A Proper Goodbye

New York – Round 1 was a 3-day stay with travel at both ends.  In the middle was a completely free, no-plans day, ideal for the side-trip I had hoped, but never dreamed we’d be able to take.  Wednesday 17 May, we boarded a train for Princeton, to see Uncle Dan.

By all rights, Uncle Dan should not have been there to see.  He’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer more than a year prior.  By the time we arrived in New York, the official medical opinion was that he had only 24-48 hours to live.  In fact, Dan graced the world with his company for another seven days – at home, well cared-for, encompassed by love – and died Tuesday 23 May, just before noon.

I’ll leave it to Dan’s big, beautiful, highly-articulate family to find words to honor him and mourn his passing, to tell his story and sing his soul home.  Dan’s son Stephen is an award-winning journalist, writer, and producer, fer gosh sakes; it’s his tale to tell, if anyone’s.  This tale is my own.

I’ll start in the middle.

I met Uncle Dan six years ago, on the home stretch of the “Land of our Fathers Tour” that took my husband Roy and me to Spain and Eastern Poland.  Meeting Roy’s relatives is always an adventure.  I never know what to expect.

No, ok, not entirely true.  While they are all fiercely unique individuals, the various members of the Jimenez family do share a few common traits.  Without exception, they are intelligent, creative, talented, progressive, politically active, and LOUD.

That last is a running joke among the clan’s significant others, who can often be found out on the porch or in an adjacent room, commiserating at normal volume.  Among my folks, the Rossman branch of the family was considered “loud” because they ate with such gusto, they often smacked their lips.  Nothing in my upbringing prepared me for my first meet-up with multiple Jimenezes – 5/6 of my husband’s circle of sibs, their amours, and the couple of kids who’d already come along serendipitously gathered at a magnificent lakeside house in North Carolina where their mum was caregiver for a regal old dame who was so close to crossing over, the distant past was more real to her than the present.  La familia Jiménez operated at an exuberant, assertive, opinionated, visceral level that was intoxicating and admirable – and occasionally quite intimidating.

Conditioned by that experience and my subsequent experiences at J-fam reunions, I was both excited and a tad trepidatious on the train ride out to meet Uncle Dan.

My trepidation dissipated at “hello.”  Dan was an absolute charmer, and perhaps the mildest, most easy-going, least deafening Jimenez I had ever encountered.  I snapped this pic right after the hello-hugs; that’s Mona and Roy flanking him.

The last survivor of seven brothers and a sister (Michael, Manuel (Jim), Joe, Dan, Johnny, Dolores (Lola), Nando, and little Luís (who died as an infant)), Dan was sharp, spry, and – impossible to believe – nearly 90.  He picked us up at the train station in his town car, gave us a tour of his plush apartment and all the amenities of stylin’ Monroe Village (everything an elder-of-leisure could desire), took us to lunch at the facility’s excellent restaurant, and regaled us with tales of his life as a 17-year-old Resistance fighter in the Spanish Civil War, as a bit of a rogue in NYC, and as a working man with a Spanish surname breaking barriers to enter the corporate world of Squibb. Dan ate smart, read lots, and golfed 9 holes every day.  He was funny, witty, savvy, and so fit, he put us young ‘uns to shame.

When I heard Dan was ill, it grieved my heart.  I thought that one, lovely June afternoon with him was to be my one and only.  I thought this was fated to be yet another final farewell I wouldn’t be making in person.

It’s a bit of a sore point with me.  The first time I didn’t say goodbye to someone properly was when Uncle Jacob died.  I have a sketchy memory of his funeral.  I remember I had to dress up (yuck, but I acquiesced because the dress had a Peter Pan collar, and I loved Peter Pan).

I remember all my relatives were there, also looking fancy.  I remember trying to get my big sister to play with me, and I distinctly remember being removed from the event because I wouldn’t stop running up and down the center aisle.

Too young to understand what was going on, too immature to behave properly at a formal, solemn occasion . . . true enough.  But was the problem my youth and lack of maturity?  Or was it the 1950s’ cultural reticence to accept the messy parts of birth and death and incorporate them into daily life?

Inch by inch, these emotionally castrating traditions of denial are changing.  When I was a kid, the parameters were absolute.  Labor and death weren’t natural processes, but medical events held entirely out of public view and usually obscured even from family and friends.  Those doing the birthing and dying were taboo.  Hurried into isolation while on or stepping over one of these proscribed thresholds, they were only welcomed back to society when they were well past the portal and safely ensconced on the other side.  Mothers and swaddled newborns were wheeled through hospital doors as if they were incapable of managing their return on their own; farewells weren’t given to the sick or old or injured in their last moments of life, but to their clean, groomed, dressed-in-Sunday-best corpses.

Too young to behave, too naïve to understand what was going on with Uncle Jacob?  Maybe.  But would I have understood better, understood more if I’d been seeing Uncle Jake in his waning days or been given the opportunity – whether I had taken it or not – to commune with him on his deathbed?

Next loss was on the other side of the family.  Aunt Ann.  She died of a cerebral aneurysm.  I remember Dad sitting slumped on the kitchen stool, stunned.  He went out to California for the funeral.  The rest of us stayed home.

