What Hurts?

Introduction

This post is about what hurts right now: physically, emotionally, existentially. I guess it’s also about what doesn’t hurt.

Scrapes and scratches

I have some new scrapes and scratches from a mountain bike crash. (Was this the impetus for this post? Oddly, no … I’d been planning it anyway. Maybe I’m clairvoyant.)

These scrapes don’t really hurt, they just sting a little. Even when I swabbed them with alcohol it didn’t really hurt, per se. It was more like the thrilling zing of eating too much wasabi in one bite.

My back etc.

My back hurts for no good reason and this just happens sometimes. It’s not intense or anything. On a scale of 1 to 10 this pain is only about a 1, but it’s annoying because it’s persistent, and affects how I inhabit my body. I have to bend over slowly to pick something up from the floor, which makes me feel geriatric. It’s also a distraction when I’m cycling. On top of that, I did something to a groin muscle, probably during an ad hoc yoga session my wife led me through. There’s something called a lunge, which would be a huge exaggeration for what I kind of did, but even so I practically maimed myself, so I’ve been walking funny. It hurts a fair bit (perhaps a 2) to put on my right sock. 

Overall, this pain isn’t so much physical; it’s more of a morale thing. The scrapes from my bike crash  are practically refreshing ... I mean, at least they ought to hurt.

Ageing

Obviously the back pain I just described is related to ageing, but at least it’s (presumably) temporary. The groin thing should subside too. But there’s new pain it looks like I’ll have to live with forever: soreness after cycling. Perhaps as recently as ten or fifteen years ago, I could do any bike ride—200 miles, even—with no soreness the next day, as if the ride never happened. Now, I’m sore after my standard 20-mile loop. It’s ridiculous. And age-related pain isn’t just depressing, it’s kind of foreboding … it carries with it the whiff of mortality. It’s like God telling me, “Yes, everything will get harder, and your bodily systems will work less and less well, and then one day your heart will stop.”

Empty nest

There was no intense moment of emotional anguish when (a few years back) I dropped my older daughter off at college, and then more recently my younger daughter. I was kind of surprised, both times, at my casual reaction … this is a really big deal, but it didn’t seem like it in the moment. But after the fact I’ll occasionally be hit with the reality of it at unpredictable times. For example, after my older daughter visited for a couple of weeks recently, and I dropped her at the train station and was driving home by myself, I felt a lump in my throat, and was kind of down. I’d enjoyed hanging out with her, and the fact that that she no longer calls our home home, was, well, brought home.

Of course, my older daughter’s original departure didn’t fully empty the nest; we still had her younger sister at home. I’ve had more of this poignancy since we dropped the younger one off for her freshman year. I felt a prick of it the other day when my wife absentmindedly put three plates down when setting the table, having utterly forgotten for a moment it’s down to the two of us. And I had a sharper pang when I was clothes shopping with a friend recently and bought something for my younger daughter. I was about to explain to my friend that this was for my daughter’s birthday, and this would be her first away from home, without a family party or possibly even a friend party since she’s still new to her college community. Before I could utter a word of this, though, I realized I was unable to talk, and my eyes were filling with tears. So I just stood there, silently crying while also laughing at myself.

Is this actual pain? Yes, and no. It hurts to miss your children, obviously, but all is according to plan. They’re happy to be gone, which means they’re thriving, and what parent wouldn’t want that? And yet, and yet…

Inflation

Does inflation hurt? Well, I sure hear a lot of complaining about it, and about related matters like supply chain and staffing problems that are making it more difficult to get the stuff and have the “experiences” we’re accustomed to. Obviously some people will feel the sting of this more than others, based on their overall financial picture, but as a middle class American I don’t personally know anybody who is so badly affected as to have to worry about homelessness or starvation. And looking at my own situation, I benefit far too much from the unfairness of the world to ever feel butt-hurt about prices going up.

Here’s a thought exercise I like to do when I’ve just paid $13 for a block of cheese and am tempted to bitch about it: I think about thrift shopping. In the Bay Area, you can get incredibly high-end stuff in perfect condition at a consignment store. A lot of the time a garment is brand new, with the tags still on it. This is made possible by people around here having so much money, they can afford to buy this stuff new on a whim and then casually change their mind and sell it for practically nothing, probably by the bushel, to a consignment store, just to have it out of their way. This kind of wealth can only occur in a world where the human experience is massively lopsided. Think of how little money went to the factory worker who made that garment. That worker surely could not fathom the idea of paying, say, $400 for a jacket and then deciding he didn’t really like it after all. The idea that I am a beneficiary of this system disqualifies me, in my opinion, from ever opening my mouth about inflation.

Other people’s problems

There are people in this world who devote their careers to helping others. I don’t mean something trivial like helping smartphone users have a more intuitive interface; I’m talking about people who work to help underserved groups who struggle. I’m glad such devoted people exist. They are making a sacrifice. Let’s consider the experience of a person whose life work is helping the poor. Facing this ongoing, persistent poverty—though they are not themselves poor—does cause them legitimate pain, because it is a professional frustration, and perhaps because they ponder the condition of needy people so as to find motivation.

That being said, for the rest of us, I think it’s kind of an affectation to get worked up about problems that don’t affect us. If I’m eating seared ahi at an upscale outdoor café while sipping an $8 beer, in my opinion it would be poor form for me to talk the whole time about, say, the Bay Area’s housing problem. And this is just a simplistic example; people get worked up about all kinds of problems, many imaginary or exaggerated, that are introduced into the public dialogue by politicians, pundits, talking heads, and the AI algorithms that spread bullshit all over the Internet with the focused intent to fan the flames of outrage and indignation. I am not denying that people can feel real anguish about problems (real or fabricated) that don’t (or can’t) affect them, but is there any point in this?

Here’s a thought exercise to illustrate my point. Suppose you’re traveling overseas and lose your passport. This is a big deal, and throws your whole trip into a tailspin. You’re definitely suffering the loss of that passport. But now imagine that after searching for several hours, you actually find it; ergo, it was never actually lost … but for hours you suffered. Was there any point to that period of anguish? Of course not. Is this different than spending hours and hours fuming about, say, the catastrophic health consequences of 5G wireless networks? Of course not, since both situations concern a problem that does not actually exist. And yet googling “health problems from 5G wireless networks” just now produced 84 million hits.

My point is, don’t borrow pain, from those who (you suppose) suffer it, based on problems you don’t have. That’s my $0.02, anyway.

Loss

I lost my father in 2017 and of course that was painful, and it’s possible I think of him more now than when he was alive. But to be very candid about it, we weren’t great chums and he had lived a long life. His death was not a tragedy.

On the other hand, I do feel real pangs when I think about friends, my age, who have died: M— in 2016 and T— four years later. It’s not only that they were struck down far too early in their lives, with so much left to do … it’s also just that I miss them so much. I saw much less of them than I’d have liked when they were alive (based on busy lives, family stuff, etc.) and now they’re totally gone.

All kinds of things remind me of M—: roads we used to ride together, photos that flit by on my screen saver, components on my bike that I bought from him, brewpubs we drank at together, so many things both obvious and surprising. I often think of him when I’m watching pro bike racing and Richard Carapaz comes on the screen. Carapaz looks a bit like M— he … has the same grin when he’s suffering. It looks like his mouth is trying to form a grimace but he’s just too good-natured.

