on a Saturday in 1984, the eve before my wife's much heralded 40th birthday. It was the call that all children of aging parents expect, but hope will never come.  

     Everett had gotten up early that morning to go to the bathroom. Halfway down the hall, he became disoriented and fell. When he was unable to get up, Olive, his second wife, dialed 911. The rescue squad rushed him to the hospital where he was admitted for observation. 

     Sunday morning, I wished my wife a happy birthday and boarded the first flight to Boston's Logan airport. There I rented a car and drove to Plymouth. Olive met me at the door and we headed for the hospital, arriving just before noon.

     The walk down the antiseptic-smelling hospital corridor seemed infinitely long as I paced Olive's 76 year-old gait. She preceded me into the room where Everett sat waiting in a wheelchair.  Curse words slurred and voice quavered with anger as he lashed out at her. Why hadn’t she contacted Braintree, he demanded. 

     Braintree was where Everett received physical therapy after his last stroke some 10 years earlier. The therapy helped him to regain partial use of his right arm and leg, although he required support of a cane to walk. Since that time, he had religiously performed a regimen of daily exercises to maintain his mobility. 
Everett was no quitter. Not then. Not now. Three heart attacks and two strokes hadn't stopped him and he saw no reason to give up.  But events would soon break his resolve. 

     The first ominous signs came at supper when he became unable to maneuver a loaded fork to his mouth with his good left arm. At each attempt he missed by three to four inches, dumping food over his right shoulder. Olive offered to feed him, but he stubbornly refused. With each successive failure, his verbal abuse of the fork became louder. In an irreverent moment, I suggested that he save all of us time by simply throwing down the whole tray. It broke the tension.

     With a suppressed chuckle, Everett surrendered the much vilified fork to Olive. As I watched her spoon food into his mouth, my mind escaped to happier times.

     From 1937 to 1975, Everett ran a part-time oil business out of his home to augment his earnings as a freelance finish carpenter. By the 1950's, the majority of his customers had become his devoted friends. At no time was that so apparent as when he made his Saturday deliveries around Christmas and New Years. On those days, Jimmy, one of Olive's sons by her first marriage, would come from Rhode Island to drive the truck. Everett would ride. It was a necessary safety arrangement as one out of every two customers would invite him in for a 'Nip'. The more nips he downed, the happier he got. By the end of the day, his distinguishing features were a perpetual ear-to-ear grin and the inability to stand without swaying to a big band tune that no one else could hear.

     On those festive Saturdays, he would scout for unwanted animals and accept them in payment for heating oil -- if he didn't write off any balance owed altogether. At suppertime, Olive and I would watch out the kitchen window, wondering what would be sitting next to him when Jimmy pulled the truck into the driveway at day's end. One year it was a Billy goat, the next a pair of exotic monkeys. Parrots. Toucans. Skunks. Raccoons. Ducks. Geese. You name the animal and Everett brought it home on one holiday or another. As a result, their small house took on the trappings and, too often, the smell of a zoo. I called it Everett's orphanage.

     Then, as now, Olive was his helpmate. She dutifully cleaned up the animal's messes while Everett built appropriate pens or cages. Then she would feed the animals each day until a suitable home could be found for them.

     But there were personal memories as well. When I was 12, Everett took me on construction jobs where he taught me the basics of carpentry. At age 14, he hired me to help on the oil truck at twice the wage paid to kids my age.

     My mother died unexpectedly in 1959 while I was in the Air Force, leaving me a small cottage, but no money. Upon my discharge in 1961, Everett hired me to drive the oil truck. The money from that job enabled me to attend State College. Throughout my college years, Everett was always there with a loan if I ran short of gas or food money. Indeed, he and Olive fed me three days every week until I graduated.

     The other ways he enriched my life are too numerous to count and too common of caring parents to warrant celebration here. But they are very important to me. For you see, he and I were not blood kin or otherwise related by law. My natural father exited my life on a dark night in 1947 when he got drunk and chased my mother up the street, blasting away at her with a shotgun. Fortunately, he was no better a marksman than he was a father. I guess Everett sensed the void that violent act left in my life because he took me on, despite having a grown son and daughter of his own.

     My nostalgic time tour of 'life with Everett' was cut short when his son's ex-wife Shirley joined us. Shirley was a registered nurse and had taken time from her job to see that Everett had personal night care while in the hospital. At 9 p.m., we said our good nights and left a sleeping Everett in her caring and competent hands.
The next morning, Olive's two sons and daughter met us at the hospital. Everett's son Arnold was out of the country and could not be reached. Everett's daughter would not come at all. She had died tragically a decade earlier at age 47. Because Everett had had a rough night, Shirley elected to stay.

     It was mid-morning when, like a dam bursting, the stroke began. Everett sighed as a torrent from the ruptured vessel washed away his will to live. Within the hour, the connections between his mind and body, like Church and State, were ruthlessly severed. Except for an occasional tremor, the body that had danced with life for 83 years lay still, an inanimate object subject to the well-meaning whims and routines of overworked caregivers. 

     As his vital signs deteriorated, the doctor warned us to prepare for the worst. Minutes later, a minister dropped by and suggested a prayer might be in order. Like sheep, the seven of us gathered around the bed and held hands as he began to pray.

     I guess if a person can be scared to death by the devil, he can be scared to life by a circle of people praying around him. At least that's what happened. Without warning, Everett snapped to consciousness and gazed up at us. I could see the alarm in his eyes. As his vital signs improved, Olive voiced hopes for a miracle. But minutes later he lapsed into a semi-comatose sleep. With the crisis passed, Shirley left to catch a nap.

     At suppertime, I volunteered to stay with Everett while Olive and her children got something to eat. They had just left when a nurse came in to change the sheets. She asked me to help. As I stood by the bed, the nurse, making small talk, asked me what my relation was to "Mr. Jones". I replied that we weren't related by blood, but that he had been like a father to me since I was a boy. The nurse replied matter-of-factly: "Oh! Then you're really not his son."

     Everett's response was immediate. With an effort neither of us believed possible, he raised up on his elbows, his eyes directed at her, his teeth gritted. The words were slurred but to the point. "Oh - yes - he - is!"  Exhausted, he heaved a sigh and collapsed back into the pillow. The nurse and I looked at one another across the bed, unable to speak.

     Olive has since died as has Everett's son. I never told them what Everett had said. It was private. But to this day, I marvel at how a nurse's casual comment gave me such a precious parting gift from a wonderful man who chose to be my father. Everett lingered at the threshold of eternity for five anguishing months. And in all that time, he never uttered another word. 

© 2002 David J. Carr All Rights Reserved