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Start
In the Navy Married
Again...
Life at Chrysler
My father worked at
Chrysler until his seventies. He suffered a major
cardiac arrest in 1985 in which he barely survived. After a week at what
was then New Grace Hospital, his brother insisted he be transferred to
a "real hospital" and he was transported to Mt. Sinai Hospital. Surgery
was performed with a cautionary "He doesn't have a good chance of
making it but it's our only hope" from the surgeon. Miraculously, he
not only survived, but ended up swimming an hour a day until he died.
Swimming was his passion, and he would vacation in Myrtle Beach,
South Carolina, every summer. He usually took a girlfriend along. One
day I remember the lifeguards calling us all out of the water because a
shark had been sighted. I couldn't find my father anywhere and I was
getting worried. Then I spotted him waist-high in the ocean, looking around as
if he was wondering where the hell everyone went. It turned out
that the guards thought he was the shark, because he swam so far out
and had a peculiar dead-man's crawl that made his elbow look a little like the
fin of a marine animal...
Jerry remained a
bachelor after Ingrid died but was pretty active when it came to the opposite
sex. After a few months of moping about the house after my mother's demise, I
suggested he try going to Parents Without Partners...I later affectionately
renamed it Parents With Problems. He made this a regular outing and had many
horror stories to share with me in his search for a female cohort. Eventually he
met a nice Irish lady named Jean, and saw her for about ten years. He had no
desire to get remarried, but enjoyed having someone nice to date and go places
with while maintaining his eccentric lifestyle at home. I say eccentric because
this man collected EVERYTHING. Swimming goggles, watches, pens, dress shirts,
suits and ties...there was about a hundred of everything he hoarded.
I took my father to
Myrtle Beach the last two years of his life. I insisted on driving. This was met
with initial resistance. He had a hard time accepting old age. He also became
angry at the ocean one day when a rip tide almost carried him out to
sea...fortunately, he still was a good strong swimmer and managed to swim back
against the pull of the current. He cursed the lifeguards for not paying
attention and disregarded the fact that he should have heeded the warnings about
dangerous currents...later on he enjoyed his vacation but seemed a bit cowed by
the experience. I watched him walk along the beach, a small creature against the
backdrop of the ocean and waves, and remembered that this was once a tough,
swaggering dad of mine, now fragile and old. I watched him sleep and was
impressed on how little space he took up in the bed, almost childlike in
appearance. He still snored like my dad, though. During the fall I took him to
an apple orchard and let him pick fruit to his heart's delight. I will always
remember his love for apples. His refrigerator would be full to the brim of
apples and they would fall out when one opened it. The following year I was in a
major depression and felt bad because I wasn't able to enjoy much with him, as
much as I tried to. He was accepting of my state of affairs and never told me to
"snap out of it" as he once would have done. Jerry had a stroke a year
before his death but recovered fully from it, although it did require surgery
and scared the hell out of me.
The last time I saw
my father was at an open AA meeting. He sat through the hour and then hung out
with my AA friends for coffee at a doctor's house afterwards. I noticed his
jokes started getting a bit inappropriate and wondered what was going on with
him. I was making plans to move to Los Angeles and finally get the heck out of
Detroit. I wanted him to come with me. He knew I couldn't stay in Michigan
anymore and supported my decision, and offered to hang on to my piano for six
months and if I liked it in L.A., he would ship it out there. He had plans to
drive to California and was excited about that trip to visit me.
I received a knock
on my door on a Sunday morning. It was the Police, and they told me to
call the Warren Police Department. They wouldn't say why, and I thought
one of my friends had found themselves back in jail. I called and was told my
father had passed away at a hotel breezeway. They asked if he had a habit of
visiting prostitutes. I thanked them for their tact and hung up. Apparently,
Jerry went out with the right intentions...he was on his way to see a prostitute
and collapsed before he met up with her. They tried CPR on him with no avail.
Chrysler Corporation said that I should drive his leased car to their plant and
I told them to propagate with themselves. I had to pay for the apartment he
lived in until the lease was up. Everyone was around me like vultures within a
week of his death to collect something. I had to liquidate his belongings which
included 6,000 books and 300 suits. I truly found out who my friends where then,
some of which I barely knew but were dear to my father. I thank them all and
will never forget the help they offered and delivered. Jerry would have been
proud.
cranky
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Jerry Makes a Hit
at the Beach 1999
(I paid the Lifeguards $1.00 for the
pose...)
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