Recently I was walking by a new-ish Sichuan restaurant in town and paused to look at their menu, wondering if they use Sichuan peppercorns, aka “ma” (spelled 麻). Suddenly, my eyes teared up. I had learned all about these peppercorns from T—, who even recommended his favorite place and advised me on what to order. This was the last time I ever hung out with him, having coffee after a bike ride in late February, 2020. By this point it was too late in his losing battle with colon cancer to hope I could visit the restaurant with him, but I thought I could at least try the place and report back. (His last email to me was, “Let me know how it goes.”) The pandemic kept me from this field trip, and from ever seeing T— again.

Silver lining?

Pain obviously serves a role in providing the kind of feedback that keeps you from, say, touching something that’s burning hot. But beyond this, does it serve any purpose? I believe it can. Pain is very personal, direct, and non-abstract. It pins us down into our immediate reality, and in doing so it can remind us we’re alive. I guess that’s not an entirely bad thing…

Additional reading on pain & suffering

• Cycling, Suffering, & the Cold Pressor Test
• Race Report: Mount San Bruno
• The Femur Report – Part I
• Physical Therapy
• Everest Challenge Pep Talk
• Brutal Bicycle Training Contest – Part II
• Riding La Marmotte – Part II                  

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Object Permanence

Introduction

This post is not about the stage of child development in which objects that are not perceivable are still understood to exist. Rather, I’m examining the peculiar phenomenon of physical objects that last far longer than anybody could expect them to. I’ve selected half a dozen surprisingly enduring items to display and discuss.

Fork, ca. 1900

This fork is ancient, obviously. Sure, you could find older stuff in a museum, but this object saw regular use until only 15 years ago. It belonged to my wife’s grandma, and her parents before her. I once watched her use it while making her famous (and delicious) fried chicken, which had only one ingredient—chicken—which she cooked over very low heat in only its own fat. The only other kitchen tool she used for this dish was a skillet. Her kitchen was exceedingly spare, lacking not only a dishwasher but even a dish drying rack. She used this fork pretty much until she died. From there it transitioned from tool to family heirloom.

Paperweight, ca. 1960

This paperweight has been around since I can remember; as a little kid I would peer into it during brief snatches of time before my brothers would forcefully take it away. All four of us sons were forbidden to touch it. It was one of my dad’s treasures. He never told us where he got it or why. When I moved away it vanished for 30-some years until I inherited it following my dad’s death.

It’s weird inheriting property. Whenever I pick up and inspect this paperweight, I still half-expect that one of my brothers, as a proxy for my dad, will come out of nowhere to seize it and admonish me again. This paperweight still seems like it’s my dad’s property, as if—looking down from some spirit world—he might still have a problem with my touching it. I never got his blessing to take possession; it’s merely one of the spoils of having outlived him.

The little cat drawing in the background is only a year or two old. I included it because my younger daughter (featured in the framed picture, ca. 2004, to the right) has already expressed astonishment that I kept it. She tossed off the picture very hastily and it was on its way to the recycling bin when I intercepted it to use as a desktop tchotchke. I’m going to see how long I can hang onto it.

Thimble, ca. 1965

This thimble must have been my mom’s, and since it appears to be sterling silver, she probably acquired it before taking on the expense of children. Though not as old as the fork and the paperweight, it has the added distinction of having been in my possession for quite a while—since about 1990 when my brother Geoff gave it to me. I’d loaned him a sew-up tire patch kit, and he returned the kit with the thimble added. The (partial) history of this thimble is given in a letter I wrote to Geoff on April 14, 1996:

[The need to mend a shoe with needle and thread] called for the Velox sew-up patch kit I use from time to time. Every time I need it I hope, almost desperately, that I still have it around somewhere. It’s one I bought from Square Wheel (the price tag is still on it, $7.95) more than five years ago to give to you so that you could repair a bunch of my tires. Inside the patch kit tin is this really groovy thimble, with engravings of birds and ivy and stuff all over it. Accompanying the thimble is your Post-it note: “Dana, I found this v. cool thimble in the basement-kine [of our childhood home]. Please don’t lose it. Hugs & kisses, GA.” I always get a kick out of that. The patch kit itself is great; the thick, curved needle is industrial-grade, and punched through the thick rubber of my shoe just splendidly, without puncturing my finger thanks to the thimble. But the note is more impressive yet, due to its staying power. I mean, it had to be more than five years ago you wrote it. The Post-it is written in faded fountain pen and is on the verge of falling into four pieces, as it’s been folded and refolded so many times. But it’s still around. Amazing for a product with the intended lifespan of perhaps just a few days or weeks.

I still have the patch kit somewhere in the garage—it pops up occasionally before going missing again—but the last time I used it, the curved needle and Post-it were gone. The thimble now lives in my desk as one of my treasures. And as often happens, a chance photo of the note still survives ... not nearly as cool as the curling-up, faded note itself, but better than nothing.

(Does it bother me that this thimble could still technically be my mom’s property? Nope. I think to her it was always just a thimble, and it wasn’t off-limits to us. Mom didn’t really do treasures so much; perhaps we kids were enough.)

Stapler, ca. 1955

Zoom in and look closely at the engraving on the base of this stapler: “MADE IN SWEDEN.” That’s how you know it’s old. Now look even closer: there’s a bit of tape just to the right of that which is almost all gone but still clearly says “LEY” and most likely says “ELEY.” That’s my dad’s handwriting and I’m 99% sure the tape, when intact, had my dad’s address, ending in “BERKELEY”—i.e., this is a stapler my dad had in college, at least 60 years ago.

Not only is this stapler likely older than the thimble, but it’s been in my possession, in continual use, since 1984. My dad didn’t give it to me—I took it. Every time I look at it I have a queer feeling, just this side of guilt. I know he didn’t intend for me to have it, but I didn’t care at the time. I pilfered this stapler out of spite, probably relating to my parents’ divorce for which I held my dad primarily responsible. I felt he wouldn’t miss the stapler because he never used it. (He was never home.)

It’s an odd concept, “stealing” a household object from a parent. I simply took the stapler with me from my family home to the condo I moved into with my mom after the divorce. Since then this stapler has traveled with me to San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, Oakland, Berkeley, San Francisco, and Albany. It did cross my mind, during college, how neat it was that this stapler, having been used by a Berkeley student in the 1950s, found its way back there to be used by another student in the 1990s. That satisfaction was of course tinged with the not-quite-guilt feeling I described earlier. I wish I’d had the rapport with my dad to show it to him and say, “Hey, Pop, if you ever wondered where your kickass Swedish stapler went, it’s right here. I stole it off you back in ‘84. And no, you can’t have it back.”

Mug , ca. 1994

I was given this mug in 1995 when I landed a new job (at a company whose logo you can’t see in this photo as it’s around the other side of the mug). Obviously this is the youngest object featured in this collection, but it’s also one of the most fragile. That chip on the rim is recent. I don’t know what’s more amazing: that this mug is still unbroken, or that I’m still at the same job. I would not have predicted either scenario back in ‘95. When my kids begrudgingly do the dishes, they’re very slapdash and clumsy and I fear for this mug’s life. I’m tempted to say, “Be careful! You’re gonna get me fired!”