I was 18 when my mom died.  Here’s where the poor-goodbye became a formative experience.  She was another surprise.  She’d been in hospital.  The doc was “giving her bowels a rest” from some pretty debilitating ulcerative colitis – the disease her favorite auntie had died of at the tender age of 32.  The doc was also giving her meds to “increase her heart action.”  She had a heart attack.  They were unable to resuscitate.

Pre-cell phones and all that, I finished up my morning at Cal Berkeley, hitched across the Bay, and went to see my mum at Marin General completely oblivious.  The nurses kept me sitting by the station for ages while they whispered amongst themselves.  A short while later I was to realize they had been whispering about my mother and the mental-emotional condition of women who suffered from colitis.  I have never been able to forgive them.

Why wouldn’t they let me see my mother?  I was getting really angry by the time a woman with the authority to give me the news led me to another room and gave me the news.  Then she called me a cab.

At home, my dad was locked in grief and in his bedroom, my sister was taking off to be with her boyfriend, my mum’s parents – in town for a visit – were silently screaming in the living room.  Somehow it fell to me to make the funeral arrangements.

I have terrific managerial chops, but I was not the right gal for the job.  My biggest mistake?  I kept my blinders on, so I could focus on what needed to be done.  Or rather, on what I thought needed to be done.  Mourning needed to be done, but how was I to know?  I opted for a closed casket.  I never saw my mum in hospital or in the funeral home.  I never saw her dead.  Our final farewell was a casual “bye for now” at the end of a brief phone call.

I wasn’t there when Solomon died, either.  My dog.  I was galavanting about Europe; my sister did the honors.  I said goodbye to him in a dream.

But I wanted to be there.  I wanted to say a proper goodbye.  I’d learned my lessons.  If you can be there, be there.  If you can say goodbye while they can still hear you (and they can hear you even if they are in a coma), say goodbye while they can still hear you.  If you are worried you’ll be in the way or be too much trouble for the caregivers, stop worrying.  They’ll let you know, and more likely they’ll be glad and grateful you cared enough to come by.  If you think it won’t matter to the person who is dying, you’re probably wrong.  If you think it won’t matter to you in the long run, you couldn’t be more mistaken.

So, when Mona asked what we’d like to do with our free day, I jumped the family queue and made it plain.  I wanted see Uncle Dan.  What luck, what fortunate timing, what a blessing to have made it to New York in time and to have a day to spend in Princeton.

Stephen met us at the train station and drove us to Monroe Village.

The facility was even nicer than I remembered.  Miles – Stephen’s partner – was waiting for us in Dan’s apartment; he’d skipped the train station to stay home and keep watch.

The golf clubs were still on the deck, the same wonderful art still on the walls . . . the only real changes were Stephen and Miles had moved a hospital bed in for Dan and moved Dan’s bed to the office, so they’d have a place to sleep when they spent the night.

We had two brief, wonderful chats with Dan; a group hello when we arrived and a private goodbye just before we left.  Dan, as before and as always, was a darling.  Ever the gracious host, he inquired after our needs, when really, shouldn’t we have been the ones inquiring?

When his hospice caregiver arrived, we took off for a meal.  It’s upscale, I know, but this is a genuine New Jersey diner, and a dang good one.

Dinner proved to be a typical Jimenez (mini) reunion; the conversation was wholly and entirely vehement, passionate politics.  It was no more than a quick breather for the boys, though, a moment of self-care near the end of a long vigil.  Stephen and Miles had closed up shop in Santa Fe and moved to Princeton as soon as Dan got the diagnosis.  A major upheaval, and terrible hard on them both.  Caring for a terminal loved one . . . we have all done it, or we will be doing it soon enough.  We all know something of the tears and laughter, the pain and beauty of what Stephen’s been going through – or we can imagine.  Miles’ lot may not be so familiar.

Stephen and Miles came East together.  Stephen came to take care of his dad.  Miles came to take care of Stephen’s dad and to take care of Stephen.  Stephen and Miles both left their home, dogs, and lives behind in New Mexico.  Stephen grew up in Brooklyn, and while he adores the dogs, he often travels for business and is fully at home in assorted big-city social/political/literary circles.  Miles grew up under the Big Sky of Texas.  His interest is architectural and interior design, his business is (New Mexico) real estate, and his dogs are the joy of his heart.

Death ain’t never easy, not in any way, but as endings go, I’d say Dan’s was a good one.  He spent his last days in his own home, free of pain, with his own things about him, surrounded by loving family.  For Stephen, not even time can heal the hole in his heart, but I’d say he’s a lucky man.  He was able to be with his father for the all of it, to manage his care, to sit by his side – to sleep by his side, holding his hand – and to say goodbye again, and again, until they’d all been said.  I’d say the extended Jimenez family is taking it in wonderful stride as well, embracing their sadness and using their shared remembrances to tighten the bonds between them.

That’s why I’m ending my story with my thanks to Miles, Prince of Princeton.  His sacrifices, his acts of love and service are what made it possible for Stephen, for the family – and for me – to say a proper goodbye to Uncle Dan.