MY FATHER IN HIS COFFIN

My father was a wisp when he died. There wasn't much left by the end, even less than when I last saw him alive a few weeks before and there wasn't much then. I doubt if he weighed 100 pounds. He declared himself "not sick, just old" and tucked the covers up around his chin, dozed off and left me to watch him sleeping. When he awoke from his nap he looked at me and said, "You don't have to worry about my funeral. It's planned and paid for." A couple of days later I went with him to physical therapy where he introduced me as "my oldest boy" one last time. A few minutes later I kissed him, told him I loved him and went to catch my plane. We both knew all of our time together - nearly 70 years - was over. I would not be there to watch him die; he would not need me there to watch. We knew that too. He didn't call out to me as I left and I didn't look back at him. There was no need.

Within days of my leaving he decided to be done with it. No more physical therapy (it wasn't improving things, at least not enough to matter and he knew it), no more forced doses of bad-tasting goop and glop, no more diaper changing or oxygen tubes. He was ready for hospice and hospice was ready for him, but he never got that far. He simply declared his independence, tucked his life up around his chin and died on a Friday night. He did it alone, not long after my brother's final visit.

He was 91 years old.

When I arrived for my final visit a few weeks before he didn't know I was coming. I walked into his room, kissed him firmly on the forehead and told him I loved him. I surprised us both. I had not kissed my father in years and still cannot remember when that might have been. I do not come from a very physically affectionate family. But men kissing men, men kissing boys, boys kissing boys. It is not what men do. Men kiss children and wives; men shake hands with other men, and with their growing sons. But I needed to kiss my father.

My sister called me later that evening to tell me my father said, "He walked in and kissed me right on the forehead." She said he was happy I did that, and it was important enough for him to mention it to her, and she found his happiness important enough to report it to me. That kiss meant something to him and to me. It was a rare and genuine thing, uncluttered by our kissless past.

The next time I saw him he was in his coffin.