Hairbrush, ca. 1977

Okay, so this hairbrush isn’t exactly an antique, but it carries the distinction of being the only hairbrush I’ve ever had. (Before my mom bought me this brush, my hair was so fine and limp it didn’t need brushing.) I have used this hairbrush after virtually every shower I’ve taken in the last 40-plus years. It’s been with me through a dozen households, and untold vacations and business trips. The opportunities for its loss have been countless.

Now that I’m a homeowner and don’t see any need to ever move again, it’s tempting to think I’ll have this hairbrush for the rest of my life. But the greatest risk of its loss comes from my kids. It’s almost comical how many hairbrushes they’ve gone through. A day doesn’t go by without them hunting around frantically for a missing hairbrush on their way out the door. It’s also surprising how many brushes they’ve broken; one brush lasted just a few days. And despite my telling these girls repeatedly that this is my hairbrush, they borrow it a lot. I’ll find it in the shower, or their bedroom, or the living room. My younger daughter even brought it to a slumber party once—that was a close call.

Once my kids reach escape velocity, this hairbrush’s status as a lifelong possession will be virtually assured. After all, I won’t be using it that much as my hair steadily retreats toward the back of my head. Eventually there won’t be enough hair left to brush, and sometime after that I’ll die.

This is the recently alarming thing I’ve come to ponder about my possessions: surely some of these will outlast me, such as the boots I bought awhile back that have an unconditional lifetime guarantee. I don’t have a problem with my house carrying on without me—after all, it was built long before I was born, and houses and land aren’t our possessions, not really—but to think of quotidian objects outlasting me … it’s a little scary. When we buy something, we expect it to serve us for a time, and then wear out or become obsolete. Not the other way around.

Only a few years back, during my Everest Challenge days, I’d go through several pairs of road bike tires a year. I’d order a bunch at the beginning of the season and have to re-order halfway through the summer. Since then I’ve been disheartened at how long a single pair of tires will last. It’s becoming progressively easier to imagine that, one day, without realizing it, I’ll mount my last pair, not because I’ll quit cycling but because cycling, and everything else, will quit me.

If all goes well, by the end I’ll have used up most of my possessions. My survivors will get my wristwatch, the dandelion paperweight, the silver thimble, and the blue plastic hairbrush (and hopefully not too many papers with Post-it notes reading, “FILE LATER”). My daughters will of course have those fancy wooden brushes with the fabric-backed bristles that make the brush go “whoosh” across your head, so the hairbrush will have to go to someone’s cat. And that’ll be that.

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From the Archives - Speech for Dad’s Memorial

Introduction

I’m coming up on the one-year anniversary of my father’s death. It’s rough. The fact of his death is compounded by the flashbacks I have of his terrible, wasting final month. Time does heal all wounds, but first they scab over which means they bleed from time to time. I’m dealing with all of that now.

Here, extracted from my archives but still warm to the touch, is the speech I wrote for my dad’s memorial service. I know it well, because I had to rehearse it, out loud, half a dozen times just to get to where I could read it out without crying. (I’m not above letting people see me tear up, but blubbering to the point of incomprehensibility does nobody any good.)

If I seem a bit less than fawning in this tribute-cum-roast, it’s because I’ve listened to memorial speeches that were so dedicated to burnishing the reputation of the dead, they lost their essential truth. To a large extent this was the case at my grandfather’s memorial, except for my cousin’s loving but honest speech, which I well recall included the statement, “He could be difficult.” That speech inspired me to write something that conveys loving feeling but hasn’t been totally declawed.

Speech for Dad’s Memorial – November 19, 2017

I was driving my dad’s old Toyota Scion the other day, and it was down to half a tank. I’d filled it up when I was out here in early October, figuring I’d do him a favor. He’d be stoked (he would say “tickled”) to climb into his car and see the fuel gauge on full. It never occurred to me, at that time, that he’d never drive this car again. Things like that drive home the point: he’s really gone.

Of course I’m going to miss my dad—but this is not entirely new territory for me. I have, in a sense, yearned for more connection my whole life. When my brothers and I were kids, it was often hard to get our dads’ attention, unless we were in trouble. As adults, we weren’t really focused on him, either. Work, our own families, and geography got in the way.

But even as kids, when we all lived under the same roof, our relationship with our dad was less a matter of mutual rapport than of us boys being kind of in awe of him. Often it seemed his amazing intellect could be a barrier. An old friend of his from Ball Aerospace sent a nice note to our “Remembering Harry” e-mail box recently, saying, “[He was] intelligent beyond all description. He formulated a way to map the non-linearities of an instrument’s measurement plane with a Zernike polynomial making it possible to linearize the pointing accuracy of a line of sight steering mirror. His idea for using the concept of a Seaman’s signaling mirror to bisect the angle between two laser beams was the basis for an entire pointing and tracking program.” Reading this was a bit like hearing my dad talk tech, back in the day: I really couldn’t follow it. Growing up, the dinner table was like some kind of science & technology forum. Much of it was pitched at my older brothers’ level, though I’m pretty sure they were lost, too.

This isn’t to say our dad wouldn’t ever meet us on our turf. One weekend morning when I was 12 or 13, several of my biking pals flaked on me. My dad surprised me by saying, “I’ll ride with you.” So we rode up Flagstaff together. I pushed as high a gear as I could, out of the saddle, rocking the bike, slogging away slowly to be macho, while dad stayed seated and spun a high cadence—an engineer’s cadence, perhaps—next to me. Of course he turned the ride into a picnic, literally. At the summit we parked our bikes and walked out to Artist’s Point, and ate the odd creations he’d packed, like bagels dressed up with sardines, dill relish, and mayonnaise, and a half grapefruit.

[Here is his beloved Trek, which he rode on this ride. I’m pretty sure my dad snapped this photo at the summit of Flagstaff, probably quite near where we had our picnic.]

On the way back down the mountain I let it all hang out—I’d mastered all the curves by bombing this descent several times a week—and halfway down I heard this incredible scream. I looked back, expecting that all was lost, but my dad was still upright, just behind me, looking totally unflustered. “Not to worry,” he said, “that sound is just my brake pads melting.” I don’t know where he found the nerve to fake it on a descent like that, other than being hell-bent on keeping up with his kid.

Another surprise from my dad came during the summer of ’94, when I took my new bride, along with my brother Bryan, on a bike ride up Mount Evans. We weren’t very well equipped for the harsh conditions up there, which would have become a big problem, except that Dad unexpectedly showed up in his car when we were about halfway up. He had a lot of warm clothing and a big thermos of hot cocoa.

[Here we are maybe halfway up, before the temperature dropped.]

I felt this outing had brought my dad and me closer together, and so, remembering that 22 years later, I invited him along as the “sag wagon” when I took my daughter on her first bike trip up Mount Evans in August of last year. He happily obliged, following along in his Toyota Scion, with his good friend J— [not shown since I don’t have her permission].

