Category: Aging Parents

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Bad, Bad Leroy Brown: The Funeral Recessional That Never Was

This post is part of ChicagoNow’s monthly “Blogapalooza” feature where bloggers are provided a prompt and required to write and publish a post within an hour.  Tonight’s prompt was this:  “Pick a song that has special meaning to you and explain why.”

My Dad’s been on my mind a lot today.  Probably because the first thing I saw this morning when I flipped on the old Facebook was THIS – a collection of photos and memories chronicling my Dad’s last months before he died.  It was a horrible, horrible time for my family.  Something I feel I am still reeling and recovering from in many ways.

Then tonight, dishes done, kids in bed, getting ready to settle in for some serious binge watching of something, anything, our landline rang.  Yes, I still have a landline, it’s true.

It was a volunteer for the local Democrats looking for my Dad.  Inexplicably, I heard myself saying, “John Quirke is dead.  May I take a message?”  What the what?  Not exactly certain how I might deliver that message, but the offer was out there.

The volunteer politely declined, offered his condolences, and clearly wanted to get off the line.  Yeah, but no, I was still talking, grateful for the connection to my dead Dad, someone looking for him, calling for him, reminding me that in odd little ways, he was still a part of the world.  I started chatting about him, reassuring the man that had my Dad still have been alive, he would have been a lock for Hillary.  And I just kept talking, providing more reassurance that my Dad’s four kiddos were also good for Hillary votes.  There was an awkward, “That’s great!” from the other end of the phone, then the call was over.

I smiled, thinking that while my Dad wasn’t successful in passing along his deeply entrenched Catholic faith to any of his four children, he did manage to solidly pass along his Democratic faith to those same four kiddos.  I wondered, as I never asked, which of those might have been more meaningful or important to my Dad.  I honestly don’t know.

I own that while I don’t practice the Catholic faith, I am marked by the cultural significance of growing up Catholic — something that is simply part of my fiber.  Familiar traditions, spoken prayers, comforting memories of childhood.  As the siblings of my parents die, I will lose my last tangible connection to the Catholic church.  My Dad’s funeral may very well be the last time I would step foot in the church and parochial school that was my home from kindergarten through eighth grade.  So many happy memories there, so many challenging ones, too.

Me and my Dad, c. 1979. This photo was taken at a wedding where he would have definitely danced to "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown."
Me and my Dad, c. 1979. This photo was taken at a wedding where he would have definitely danced to “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”

When my Mom died, my sister and I both delivered eulogies.  It was never in question and simply worked into the funeral mass.  That same sister and I both expected to eulogize my Dad, ten years later, when we were surprised to learn that families were no longer allowed to eulogize a loved one or provide any kind of personal remembrances at the funeral mass.  Catholic practice now demanded that funerals be focused on God and faith, and not so much on the deceased.

Hearing that was crushing, I’ve got to say.  I’ve delivered four eulogies in my life and each of them has been my love letter to someone I miss dearly.  My personal goodbye, a way to put into words a sliver of what loving them had gifted me in life.  I did this for my Mom, then my daughter, my aunt (a nun herself), and had mentally crafted the words to my Dad’s eulogy for the past twenty years, since my Dad suffered his first heart attack at age 60.

My sister and I bickered about it at the funeral home.  I was stunned and bereft, full of words that needed to be spoken about my Dad, for my Dad, the last time I would ever stand next to his body before it was committed to the earth.  And I was being told no.  It was unacceptable.

I arranged for the funeral director to call the priest directly, the same priest from my childhood, a man my father had had a very complicated relationship with after the good father simply forgot to show up to the mass where my parents were to renew their marriage vows in honor of their 25th anniversary.  There was a church full of friends and family who had flown in to help celebrate a silver anniversary but no priest, so no vows.  Worse was his refusal to apologize to my parents.  It put both my very Catholic parents off going to mass for a few years.

Anyway.  Fast forward to me literally begging this father, the holy one, not the biological one, to be able to eulogize my Dad.  I pleaded and appealed, hoping to find his humanity.  “Three minutes,” he said, “I’ll give you three minutes, but then I’m cutting off your mic.” I expressed tremendous gratitude,  but all I could think to myself was, “Yeah, peace be with you, too, buddy.”

