Eventually the options wore down to two: aggressive invasive measures—tube feeding and IVs—or letting him starve.
Because René was a pharmacy student her father had given her power of attorney. She had discussed the options with her father in the early days of his disease. Emphatically he said he did not want aggressive medical treatment. He did not want to simply hang on with tubes down his throat and wait to become riddled with infections. He did not want to put her through this.
“Promise me this,” he had said, taking her shoulders in his hands. “When I get really bad, you’ll let them do what has to be done to let me go out with dignity, okay? Promise? I don’t want to end up just some gaga thing attached to a diaper.”
She could barely get out a yes.
She told the nursing staff that she knew how her father viewed life and that he wanted it this way. So she signed the papers:
Do Not Resuscitate—DNR
Do Not Intubate—DNI
Do Not Hospitalize—DNH
Some days her recollection of her father was so vivid that she could not accept the fact of his death. And she could still recall that first day as if it were last week, when she realized that her father—former mechanical engineer, a man of extraordinary discipline, a book lover, a good-time piano player and crooner, an avid fisherman, a jokester, and a gentle, loving, fabulous parent—was beginning to bump down the staircase.
And in an instant René was in the backseat of his Lincoln Town Car, listening to him.
“You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a case of do or die. The fundamental things in life as time goes by. Dah DAH dah DAH dah DAH …”
“Come on, Dad, you’re spoiling a great song. For old time’s sake.” It was his birthday, and she was home from college.
“Only if you lead.” He had pulled up to the stop sign at the top of their street.
“Yeah, like you don’t know the words. You could have written them, for God’s sake.” She was hoping he’d kick into an old sing-along as they did on long trips when she was a girl. But for some reason he wasn’t interested. And her mother sat in the passenger seat looking tense. “‘You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh …’”
“Oh, that version,” and he gave her a wink in the rearview mirror.
Her dad was still such a kidder. “You big goof.”
“What time are the reservations?” Diane had asked, her voice devoid of inflection.
Because of traffic, René had arrived late, which probably explained Diane’s mood. Her face was out the window and she dug in her handbag for a cigarette.
“Seven-fifteen.” René tried to ignore Diane’s grimness, especially on her father’s birthday. “Okay, from the top. ‘You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss …’ Mom, feel free to join in. ‘A sigh is just a sigh …’”
Her father sang along haltingly, as if waiting for René’s prompting.
“‘No matter what the future brings …’ Dad, you’re punking out.”
“He doesn’t want to sing.”
“Yes, he does. Right, Dad?”
“Actually, I’m a little fuzzy on the lyrics,” he said to the mirror.
“How could it be fuzzy? It was your wedding song.” It was also part of their “repertoire”—old Sinatra, Bennett, and Johnny Mercer numbers.
He didn’t respond.
“Right,” Diane said under her breath.
His head jerked and he turned into the northbound lane of 6A. They were heading for the Red Goose, a favorite restaurant near their cottage in East Sandwich. It was a glorious midsummer’s evening with a soft, sultry sea breeze. In spite of a growing uneasiness, René persisted. “Then how about ‘I Remember You’?” She could hear the note of desperation not to let go of their old-time ritual.
“Sorry, Honey. My voice isn’t what it used to be.”
“You’ve got a great voice, Dad.”
Diane snapped her head around and hissed, “He doesn’t want to sing.”
It was as if she had stung René with venom. All she had done was try to lighten the air. Then she saw something in Diane’s eye just before she turned forward again. Something was wrong. Diane muttered under her breath to her father.
“What?”
“Next left.”
“You don’t have to tell me, for chrissake.”
“You passed the street.”
For a split second it occurred to René that her father was joking, that this was one of his elaborate charades to twist Diane’s tail—something he’d do when she was in a bad mood. It was slightly perverse but it always got her laughing. Like when he’d pretend that his leg had fallen asleep and that he’d have to limp to the movie or restaurant, stopping every so often to whack his thigh awake, then suddenly stop limping as if he were one of those miracles at Lourdes and look up to the sky in a gaze of beatific gratification. It would send both of them into laughing jags. Or the time he spent the entire evening speaking like Peter Sellers’s Inspector Clouseau because René was taking French lit. And the more Diane asked him to stop, the more he pretended he didn’t understand English until she cracked up. That was it: One of his routines—playing Daddy Dumb-Dumb.
“Christ!” He hissed and he slammed his hand on the wheel.
René felt her insides clutch. No, something else.
He pulled over to the side to let traffic pass. He had driven by the turnoff. For several seconds he stared through the windshield as silence filled the car like toxic gas.
“What’s wrong?” René could hear the fright in her voice. Ever since her arrival, she had detected a low-grade anxiety—her mother’s nervous distraction, her father’s forced cheer. A horrid thought slashed across her brain: Her mother’s cancer was back. During a regular check-up they had found a spot on her lung. And Dad was so distracted by worry that he got confused on a route he could navigate in his sleep.
“Everything’s fine,” her mother snapped.
“I’m just a little tired, Honey.” When the traffic cleared, he made a U-turn, approached the intersection again, then turned.
“Dad, it’s the other way!”
He slammed on the brakes and nearly collided with an oncoming car. Horns blared as they sat in the intersection, her father looking stunned. “Pull over. Pull over!” her mother shouted. He pulled over, the car facing the opposite way and on the wrong side of 6A. René’s chest was so tight she could barely breathe and her mother was crying. Her father sat staring straight ahead. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”