Dad made a picnic out of this outing, too, giving my exhausted daughter the most challenging sandwich of her young life: homemade bread, like particle board, spread thick with refried beans, ketchup, and—of course—mayonnaise.

But so much of the time during my childhood, my dad was immersed in his own thoughts. The childish ideas I tried to share just didn’t tend to grab him. He was a bit like the archetypal “absentminded professor,” often pondering a mathematical or scientific abstraction, or the workings of the natural world. I think everywhere he looked, he saw these intricate mechanisms that just begged to be studied and fathomed. I suspect his profound intellect could be isolating for him, too. A character in a Vladimir Nabokov novel wrote to his wife, “A genius needs to keep so much in store, and thus cannot offer you the whole of himself as I do.” Was my dad keeping something in store? Hard to say, but I did find it hard to compete with whatever good solid engineering problem had taken root in his brain. Where mechanisms, science, and engineering were concerned, my dad always knew where to start, and how to proceed ... humans were always a bit trickier, and relationships could end up being the problems left unsolved.

And so, with all this in mind, I’ve been gratified to see, over the last ten or twenty years, my dad expand his comfort zone and delve deeper into messy human stuff. I’m impressed by how social he became, how wide a circle of close, loving friends he had around him in his retirement. He developed a spiritual side completely at odds with the purely scientific approach he’d had as a younger man. He also described to me his (apparently willing) participation in activities I never dreamed he’d undertake: meditation, Buddhism, singing, even dancing. Dancing—man, I’d have loved to see that.

As I grieve, I have to remind myself that memory is fickle. When I look back on that high-speed bicycle descent of Flagstaff, and my dad glued to my wheel despite his brake pads melting, I recognize this alternate side of him. Even if he didn’t always nurture it, his capacity for reaching out and expanding that comfort zone seems to have been there all along.

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More Beer Pix - the H.B. Albert Memorial Beck’sts

Introduction

It was a little sad for me that, when researching my recent aquaculture post, I couldn’t consult my dad. It would have been a great conversation topic, and those weren’t always easy to come by. I say “weren’t” because my dad died last year. I’m now bumping into various anniversaries: of our last non-medical visit; of the unsuccessful surgery that was the beginning of the end; of the end itself; and, of the aftermath.

Now, I don’t cope with these anniversaries, nor did I cope with these events, by drinking beer. But, looking back, I can see the role that Beck’sting played in being supported through the gradual dénouement. Read on for some bittersweet memories, bitter beers, and fetching photos.

A note on the captions and other comments: throughout this post, I’ve included the initials of the Beck’ster and anybody who commented on his Beck’st. Where you see one letter only (e.g., “E—”) that’s somebody’s spouse, etc. And if you don’t know about Beck’sting, click here. For a follow-up gallery of Beck’sts click here.

Last time we hung out with Dad in a non-convalescent capacity– June 18, 2017

[All four brothers took the old man out for a Father’s Day dinner. We were together in Washington state for my nephew’s wedding. My dad, already in the throes of a losing battle with cancer, had made a heroic solo road trip—which we all knew would be his last—so he could attend.]

DA: This is a Boundary Bay Scotch Ale. You can tell H— is very impressed with my exquisite taste.

PCS: H— is looking dapper! Did you get him to drink a few brewskis?

DA: Very funny. I think he’s consumed a grand total of half a beer during his lifetime. He does look pretty baked in this photo, though. (Of course he’s not.)

BA: Well... it is a good picture of your Scotch Ale, Dana, but I’ve seen better of Dad! He was actually pretty chill for the time together, which was great.

Helping out post-surgery – September 6, 2017

PCS: Funkwerks Saison! Chillin’ with Dana....Gondo! [Gondo = Café Gondolier, a Boulder favorite.]

DA: Funkwerks Saison! Very good, out of Fort Collins. Chillin’ with Pete at the Gondo!

DW: I bet that Funkwerks is a hella lot better than the Mirror Pond that’s sitting in my fridge, which I have on good authority is meh.

JL: Gondo Bext! Double Gondo Bext! That’s got to be worth 50 points! Maybe more! How many plates of spag will Dana eat tonight? And why aren’t you there are on all you can eat night???? Or is Wednesday all you can eat night…? I thought it was Tuesday. What are you doing out there Dana????

DA: We missed spag spesh night by one night! So we had garlic twists, one plate of spag, and shared a pizza. Good times! I am in town helping my dad out after a major surgery. At least that’s my excuse. I am really here for the spag!

DA [later than evening]: This is one of my very favorite beers: the Dogfish Head 90-Minute IPA. Isn’t it amazing that the Gondo, an iconic restaurant from our childhoods, is now serving us brilliant adult beverages?

JL: Yes, you are correct.

DW: Great Bex’ts. What’s on tap for tomorrow...some 180 mile mega ride with 22,000’ of climbing? After a few of those awesome looking beers and the twisted, elated, conspiring expressions you both have, I’m sure that’s what you were planning. On the other hand, did you guys put your phones down and talk to each other, or just kept checking your social media accounts with a nod, grunt or response that had nothing to do with the question asked from the other? Both are totally acceptable, BTW.

DA [the next day]: LOL. I meant to ignore Pete and Max by immersing myself in online dialogues but I don’t have enough virtual friends to make that work! We’re going to do some kind of mega-ride. I might go for some bonus miles by riding to Golden to meet Peter. Kind of depends on how comfortable the saddle is on my rental bike. I am kind of hurting this morning ... can’t tell if it’s the beer, the overeating, or the stress of being a ... CAREGIVER. (Say that reverently, with a pregnant pause for effect beforehand.)

Helping with skilled nursing facility, then hospice – October 17-26, 2018

DA: Maxin’ out with Bryan and Max at the Gondolier in Boulder. This is a Modus Hoperandi IPA from Ska Brewing in Durango. It’s 6.8 IBU and 88 IBUs but surprisingly smooth and darn good!

JL: Bryan looks angry for a guy with a nice looking full pint of beer in front of him — what did you say to him?? Or maybe he’s just hangry because they haven’t delivered the spag yet. And what brought you guys to Boulder? Weren’t you just there?

BA: Here’s the view from the other side of the table. The spag spesh is a nice reprieve from all the action here in Boulder.

DW: Dana looks equally angry. I hope you guys had more than one IPA.

DA: We are here visiting my dad who is very sick. As in very, very sick ... we are on the way back from the airport having just fetched Geoff [who flew in from Holland]. Sorry to be a downer.

JL: Oh man, I’m really sorry to hear this. There was a part of me that was wondering if something bad was up with your first email, but then I “perished the thought.” You and the brothers are there, and that’s good. My thoughts are with you guys.

DA: Thanks John. I thought about saying something earlier but I didn’t want to taint a perfectly good Beck’st. Things are headed pretty swiftly in the inevitable direction....

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DA: At Uncle Max’s pimpin’ new bachelor pad. Dan, note that even though the New Belgium Trippel specifically recommends stemware, I served these in a proper (and non-carcinogenic) pint glass.

DA (continued): Here’s another. New Belgium Trippel, Crystal Brewing Blood Orange Kolsch, Great Divide Colette.