I laughed after hanging up the phone, remembering, from the fantasy funerals for my Dad that had played out in my head for the past twenty years, that there was no chance in hell I would be able to get to hear the song I had always imagined would play as his recessional — the song that is played as the casket is carried out of the church after the funeral mass.  That song being Jim Croce’s “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.”

Bad, bad Leroy Brown from the southside of Chicago, baddest man in the whole damn town, meaner than a junkyard dog.

That song transports me to my years of childhood, watching my parents dance to it at all of my cousin’s weddings, and I had a lot of older cousins.  I loved to watch my parents dance.  They had a complicated relationship, my folks, but they always made sense on the dance floor.  They met at a dance hall in 1957, the Holiday Ballroom.

So, yes, I didn’t push the idea of Bad, Bad Leroy Brown as my Dad rolled out of church for the last time.  I was happy with my three minutes.  But tonight, this one is for Da.  Take it, Jim Croce, and for those of you at home, this works best with the volume up, way up.

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Old Furniture

My home is full of old furniture.  I sleep on the futon my husband had when we met; the same pine futon base he used as a bachelor.  My family eats meals off an old green enamel table from the 1920s that my Dad found in the basement of a house he was flipping in Apple River, Illinois.  Our living room is a mish mash of my parents old furniture, thrift store finds, and a few new pieces thrown in for good measure.

For almost a decade I worked in a retirement community in Chicago’s posh North Shore.  When older adults moved into a different space as their needs changed, much of their furniture might not fit into a smaller floor plan.  It was always a relief for them to learn that they could donate their leftover furniture, which retro poseurs like me could pick over each Monday and Thursday morning at the Women’s Board Thrift Shoppe.  I kid you not that half the furniture in my home was bought from aging Presbyterians.

Are we cheap or purveyors of fine older recyclables?  Pffft.   Probably a bit of both.

When my Dad died last spring, my sibs and I were tasked with cleaning out his condo — the leftovers of his life and our childhood.  I’ve written about the process before, and no doubt, will do so again.  It is a profound process, this cleaning out, throwing out, and letting go.  A concrete goodbye that feels about as final as I imagine anything ever will for me.

In 1958, my parents were married.  They bought a home together — a brick raised ranch on Chicago’s Southeast side not far from my grandparent’s home, and furnished it with money my Mom had saved from a settlement she received after a car accident that nearly took her life a few years earlier.  This was the furniture of my youth.  Most of it wasn’t replaced until the 1980s, an era far less chic than the mid-century modern of their earlier purchases.

My parent's mid-century modern living room, 1958 Chicago.
My parent’s mid-century modern living room, 1958 Chicago.

Those seashell chairs have been reupholstered with a nubby teal and are grand in my sister’s Brooklyn apartment.  The black sectional is in my other sister’s basement, though its seen more than a few slipcovers over the years.  The round coffee table anchors my own living room.  I love it and often hear my father boast about the Philippine hardwood it was made from.

As we cleared out the condo, all that was left was a hodge podge of pieces.  My Dad was even more sentimental than I, if possible.  There was my family’s dining room set that he kept until the end.  Even part of my grandparents dining room, too, as my Dad had a hard time letting go when they moved out of their home.

The dining room of my youth was more of the mid-century chic.  1958 Drexel.  Six chairs, dining table, and china cabinet.  All with clean lines and spare style.  None of my siblings or I claimed it.  My brother didn’t need it as a bachelor, my local sister is not into mid-century pieces, my Brooklyn sister had neither means or space to move it across the country.  And while I love the pieces, we had a Heywood Wakefield set gifted to us when we moved into our first home.  I could never bear to part with it.

So the dining room went unclaimed.  It never felt right, but we knew, eventually, it would have to go.  We even had trouble giving the set away, as, apparently, there is a glut of similar pieces on the market.  Not even local churches wanted it.  Man, when St. Vincent De Paul tells you to take a hike, you know you’re saddled with something.

