Father’s Day Guest Columnist Vincent DeNigris: The Long Goodbye (part 2)

 

Dear Vincent,

I was in front of my locker at the police precinct, half out of my civilian clothes when one of the guys ran over to me. “The hospital called,” he said. “Your father took a turn for the worst.”

I quickly changed into my uniform. The desk sergeant, knowing my predicament, told me to take a radio car to the hospital. I sped over the Williamsburg Bridge into Manhattan.

At the hospital, I saw what looked like 20 doctors and nurses all around my father’s bed administering CPR to him.

“He had another heart attack,” one of the doctors came over to tell me. “We started trying to revive him almost 30 minutes ago, but we’re still getting no pulse.”

Then he asked me if they should stop.

“Keep going,” I said.

I stood there in my police uniform, frozen, scared, as if I were a little boy, watching helplessly as my father fought for his life. I had tears in my eyes and wanted just to wail and fold up in a heap on the floor. But my police training kept me together.

After another 15 minutes, they finally got a pulse.

“Thank G-d,” I said.

I called my siblings to get over there as fast as they could. When we all assembled, the doctor informed us that although they had revived him, he would probably never come out of his coma, and that he was brain-dead. We all started to cry, except for me. I was the oldest, a police officer in uniform, and I had to keep my cool, keep myself together for all of us.

My father went on life support. I called the precinct to report what was happening. My brothers and sisters and I stayed with our father at the hospital all that day.  We sat with him day and night for five days while he lay in that bed, tubes in his body. To this day, the sound of that respirator still haunts me. Same with the beeps and buzzes from his heart beat on the monitor next to his bed.

On one such day, I looked out the 12th floor window. I saw people on the street, kids dressed in Halloween costumes, and felt bad about being unable to take my son trick or treating.

By the third day, the doctors said a decision had to be made about whether to continue life support. Because he was brain-dead, he had no hope for a life with any kind of  quality. After our family discussed it, my brothers and sister left it up to me.

I then made one of the hardest decisions of my life. I said we should take him off life support.

On the night of the fifth day, my brother Anthony – may he rest in peace – started to cry. He said he could no longer stand to be there. Every time he saw our father’s blood pressure drop on the monitor, he felt like he was going to lose it. “You stay,” he said. “I’m taking a cab home.”

“It’s 3 in the morning,” I said. And I drove him home.

I stopped at my mother’s house to tell her what was happening, and just then the phone rang. It was the hospital. Someone told me my father was near death and to get there right away.

But I was too late. By the team I got there, he was already gone. No more tubes, no more monitors, no more of the eerie sounds we had endured for five days, just silence and my father, all bloated, his eyes puffy, his hands swollen from all the fluids and meds given to him. A neatly folded sheet covering his body was tucked under his chin. It reminded me of those photos of newborns all wrapped up.

Alone with him now, I held on to the rail of the bed  and bent down and cried and kissed my father goodbye.

Father’s Day Guest Columnist Vincent DeNigris: The Long Goodbye

 

Dear Vincent,

“I can’t breathe,” my father said over the phone. It was 10:30 p.m. on a Sunday.”Vin, can you take me to the hospital?”

“Dad, when did this first start, Dad?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“I’ll be right there.”

My father and I had the same conversation at least once a month for a year before his death.

Frank DeNigris was a Navy man, a cook, retiring in 1977 after 30 years of service. After that, and up until he died, he worked as a cook for the New York City Department of Correction in the Bronx House Of Detention.

My dad was short and stout, had a great sense of humor, and owned the shiniest shoes I have ever seen on any man’s feet.

He met my mother, Maria, in Italy while he was stationed in Naples in 1957. They married in Italy, moved back to the states and had four children. My parents always joked that I was made in Italy, but born in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. I am the oldest of four. After me came, in order, my brothers Anthony and Frank and my sister Rosemarie. My parents divorced in 1981.