JL: The perspective appears to be from someone who has already had a few too many… For me, I’m having this odd “IPL” [India Pale Lager] from Jack’s Abby. It’s “cleaner” than an IPA I would say. Slightly more refreshing, but still very flavorful. It might become my new favorite beer. Oh, and it’s in a can, which is my preferred container for beer in the summer/warmer months. Many breweries around here are putting more of their beers in cans. It’s “cool.”

October 27, 2017

[I sent this Beck’st just a few hours after my dad’s death, which is described here. I snapped this photo at the Dushanbe Teahouse, a restaurant my dad raved about but which we somehow never managed to visit together. It was weird to be dining in such a swanky place while our dad was laid out stiff somewhere, but I guess life goes on. As if to underscore this point, at the Teahouse we happened to run into the hospice nurse who’d been at our childhood home with us, and even in the room with us, when our father died. I didn’t feel like addressing these surreal feelings in my Beck’st—much less typing a lot with two thumbs during dinner—so I kept my Beck’st short and sweet.]

DA: A local beer from Avery Brewing Company, the White Rascal Belgian style white, at the Dushanbe Teahouse in Boulder. Delicious! I hired a model to pose in the background. Huh huh, no. That’s my niece R—.

PCS: That’s good times! Cheers to the memories.

BA: Good times indeed. As much as I’m relieved that the late night amateur nursing care, the [heinous] ostomy odors and the gut-wrenching pain of it all are (more or less) behind me, I’m really going to miss the rich, wonderful times with these brothers. I can’t imagine what it would be like going through something like this alone. We had some good Beck’sts, that’s for sure. The food at this tea house was really good, as was the tea I had. Who could have known?

Memorial trip – November 16-18, 2017

DA: This is a Mojo IPA from Boulder Brewing. Pretty yum! Note the reflection of my checkered napkin, and of course Evil Uncle Bryan in the background. We are in Boulder for my dad’s upcoming memorial.

BA: Too bad your phone has such a tiny lens with such a small aperture, otherwise you’d be able to blur out the background a bit better! Still, good times, all things considered.

DA: Actually, I was thinking the main flaw with this photo is that you’re so bald.

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DA: Liquid Mechanic Belgian IPA, post-memorial. [Pete gave me a lift to the memorial “after-party,” held at a friend’s house in a suburb outside Boulder, and when we drove by the Liquid Mechanic brewery Pete made an executive decision and swung into the parking lot. He’d wanted to try this place, and this seemed the perfect opportunity. The memorial had gone just fine, but so many complete strangers approached me afterward and talked my ear off—all on the subject of a dead man who’d been my father—I was feeling pretty damn overwhelmed. This glorious beer and a little peace and quiet were exactly what I needed.]

DW: You guys look quite dapper in your sports coats. That beer looks pretty darn tasty too. Sorry about your dad, Dana. I hope this bex’t will make you laugh a bit. This is my GWAR bex’t.

DW (continued): This is a Tropical and Juicy from The Hop Concepts in San Diego. This IPA blew me away. It was delicious and a total surprise. We stopped in Sacramento on our way down to Ventura for Thanksgiving. No shortage of breweries in Downtown Sac. We tried Fieldwork, but there was no room and not an ideal arrangement for two 15-year-olds. My kids were very hangry and not amused with my need to get to a brewery. “What’s wrong with Denny’s?” I think I heard. We walked over to something called “Burgers and Brew.” The name is a bit hokey, but it had good ratings and a great selection of craft beer. There was a huge line next to the restaurant with a lot of metal heads, hanging on from the 90’s. The reason? Next to Burgers and Brew was the night club “Ace of Spades” and that’s where GWAR was playing. One unfortunate thing about Bend (and most of Oregon, except PDX) is a lack of ethnic diversity. Hanging out in Sac for awhile was nice for that, and the cultural experience of metal heads was a whole new level of diversity that my kids were pretty blown away with. I played them a YT video of GWAR in all their glory.

DA: Wow, cool Beck’sts! I confess that a) I didn’t know Fieldwork had expanded from Berkeley to other locales like Sac, and b) I had to look up “GWAR.” I asked E— if she’d heard of GWAR and she replied, “I’ve heard of guar gum.” Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the crowd as much as the Tropical and Juicy IPA. I love the idea of ageing metal-heads (or “metallists” as we used to call them in high school). I have managed to turn [my daughter] A— on to Metallica. That’s not so hard though, since they’re tot’ly wicked. BTW, my brother Max made a new year’s resolution a few years back (one of many) which was “no more classic rock people.”

Follow-up Boulder trip, cleaning out Dad’s house – March 5-6, 2018

DA: Here’s another Boulder Beck’st with Uncle Peter, Uncle Bryan, and Evil Uncle Max. The beers in the glasses are a Belgian style from Upslope Brewing, a local place. Gorgeous beer. Note the pasta dough—fresh pasta is imminent and nothing goes better with beer except maybe friends and brothers. Fortunately we’ve hit the trifecta! Note also the also local (Denver) Great Divide Titan IPA, a solid choice. Good times!

JL: You guys are all looking good. Real good. However, that “pasta dough” as you call it looks more like an alien tumor. Yikes.

Road trip Beck’st – March 7, 2018

DA: Bryan and I are at the Nevada Hotel in Ely. Our room came with free breakfast at Denny’s and free Budweisers at the bar. I reckon these are about 8-oz. beers and maybe 3.2% ABV. They were slightly better than nothing and the company was top-notch.

JL: I must have missed something. Why are you in the middle of nowhere Nevada????

BA: ROAD TRIP! We were driving Dana’s new car to Cali. He inherited Dad’s Toyota Scion XB, in case you hadn’t heard… So we were havin’ a Bud. It was nothing special but I must confess, it was better than I thought it would be. (That was my first Bud ever.)

Real estate closure – March 10, 2018

DA: Here are Bryan and I celebrating the closing of a major real estate transaction: selling our father’s house. (I finished the paperwork during the Boulder trip but of course it wasn’t really done until the wire transfer came through.) This is at Fieldwork, which is not only the best brewery in NorCal but happens to be walking distance from my house. Bryan has a Belgian “table beer” of some kind and I have got a Radlands IPA. Both very tasty!

DA (continued): I’m not sure this is technically a selfie. We used the self-timer, which predates the selfie by many decades, innit? 

Life goes on – April 12, 2018

DA: I’m up to 174 pounds but the wife says I’m still too scrawny to cuddle, so here I am Beck’sting again. Solo-Beck’sting, no less, in clear violation of my only-drink-with-friends rule. E— put her foot down about that, on the grounds that the only way for me to fill back out after the all-too-effective South Beach Diet is thru regular consumption of beer. Hence the flurry of Beck’sts lately. Don’t worry, though: I can quit anytime I want. In the background there is my new car. Dad called it the Toaster (or “Towster” to be precise) but it’s my car now and I am calling it Boxtro. Bryan can provide the etymology. The beer is an East Brothers Pilsner. It’s okay—paying my rent at this coffee shop is all. They don’t serve Lagunitas IPA here anymore which is a bummer.

PCS: Beck’staholic!