Then, just last week, there was a text.  A friend of our realtor shares a similar style and wanted to look at the set.  She loved it.  Could she have it?  I honestly didn’t realize how important it was to me until I got the news that someone else wanted it.  Yes!  Please!  It is yours!  A warm sense of sweet relief washed over me.  My childhood dining room set had found a new home, a new family.

DR Set

The moving truck that would carry the set to its new owners stopped by my home last week, as I had found two extra leaves and pads for the dining table I wanted to include.  And it struck me, as I fished out those leaves from deep storage just how significant this idea of passing on furniture truly is.  “Leaves” itself is such an alive, organic term.

The life of a family happens around a dining room table.  Thanksgiving turkeys are carved, birthday candles are blown out, high school term papers are written using three volumes of the 1968 Encyclopedia Britannica spread out next to the typewriter, forts are built with the table’s protective pads.  Endless joys and sorrows happen around dining room tables.

Family happens around a dining room table.

And as sad as I am to say goodbye to this slice of my childhood, my family history, I am so, so happy with the idea of another family creating new life and memories around it.  More holidays, more birthdays, more celebrations, more sadnesses, more leaves, more life.

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In Case of Emergency

I’m taking a break.  No one I love is allowed to need me in any extraordinary capacity for the undefinable future.  No sickness.  No breaks. No demanding needs.  No crisis allowed.  Like I said, I’m taking a break.

For long (or short, depending on how you look at it) swaths of my life, I have been a caregiver.  I was a professional caregiver for ten years working with older adults. I got paid to care and provide support to older adults and their families as they navigated aging.  It was important work and I both loved it and was good at it.  It challenged me.  I hope, if only in small ways, that I provided some comfort for a few people along the way.

One day almost twelve years ago now, I was readying a presentation with a mentor I was to give the next day for a room full of seasoned therapists and social workers.  I don’t even remember the specific topic, but it was something about caring for older parents.  I was nervous as hell, but prepared and excited.  For a clinical social worker, I was hoping to enter the big leagues where Chicago’s most well respected therapists might actually learn who I was and what I was capable of, clinically speaking.

That afternoon I got a call from a nurse in a Biloxi, Mississippi ER.  My Mom had been admitted and she was alone.  They wanted someone who knew her to talk to her. My Dad had been contacted and was on his way, but wouldn’t arrive for at least an hour.  Was I Sheila Quirke, daughter of Donna Quirke?  Yes, of course, that ‘s me, my heart beating fast.

Found in my Dad's wallet. I keep this on my bureau, looking at it frequently, remembering my Dad, my Mom, being the caregiver they needed. I hope I was worthy of a note like this.
Found in my Dad’s wallet. I keep this on my bureau, looking at it frequently, remembering my Dad, my Mom, being the caregiver they needed. I hope I was worthy of a note like this.

That, right there, over the telephone, was the moment I became I caregiver. I grew up in the time it took that nurse to dial my number.  It didn’t matter that I was in my 30s and married with a career and an office with my name on it.  I wasn’t a grown up until that moment I became a caregiver.

My Mom’s speech was slurred.  She just kept saying “okay” over and over, but it sounded something more like “ooohhhhh-k-aaaaaayyyyyy, ooohhhhh-k-aaaaaayyyyyy, ooohhhhh-k-aaaaaayyyyyy.”

Her voice scared the hell out of me.

I would spend the next year helping my Dad and sister (and some very loving and compassionate paid caregivers) take care of my Mom who no longer was able to walk or talk or bathe or eat or toilet independently.  I would not trade that year for anything.  The foundation of my life shifted in that year, but I was too busy washing sheets and cooking meals to realize it.

It was a privilege to care for my Mom, who, it must be noted, was amazingly gifted at receiving care.  She was gentle and receiving and patient and kind, despite her injuries and insults that prevented her from ever enjoying the life most of us take for granted every day.  She taught me so much in that year without words.  She shaped me in ways that only a mother can.

Just a few months after my Mom died our daughter was born.  We didn’t learn of her sex beforehand, but knew if I delivered a girl, she would be named after my Mom.  The first word I ever spoke to my first child, when I held her in my arms the moment after delivery, was “Donna.”

