We Aren't Diagnosed, But Something Ain't Right

Humor has always been my coping mechanism. Looking around at my family, its a shared quality. One of the saddest times of my life was when my dad was dying. It was also one of the times when we laughed the most. Like whistling while walking past a graveyard, humor is our defense and protection. Unhealthy and a sign of trauma bonding? Sure, but it works!

It was mid-July when Mom called, “Your dad’s in the hospital.” 

“What happened?”

“He worked on the six acres behind the grove over on Tubby’s, and came in and told me it’s time to take him to the hospital.  He’s been in a lot of pain in his stomach.”

I knew if Dad volunteered to go to the hospital, it would be a severe pain. I had bandaged cuts on his hands and arms that should have been stitched, and the man never flinched. He had taken his cast off his arm and worked all summer.  Dad was invincible.  He had completed the fieldwork before going to the hospital, but he was the one requesting to go. That was frightening to me. Any farmer voluntarily going to the hospital is alarming, but Dad’s fear of hospitals was legendary.

I called Donna and told her to come home. She caught the next flight to Minneapolis.  At the hospital, we were told Dad had an intestinal blockage and would have surgery the next day.  The doctor wrote an order for Mom to sleep in Dad’s bed with him.  For over forty-five years, they had slept in the same bed. Dad was scared and wanted Mom by his side. Mom was so tiny by now, not eating from worry and stress, that she fit easily into the hospital bed.    

That morning, before the nurses came to take him to surgery, I sat beside him on his hospital bed. He was pale and clean, dressed in a hospital gown, a shadow of the giant of a man I called Dad. He leaned against me, his shoulders small and fragile. I put my right arm around his shoulders and held his hand in my left hand, sitting as close to him as possible. He held my hand and whispered, “Come on, Pooch, let’s just go home. You can take care of me.”

I wanted more than anything to agree. At thirty-three years old, but always his child, I took his hand in both of mine and told him, “I can’t control the pain for you. You have the surgery, and then I’ll take you home and take care of you.”  

Dad sighed, “I suppose Pooch.” 

We waited in the surgery waiting room together without speaking, Tubby and Cathy, Donna, Mom, Greg, and me.  The surgeon came in a few hours later.  Without expression, he stood in the doorway and said, “It’s a mass that’s spread throughout his abdomen.  His blood is so thin, it’s like water.  It's everywhere; the only place it hasn’t reached is the liver, and that’s not going to take long.”

Tubby looked directly at the surgeon and said, “Call Dr. Kevorkian.”

The surgeon's face registered shock, and he hesitated for a moment, then continued, “We did an ostomy so he can have some pain relief and reduce the tumor as much as I can.  But there’s nothing else we can do.”

Collectively, we gathered outside Dad’s hospital room, waiting for him to return from the recovery unit.  Outside of the room was a scale with weights to balance.  We all took turns weighing ourselves, putting a foot on the scale to make each other think we were heavier.  Then we would proclaim loudly, “Wow, what a fat ass!”

Mom got on the scale, complaining about “You crazy damn kids” as she did so.  Tubby moved the weights to 90 pounds and then jiggled the smallest weight. 

“Damn, Ma, you weigh the same as a concentration camp victim.” He announced.

“Dresses like one, too,” Donna remarked.

We had started rummaging through the unit’s medical supplies shelf before Dad returned.  “Christmas shopping,” Tubby told the nurses when they stared at us.

“Stop it! I know these people.” I hissed at Tubby.

“Well then, they shouldn’t be surprised,” Donna said.

We saw Dad set up in the room.  An NG tube down his nose to drain his stomach, an oxygen mask, and IV tubing.  He was a shell of the man we knew.  Told by the nurse that he would sleep for the rest of the day and night, we tucked Mom in bed carefully with him and left.

The following days, Donna and I stayed in the room during the daytime with Dad and Mom, Tubby, and Cathy coming in the evening after Tubby finished work. 

Mom was a mess of jangling nervous energy, pacing the room, and worrying.  By the afternoon of the day after surgery, I couldn’t stand it any longer.  . Sitting beside Dad,I asked Donna, “What’s wrong with her now?” 

Dad opened his eyes and, through the haze of morphine, said sternly, “Don’t talk about your mother like that.” 

T hen he closed his eyes and went back to sleep. I looked at Donna, and we both widened our eyes.  I whispered to Donna, “Damn.”