BA: Boxtro was some kind of stuffed animal, though I’m not remembering too well just what kind of animal it was, a bear, I guess, but it seems it had smooth skin rather than hair or fur. I have a memory of someone squirting toothpaste on Boxtro’s head, which proved very difficult to remove. I’m not sure how the name came about. It was Max’s pet, was it not? The car’s looking good!

DA: Boxtro was a teddy bear, and you’re right, he had oddly smooth fur, like a bed sheet. You, Geoff, and Max were huddled around the bear, and I watched with fascination as one of you meticulously drew a figure-8 in Crest on the bear’s head. Max seemed oddly cool with this, perhaps because it was so gratifying to be participating in a group activity with his cool older brothers.

The car is just fine, but E— is begging me to get some hubcaps. Where the hell did Dad put them, after he had the rims spray-painted? I should have asked him when I had the chance…

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Famous Last Words - Part II

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

If you haven’t read last week’s post, I recommend you click here and do so now. In that essay I explored the phenomenon of a dying person’s last words, and was all set to tell you my father’s last words—but then ran out of room. Well, not room, exactly, but I had gone on long enough and didn’t want to bore you. So today you get to find out what my father’s last words actually were.

 Picture above courtesy of Philip V. Allingham.

My father’s last words

My father, just before he died, said … well, wait. Before I get to that, I should give you a bit of background, so that you can fully appreciate just how funny, unexpected, and yet apropos my father’s last words truly were.

To start, my father always fancied himself a gentleman. He never cussed. I mean, ever. It was weird. This is a guy who never even said “fart.” I think he said “damn” here and there, but less frequently even than my daughters, who aren’t officially even allowed say this. When my dad needed emphasis, he either resorted to volume or other means.

For example, he was once a passenger in my 1984 Volvo when I had a mishap. I was parking in front of my house and came in a little too close to a broken curb outcropping, which caught the edge of my car’s trim and zipped it right off the side of the car. This made a terrible, loud noise like the car was shrieking in pain. When my dad got out he was shocked—almost disappointed, it seemed—that my comeuppance involved so little damage. I zipped the trim right back on to the car, good as new, and my dad said, “You are real lucky you didn’t do more damage.”  For him to use the adjective “real,” where the adverb “really” is called for, was tantamount to profanity, given his normally precise, professorial syntax.

Even when my dad was clearly angry, he didn’t resort to strong language. Once, on a beautiful summer evening, just before dusk, my dad was driving my brothers and me up Flagstaff Road, just for the pleasure of it, when we encountered an encampment of drunken college kids whooping it up. I can’t remember what they were saying but it was vulgar and far louder than necessary. They were being loud, it seemed, just to disturb the peace, and to flaunt their youth and irresponsibility and drunkenness. (I even seem to recall a soiled prophylactic sailing through the air, but perhaps this is the embroidery of memory.) My dad did not yell, “Shut up, you bastards!” like any normal person. What he yelled was, “Hush up!” Who says “Hush up”? Nobody, that’s who. (Oddly, this caught the drunks so off-guard they were momentarily speechless as their soused brains attempted to parse this utterance.)

My dad’s uncannily clean mouth wasn’t due to any moral or religious airs. He just had this profound sense of decorum. Surely he was aware that a certain amount of profanity is common among adults. In fact, on one occasion, a year or so ago, he even alluded to this. He remarked, “I encountered recently a rather humorous website cataloguing all the ways the F-word can be used. The F-word turns out to be highly elastic, and can be used as almost any part of speech … as a noun, as a verb, and so forth.” I was so eager to encourage this exploration that I probably overstepped a bit. I replied, “Oh, yes, I’ve seen that website and it’s pretty funny. But you know, it’s incomplete. The guy compiling the list missed one: ‘fuck’ as gerund adverb, as in, ‘Are you fucking shitting me?!” This seemed to catch my dad completely off guard, and just like that the conversation was over. He responded as though I’d been verbally abusive. I realized this may have been the first time he’d heard me use such language. (I just shrugged it off, like, “You started it, dude.”)

Notwithstanding my dad’s lifelong avoidance of profanity and other tough talk, I knew toward the end of his life that, as far as last words go, anything was possible. Perhaps a new experience like dying of cancer would unleash an entirely new lexicon. This was the case with a former President of Bolivia, Antonio José de Sucre, who was known to be a gentleman who had never cursed in his life. Upon being shot twice in the head (but before a third shot, to the heart, killed him) he cried out, “¡Carajo, un balazo!” [“Fuck, a bullet!”]. So he had that word in him but had just never been upset enough to deploy it.

So it was with my dad, not long before he died, when in the middle of the night I heard him yell out, “Shit!” I had literally never heard him utter this word before. Of course, he didn’t have an audience—or at least, he didn’t realize he did, being alone in his bedroom—so maybe this wasn’t eligible to be his last word. On the other hand, he yelled it quite loudly, and was well aware that a crack team of his sons was assembled in the living room on cots and mattresses, taking turns attending to him during his hospice. Novel as this word choice was, though, I can’t say I was surprised. Something about having an ostomy bag burst open would surely loosen anyone’s tongue. (If it had been me in there bursting my ostomy bag, I’d have woven a tapestry of profanities that would make Eminem blush.)

Still, cursing to an empty room in the dark is a long way from challenging somebody verbally, in broad daylight, face to face. Throughout his life my father avoided pointed statements and direct challenges whenever possible. If you said something that upset him, he would either fold up completely—the conversational equivalent of going limp or playing possum—or he would quietly explain that you were upsetting him.

He had a special way of reacting if you were boring him or about to hold forth on a topic he didn’t want to hear about. His protocol in this scenario was even more efficient than a teenager’s “Whatever dude” or “Like I care.” He would essentially cut you off with the simple word, “Good.” For example, I once said to him, “I just started a pretty cool project at work.” For some reason he didn’t want to hear it. Maybe his brain was tired, or maybe he was afraid he’d be out of his depth with this topic (which would have been ironic, as my brothers and I grew up hearing all about his work in the field of rocket science). Whatever the reason, he just said, “Good.” It’s impossible to capture, with mere text, the peculiar inflection he employed to convey the utterly dismissive intent of this utterance, but his meaning was impossible to miss. Dad’s “good” meant “All right, good for you … but I don’t give a rat’s ass, so shut up already.” So often did he employ this “good,” it became a running family joke. Even my kids have become expert at mimicking it. So I’ll say, for example, “Girls, I want to talk to you about Internet security,” and they’ll reply, with perfect Grandpa inflection, “Good”—and then disappear.

Okay, great … so what were his last words?

My father’s last words were … well, first let me paint the picture for you, of this deathbed scene. My dad had reached the phase where lucidity was a huge struggle. If somebody visited with whom he really wanted to connect, he dug deep, made eye contact, swallowed, cleared his throat, and then asked (with a gesture or a croak) for a drink of water, which would cause a coughing fit right after he swallowed it, and then he would utter a sentence clearly tailored for maximum brevity. The effort would exhaust him, and then he would slump back on the pillow, and his eyelids would half close, and his eyes would roll up toward the top of his head. For long spells between these verbal efforts—which became progressively rarer—he would just lie there in a partial doze.