Donna was a joy and a gift and healed my family in so many ways.

When young Donna was herself diagnosed with a brain tumor at 20 months old — the same thing that my Mom died of — the caregiving I did reflected the intense love a mother has for a child.  For 31 months I cared for my child with cancer.  The cancer took Donna from us and life will never be the same.  We are changed, my husband and I.  Cracked, but holding. Damaged in invisible ways.

My father, who throughout my Mom’s illness, when he needed to let off steam, would say, “I’m going to collapse when this is over,” somehow didn’t.  He held it together after my Mom died.  He sold their home and moved into an apartment in the city.  He became a widower after 46 years of marriage, but figured it out.  He was happy enough, as they say.  He would pop by unannounced.  He would sometimes babysit for little Donna.  I loved living near him, keeping tabs on him.

After little Donna died, my Dad did collapse.  Two months after we buried her, he suffered a heart attack on the operating table during a knee replacement he had been putting off for years.  He fell into a terrible, intractable depression.  The losses he had experienced finally permeated and he just surrendered.  I spent much of that first year of my grief worrying over my Dad, getting him to appointments, cajoling and supporting and prodding and screaming in frustration over what depression does to a person.

It passed, finally, his depression.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly he recovered.  I didn’t worry as much.  I didn’t have to fuss or prod as much.

In the ten years my Dad lived after my Mom died, we had a lot of conversations about our grief, about aging, about quality of life, about his wishes.  We had a plan, tentative and abstract as it was, that my Dad would live with us when and if the time came.  If ever a person was not cut out for institutionalized living, it was my Dad. He hated authority, always had, even as a young boy with nuns telling him that two plus two equaled four.

But the best laid plans of fathers and daughters often go awry.

When my Dad required caregiving, like my Mom, it happened suddenly and without notice.  Unlike my Mom, he was not a gracious receiver of care.  He was a King Lear who fought it every step of the way.  He roared like a lion, saying the most painful of things, wounding with words.  He hated needing help, fought against dependence (literally and figuratively), got angry at those providing care.

We didn’t know it at the time, but cancer was advancing in his body and it changed him neurologically and cognitively in ways that brought out the worst in him.  I did the best I could for him, advocated with doctors, cajoled nurses, managed his finances, found adequate housing when it was clear that our home would never be an option — as it turns out, a raging older man, even a beloved father, and two young children don’t really fit together.

My Dad’s illness was short, blessedly so.  From his neurological changes to death, only six months had elapsed, but those were six of the longest months of my life.  They changed me, too, just as the months caring for my Mom and daughter had.  One of my life’s greatest gratitudes is that my Dad returned to some version of himself before his death.  His last weeks were absent those personality changes that had been so painful to witness.

Now I feel empty.  Spent.  Done.

I was the best caregiver I could be for my Mom and daughter and Dad.  I was committed and present and passionate.  But now I fear I have reached my quota of caregiving.  Interspersed between all these caregiving episodes, I have raised and am raising young children.  Between three children spaced four years apart overlapping three episodes of intense caregiving over roughly the same period, stick a fork in me, because I am done.  Finished.  Don’t call me in case of an emergency, because I don’t know if I will be able to help you.

If you are a caregiver, I salute you.  May the force be with you, because you will need it.  I watch from afar as some of my friends go through their own caregiving experiences — some lasting year upon year upon year — some making my own caregiving look like a ride at Disney.  You have my utmost and everlasting respect.  I hope someone is there for you the way you are there for the ones you love. May you, one day if not today, know peace again.

If you know a caregiver, please, give them a break.  Or a hug.  Or a Starbucks.  Caregiving can be such an isolating experience.  It demands your full attention, to the detriment of so many other things you would or should be doing.  Know that what they do, sandwiched in between going to work and shopping for groceries, is sacred.

And if you have not yet been a caregiver, but will be some day, I salute you, too.  Not everyone can do it, and that’s okay.  But if you are called to it, out of choice or necessity, may you find what you need to provide for those you love.