I stepped outside the room and saw someone I knew well, who was also Dad’s internal medicine doctor. I pushed my face into his until he backed up to the wall.  “Give that old woman in there some Ativan or give me some, either way, somebody is gonna calm down!” 

He quickly prescribed three Ativan for Mom. I took the paper and ran across the street to the pharmacy and filled it immediately. I brought it into the room where Dad slept, and Donna and Mom sat on the other bed in the room. I handed it to Donna. “Give one of these to her,” I told Donna. 

“Are they addictive?” Mom asked.  “I don’t wanna take anything that’s addictive.” 

“Ma, they only gave you three pills; it’s gonna be a damn short addiction,” Donna told her.

Within minutes of taking the pill, Mom, who hadn’t slept in days, was curled up and tucked into the second bed.  Donna and I sat at the foot of the bed playing cards and watching Dad sleep. 

That evening, Donna and I went to the local movie theater to watch the sequel to Grumpy Old Men. We needed to relax, laugh, and regain normalcy from our vigil. We didn’t want to talk about what was happening in the hospital.  We weren’t hungry, and we needed a diversion. A comedy would be perfect.

In the opening scene, Walter Matthau appears on screen in bib overalls and pauses at the top of the steps.  Donna and I clung to each other and sobbed. While around us, the theatre was full of laughter, we cried through the entire movie.

Early the next morning, the telephone woke me up.  A woman’s voice introduced herself as the hospital nurse, telling me that I needed to come to the hospital immediately. I knew when the nurse called, it meant urgency.  

  I screamed at Donna, “Wake up, we gotta go.  We gotta go now!” 

We began rummaging in the basket of clean laundry we had done a few days before.  Somehow, we managed to get dressed and across town in record time. 

As we approached the hospital, I told Donna, “Turn right.”  Having the same genetic inability to distinguish right from left, Donna turned left, taking us directly into the hospital parking lot. 

Running across the parking lot, I realized from the intense discomfort that I had put on my sister’s underpants, now digging into sensitive areas, as I was several sizes larger than her. Looking back, I saw Donna struggling behind me, reaching into her jeans to hold up her much-too-large underwear. 

I ran straight to Dad’s room and stopped beside a nurse at the foot of his bed. Dad looked like he was comfortable for the first time in a week. My mind didn’t notice that the NG tube, oxygen, and IVs were gone. It looked like Dad was taking a nap. I turned to the nurse and asked, “What’s wrong?”

“He passed,” the nurse replied.

T he typical oldest child, Donna, took charge and walked straight to the nurse’s station to call the mortuary. The staff member insisted that the hospital had to make the call. Donna argued with the nurse, insisting she would “handle it.”  “What do you mean I can’t call the mortuary.  Isn’t that what has to be done next?”

“Ma’am, we have to call.  That’s what we do, we call the mortuary when a patient passes.”

“They won’t let me call the mortuary,” Donna yelled to me from the nurse’s station.

I was imagining a wrestling match between my sister and the nurse over the phone. Finally, the nurse handed her a plastic bag with Dad’s clothes and his wooden cane, giving Donna something she could control. With the cane and the bag of his clothing, the tactile remnants of our father, Donna, and I drove to the trailer house.

Already, hot dishes and trays of food were arriving. The news of Dad’s death in a small rural hospital, where he was surrounded by people who knew me or my family, had spread quickly through the community.

“At least you don’t have to cook, Ma,” Tubby said as he helped Mom put the food away.

Dad passed away in late July, the peak of Minnesota hay baling season. Only there was no hay baling for the Baumgarts that year. Dad had plowed under the last hayfield before going to the hospital. This left the three of us siblings with an unnamed restlessness.  We were gathered, yet this time there was no Dad to announce, “Youse kids need to”. 

We all agreed on a casket that was the color and material of a brand-new plowshare. Dad would be buried the traditional three days after death. The night before the funeral, we held the “viewing.” The three of us, with Tubby and Cathy’s and Donna’s adult children, Mom, Greg, and a large pot of coffee, sat in the back mourners’ room. Family and friends came in to offer their condolences. The coffee pot emptied quickly and was promptly replaced by the funeral director’s wife. Donna told her, “Keep it coming!”

In between brief moments of accepting condolences, we shared stories about the disasters and near-disasters of our lives with Dad. Tears streamed down our cheeks as we laughed until our sides ached. We recounted the silly things we had done, blaming them on Dad’s genetics and our upbringing. Even Mom joined in the laughter, exclaiming every few minutes, “Oh, you kids.”