My brothers and I learned that our dad seemed to appreciate our presence even if he couldn’t communicate (verbally or through eye contact). So we’d sit by the bed and hold his hand. He’d acknowledge this, sometimes, with a brief hand squeeze. (And if our presence didn’t always register with him, the gesture meant something to us, anyway.) And so, sometime in the last hour of our dad’s life, my brother Geoff and I just sat with him, across the bed from each other, each holding one of his hands. We sat there quietly, looking upon him, knowing full well that we wouldn’t be looking upon him for much longer, and then never again.

What a sight he was. He hadn’t gotten around to getting a haircut or trimming his beard before a big surgery in mid-August, and the ensuing complications and follow-on surgeries—one crisis after another, each advancing him toward this early death—meant he never got around to these petty sartorial matters, so now his hair was long and wild, his beard long past the professorial stage into well into hipster territory. From the neck up, he was like some crazy old man from a Faulkner novel. But below the neck, his body was just wasted away—nothing but skin and bones. His rib cage was so prominent we couldn’t help but think of E.T. His arms and legs were so spindly, so utterly devoid of flesh, he was like an honest-to-God prisoner of war. His remaining skeletal frame was birdlike—like Poe’s “grim, ungainly, ghastly, gaunt, and ominous bird of yore.” In short, our dad’s physical presence was nothing short of heartbreaking to look upon.

And yet his hands, amazingly, remained unchanged. Sure, they were old person’s hands—mottled, red, sun-ravaged—but still large and strong. His grip was surprisingly good. Looking from the wrist down, you might have said this guy had gotten too much sun—but not that he was clearly a terminal patient heading down the home stretch of a wasting death. Geoff and I sat there holding his hands for a long time and then Geoff said exactly what I’d been thinking: “His hands are still the same as ever.”

So we sat there, gripping his hands, managing to find something to admire in this broken, wasted man. “Think of all the cool stuff he built with these hands,” Geoff said. It was true. Our dad was always building things, his whole life long. He made custom roof racks to put his bikes on his car. He built world class telescope tripods from old hockey sticks. He once built a prototype of some kind of aerospace stabilizer out of crap he found in the basement, including an old car tire that was suspended over the floor horizontally; as I stared at it, wondering what the point could possibly be, Dad invited me to give it a kick. This I did with gusto, and to my amazement there was a sudden whizzing and whirring of servos and the swinging of the tire was stopped in an instant, like magic.

“Think of all the knots these hands have tied,” I said. My dad knew all the sailors’ knots. He could do a clove hitch, a half hitch, a bowline, a sheepshank—all of these in his sleep, in the dark. Geoff replied, “Yeah—” but was suddenly cut off because:

“Shup,” our dad said. Huh? Shup?

I looked into his eyes, and he looked back. “You mean, ‘shut up’?” I asked. He nodded. And that was it. The last words he ever spoke. Shut up.

Now, this may not seem momentous to you, but remember everything I said above. This man had surely never, in his life, told anybody to shut up—certainly not us. That really says something, because we were four very boisterous boys—I can still hear our mom yelling, “Stop all that yammering!”—but our dad had never, ever told us to shut up.

So Geoff and I shut right up, believe me. And we looked at each other in astonishment. What was our dad reacting to? I guess it must have been painful for him to be talked about like that, right in front of him, almost in the past tense, and without being part of the conversation. Maybe the allusion to his wasted body was hard to take; to hear the statement “His hands are still the same as ever” was part and parcel of the bigger point—that the rest of his body was ruined. Or maybe he just couldn’t handle the casual ease with which we expressed ourselves, when he was barely able to speak.

Or maybe, just maybe, after a lifetime of decorum and politesse, and now facing imminent death, he decided there was no reason not to finally say those simple words—“shut up”—that he’d been waiting his whole life to be able to say.

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Famous Last Words

NOTE: This post is rated R for mild strong language.

Introduction

I had the unfortunate opportunity recently to hear somebody’s last words. As in, on his deathbed. I suspect that few people’s last words are memorable, or at least get remembered. However, I came well prepared for my opportunity as witness, which gratified my longtime fascination with dying words. In this post I’ll explore that fascination with you.

Famous last words

My brother Max and I have discussed this at length. We want to go out saying something impressive. Max declared, “I wouldn’t want to go into death unprepared. I want to have something rehearsed.” Like what? “Well, something like, ‘Stay gold, Ponyboy … stay gold.’” Of course he was joking, as that’s been taken. Myself, I’ve always kept the following quote handy, ready to rattle off whenever I don’t know what else to say: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” Those are Vladimir Nabokov’s words, but not his last. His last words were, “A certain butterfly is already on the wing.”

Pretty glib, eh? Almost too perfect. And that’s the challenge: to have something queued up in advance, and then to have the lucidity and presence of mind to recall it in your last moment. Adding to the difficulty is that you may not know which moment will be your last. As I’ve discussed with Max, there’s always the Little Big Man scenario: you think the time has come to die, and you make a big speech and everything, and then you unexpectedly go on living for quite some time, making this “final” thing you said a bit of an embarrassment.

There’s also the scenario where you give a nice little speech, thinking it’s the end, but then you live just long enough to spoil it with some other random utterance. This happened to the famous writer Roald Dahl, who had his family gathered around him and said, “You know, I’m not frightened. It’s just that I’ll miss you all so much.” Pretty nice sentiment, but then, as he seemed to lose consciousness, his nurse decided to give him a morphine injection to ease his transition—whereupon Dahl cried out, “Ow, fuck!” And then died. Ow, fuck … famous last words.

Convicted murderers, right before being executed, have a great opportunity to say something memorable. In my extensive study of last words (i.e., reading the entire Wikiquotes entry), I found murderers to be the best represented. They can predict the moment of death beforehand, and they’ve had some time on death row to think of something. James French, just before getting the electric chair, yelled to the assembled press, “Hey fellas! How about this for a headline … ‘French fries!’” Thomas Grasso declared, “I did not get my Spaghetti-O’s; I got spaghetti. I want the press to know this.” Of course, even murderers can screw this moment up. Shannon Charles Thomas gave some long formal statement, but then forgot to shut up afterward. His actual last words: “Is the mic still on?”

Perhaps murderers aren’t whom to look to for the crème de la crème of last words, as these people don’t tend to be well educated and/or or deep thinkers. I’ve found wittier quotes from those executed in the name of politics. Consider Pedro Munoz Seca, a playwright executed during the Spanish Civil War, whose last words, facing a firing squad, were, “I am starting to believe you are not intending to count me amongst your friends.” George Jacques Danton, a French revolutionary famous for his physical ugliness, said just before being beheaded, “Show my head to the people. It is well worth seeing.” But my favorite line comes from James Scott, First Duke of Monmouth, a British nobleman executed on Tower Hill. It was customary in those days to tip the executioner in advance (as a way to ensure good—i.e., swift—service), but Scott refused. Perhaps for that reason, the first blow of the axe landed on his shoulder. He looked up at the executioner and said, “Sir, if you miss like that again, I cannot guarantee that I shall remain still.”