We told stories of chasing cows and pigs, Dad’s words and curses ringing in our ears. We each had at least two or three tales of being trampled or kicked without Dad's sympathy.  The three of us told stories of childhood misbehavior, and my nieces and nephews joined in with their confessions of misdeeds. The sound of our laughter swept from the room and gently surrounded Dad in his coffin.

The funeral director and his wife frequently stopped by, refilling our coffee and listening to our stories. Initially professional, they eventually began laughing with us at some of our wild adventures. Having an audience and a fresh pot of coffee kept going all evening.

The funeral director approached Mom and whispered in her ear.  At first, she looked startled, then nodded okay.  When he left, she told us, “He has to leave for a bit, but his wife will be here in case we need anything before he gets back.  All I could think of was you kids getting into a fight and knocking over the coffin.” 

“Oh, for Christ's sake, Ma,” Donna said, “We’re not the Campbells.”

I don’t know why Mom immediately thought of a fight. Did she believe that somewhere, somehow, we all held a deep-seated resentment towards her or each other? We were not fighters; we knew too well how to wound with words and glances. We were “Minnesota nice” and used the double-edged sword of politeness. Not one of us would embarrass ourselves by causing a scene in public.

  The day of the funeral, it was a beautiful day for baling hay, but the church was packed so full of farmers that some mourners stood outside. The church was filled with the faces of my entire life.  Relatives, neighbors, and friends left their chores and hayfields to say goodbye to Dad.

Donna and I crossed the tar road to the hayfield next to the little country church. Donna picked flowering hay blossoms from the hayfield while chastising me: “I should never have sent you to pick up pantyhose.  Look at me; my legs look like an albino!  I’ve never worn pantyhose this color.” 

“Relax, it's Minnesota, we are all pale here.”

Donna placed the hay blossoms in the coffin next to Dad.  Mom put their wedding picture in his hands.  Tubby placed a picture of his son and daughter on a tractor. My poem was already tucked in the front pocket of Dad’s bib overalls.

These were the things that represented what meant the most to Dad.  Family, work, and love, like burying a Pharaoh, we placed in the coffin my father’s most precious possessions. 

The grandchildren served as pallbearers, creating one last inherited mix-up. The funeral director lined them up outside prior to the funeral.  Standing in line according to height, he assigned three to the left side and three to the right. Six confused pairs of eyes stared back at him. I stepped forward and said, “You three on the left, that’s your watch side. You three on the right, no watch side.”

Looking at their wrists, they aligned themselves in order. There was a moment of hesitation until Donna’s oldest son, the only left-hander, figured it out.

We took the road back through Bug Tussle, past the old Wanderi farm, now just a cornfield, the buildings gone.  We followed the funeral director to the cemetery, across the tar road from Dad’s schoolhouse.  The cemetery is on a hill; from the gates, I could see my father’s entire life.  The field that was once the farm where he was born, the schoolhouse he attended, and the cemetery where generations of Baumgarts rested.

At the cemetery, watching the procession pull up and park, Donna said, "There sure are a lot of people for a man who never left the county.” 

Tubby looked at the gravesite and asked loudly, “So is that the side Ma will go?” 

He earned himself a stern look of reproach from Donna and the funeral director. 

The gravediggers parked their backhoe, laid down their shovels, and walked over and joined us for the graveside service; they, too, knew Dad.  One grizzled old man whispered to the three of us as we stood together, “This is the hardest grave I have ever had to dig.”

Surrounded by family, just a few feet away from Eddie Schmidt, we left Dad under the towering oak trees. I said a final goodbye to a man who had seemed larger than life itself. I had lost the only man I could trust to always love me. 

After the graveside service, we returned to the church basement for a “little lunch” prepared by the church ladies. Family and friends crowded into the church basement as we ate, and the funeral director approached. “Thank you,” he said to the three of us. “I have conducted many, many funerals, but I have never laughed as hard as I have with your family. Your father must have been a great man.”

Mom started to apologize for her family, but was interrupted by Tubby asking, “How do you do this? Do you find yourself measuring people for coffins when you meet them? Guess you’re the last person to let somebody down, huh?”

Dad would have been proud of us that day.  There was no fighting, and everyone got along. None of us sat around crying and feeling sorry for ourselves.  Nobody made a fool of themselves by being emotional.  We stood tall in adversity and laughed our way through it. We don’t cry and we don’t mourn, we are rocks. Humor was our only allowable emotion, our family’s survival skill.