Of course, anybody whose life ends like this has the benefit of an audience which knows it is witnessing somebody’s demise. This audience is prepared in advance to register what is said and may naturally suppose the words will be remarkable—so they’re paying attention. But the death doesn’t need to be deliberate, if there are enough people in attendance. There is very little doubt as to the authenticity of the final words of Mark Sandman, the lead singer of Morphine. Addressing a stadium full of fans at a concert in Palestrina, Italy, he said, “Thank you Palestrina. It’s a wonderful evening, it’s great to be here and I wanna dedicate you a super sexy song.” And then he collapsed of a fatal heart attack.

In contrast, when a famous person dies but not many are around to hear his or her last words, there’s certainly room for error—especially when posterity so badly wants to glorify the memory of the deceased. Perhaps this is how history has recorded so many conflicting (and thus inaccurate) accounts. For example, Groucho Marx is said to have parted with, “This is no way to live!”—but his last utterance is also reported as, “Die, my dear? Why, that's the last thing I'll do!” So which account is correct? At most one, and quite possibly neither. Humphrey Bogart supposedly said, “I should never have switched from scotch to martinis.” But other sources have him leaving off by telling his wife, “Goodbye, kid. Hurry back.” Maybe the thing about martinis was merely toward  the end? Who knows.

Dylan Thomas either said, at the last, “I’ve had 18 straight whiskies … I think that’s the record,” or, “Roses plural or Rose’s with an apostrophe?” The second report, spoken to his girlfriend, strikes me as more authentic (for being less pitch-perfect), but again we can’t really know. Elvis Presley is purported to have made his final utterance, “I’m going to the bathroom to read,” but the more believable account is that he said, “Okay, I won’t,” which gives the more interesting utterance to his fiancée, who (as he headed for the john) warned him,  “Don’t fall asleep in there.”

One apocryphal final utterance that I’m guilty of repeating is that of Tom Simpson, a cyclist who died of a drug overdose during a Tour de France stage. He supposedly said, “Put me back on my bike.” What he actually said was, “Up … up….” Of course that doesn’t make as good a story. Pancho Villa left us a nice touch of irony along these lines, saying at the end, “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” Very witty and “meta,” except that, alas, this quote too is apocryphal … nobody knows what his last words actually were.

Other last words can perhaps be better trusted, not because of who was around to remember them, but because they’re memorable without being uttered by a famous person burdened with the responsibility of saying something bright. For example, Louise-Marie-Thérèse de Saint Maurice, Comtesse de Vercellis, reportedly said, “Good. A woman who can fart is not dead.” This was, yes, after letting one rip. That’s just too good to be made up (and if it was untrue, people would surely have spoken up). Another utterance that seems too apropos to have been apocryphal is the final utterance of the surgeon Joseph Henry Green who, upon checking his own pulse, spoke just one word: “Stopped.”

Then we have the case of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, whose last words were, “God bless, God damn!” According to Wikiquotes, “He was known to spend many long hours trying to decide what his last words would be; one can only speculate if this is what he had intended to say.” I guess there are worse final proclamations; after all, “God bless, God damn!” was reportedly good enough for James Thurber, a noted wordsmith. (Perhaps Thurber was quoting Santa Anna?)

Where last words are concerned, accurate recall is a two-way street: anybody who might be in the room with the dying could be the only one to hear these words, and may or may not care to commit them to memory, especially if they’re humdrum things. Freddy Mercury, on his deathbed and weak from AIDS, probably didn’t realize his humble and necessarily concise request for help getting to the restroom—“Pee pee”—would be the last thing he ever said. But was it, really? Unless he literally died moments later while getting this assistance, he might have died half an hour or so later, and do we really know he didn’t say some other similarly bland thing during that time?

My father’s last words

Many of my dad’s utterances, toward the end, seemed like candidates for his last words. In these final days, I struggled to remember not only every single thing my dad said, from the profound to the truly banal, but also the sequence in which he said them. After all, I wanted to get this right. There’s a world of difference, to me, between something said toward the end versus the very last thing a person ever said.

When people are gravely ill and thus not of a reliably lucid mind, or even when they’re just bummed out about being terminal, they run the risk of leaving off with something less than totally profound. Agnieszka Osiecka, the Polish writer, said to her children on her deathbed, “Do Dupy,” which translates, “This sucks.” Perhaps she didn’t intend these to be the last words she ever spoke. Similarly, I doubt my dad intended his last word to be “Integers!” which he said quite loudly and emphatically, but apparently to nobody; my brother and I heard it from the next room. But he also said, “Urinal,” because he needed to pee. It vexed me at the time that I could not recall which came first. What if he never said another thing? What if I wouldn’t be able to know his last words for certain?

Hanging on my dad’s every word during those final days seemed a fool’s errand, because nobody could know how long he would last. It seemed he could die any minute, or in the next few hours, or maybe not for days, and possibly a week or more. How long could I go on committing his every verbal output to memory?

There was also the risk that If I didn’t nail down my father’s last words, I might unknowingly invent something. I’m not talking about putting words in his mouth, but about conveniently seizing on something profound, and later recalling it, inaccurately (though inadvertently) as the last thing he said. For example, he did gather my three brothers and me around him toward the end to bid farewell. “Okay boys,” he said, and then paused. So far he was off to a great start. How many times had he addressed us that way? I was almost crying already. 

Then, working to summon the breath needed to continue, our dad cleared his throat and said, “This is the last time I’ll have an audience.” This, because it came from a man who had always enjoyed an audience, was profound. But now he was truly running out of breath, and mental clarity, and only managed to finish up with: “Bye-bye.” And this could have been it, and though it’s not a total zinger, it does have a nice sense of closure, perhaps not worthy of My Dinner with Andre, but more than good enough.

But I knew this might not be his final utterance. I stayed focused, because if I didn’t catch whatever he said next, I’d forget that next thing, and fall back on the last thing I did remember—i.e., the “bye-bye” speech. And that wouldn’t be fair to my dad. Make no mistake about it: the last words should be remembered exactly—not for the benefit of the audience, but for the benefit of the dead.

A bit later our dad said some very nice things to Max, that I could probably remember pretty much verbatim if I thought hard (and which deserve to committed to memory, I suppose), but I know for a fact these weren’t my dad’s last words. He was going to go around and give a final benediction to each of us, and you’d better believe I’d have paid close attention and made sure to immortalize whatever he said specifically to me—but he never got to it. He ran out of steam. And the really crazy part is that I can’t even remember if this was the very day he died, or the day before. That’s how quickly these memories get warped.

But you know what? In the end, I managed it. I know unequivocally what my dad’s last utterance was, and what’s more I have a witness. Two of us heard him, distinctly. And this was in the last hour of his life, and we were with him the rest of the way, and he never said another thing. And what he said was totally unexpected, completely lucid, and—in its way, coming from the mouth it did—totally profound. It was also pretty funny. What he said was this:

Wait, hold on. About the only feedback I ever get on this blog is that my posts are too long. And look at this, I’m at like 2,300 words already! So I’m going to just snip this off right here so you can get back to binge-watching House of Thrones or Game of Cards, or tweeting or snapchatting or whatever I dragged you away from. Tune in next week for the thrilling conclusion (I originally typed it “confusion”) of albertnet’s Famous Last Words!

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