My father smoked heavily for most of his life. His health problems startedafter he left the Navy. He quit smoking after his first heart attack, but the damage was already done.

Well, I hung up the phone that day and grabbed my duffle bag and drove to his home. I had work in the morning; I was a New York City police officer in Williamsburg’s 90^th Precinct.

When I arrived, we argued – the same argument we always had.

“Why did you wait all weekend before calling me? You know I have to be at work at 6:30 in the morning!”

“I didn’t want to bother you.”

This was the script we followed, word for word, every month.

“All right,” I would say. “Let’s get all your meds and clothes together and go.”

He always wanted me to take him to the Veterans Hospital in Manhattan. I guess he liked it because it reminded him of the service, and he could chat with other vets.

As usual, I checked him in, and while we waited for a room, he flirted with all the nurses. It was around 5 a.m.

“I have to get to work,” I said.

“Go ahead, I’ll be OK.”

“I love you. I’ll be back after work to check on you.”

I left my Dad sitting up on his bed in the emergency room, chatting up one of the nurses.

The hospital would keep him for a few days and send him home. That’s how the script always went.

At least that’s what I thought would happen.

P.S. – Please see part 2 tomorrow.

Guest Columnist Vincent DeNigris: The Mom You Lost

Vincent DeNigris, who lives in Hancock, New York with Samuel, his partner of 24 years, and his English bulldog Bella, is the father of Vincent, 35. He is a retired New York City police officer who worked the same streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn where he grew up. He was on duty on September 11, 2001 and lost 23 of his friends that day.  He has raised pigeons as a hobby for 42 years – learning how from the old Italians and Jews in his neighborhood – and is now widely known as a master breeder of English carrier pigeons.

Dear Vincent,

I met your mother, Barbara, on Devoe Street, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her grandparents lived around the corner on Humboldt Street, and her Aunt Nettie and  cousin Elvira lived two houses over from there. Barbara and I became childhood friends.

Your mother was funny and bright, and none too bad on the eyes. She loved music and loved to dance (you’re so much like her in that respect). We always enjoyed being together.

After you were born, everything just started to fall apart. I was holding down three jobs. I was a stationary engineer for the Minkskoff Theater family, a part-time stagehand on 44th Street and Broadway, and superintendent of our apartment building in Kew Gardens. While I was out making a living so that we could buy a house close to Uncle Nick and Aunt Marilyn in Bethpage, your mother started to do hardcore drugs.

The rent we collected for the landlord, your mother would take and spend on heroin.

She always told me she used that money because she was running short, and that I was bringing home too little money for us to survive. She did a good job of covering up.

I would be up for work and out of the house at 6 a.m. every day, and your mother would give you breakfast, take the bus back to Williamsburg, drop you off with your grandmother Carmela, and go do drugs with her friend Irene.

I finally caught on to her and we got divorced. I could no longer live with myself knowing you were living with her while she spiraled out of control. I got full custody of you when you were three years old.

Because I always loved your grandmother Carmela, I would let you go to her apartment to visit your mother there. I would bring you there on a Friday night with the promise you were going to see your mother, you were always so happy and excited about that.

Sometimes your mother would show up to see you.

But more often she failed to make an appearance.

Carmela would always plead with me to let you stay a little longer so that your mother could see you. At first I did that for the both of you. But your mother had a habit of showing up to see you just when I was about to take you home. Depending on my mood, I would either let you stay a couple of hours more, or I would just take you home because most of the time she showed up, she showed up high. This went on untill you were nine years old.

During all that time, my heart would just tear apart for you. When you were sick and cried for your mother, it was my face that you would see hovering over your bed. When you woke up screaming from a nightmare, it was either me or your grandmother, (my mother Maria) who picked you up and comforted you. Your first day of school, you proudly waited for your mother to show up at our house to see you off. She never came.

Your mother died when you were only nine years old. I waited three days before I could get up the courage to tell you. She died from AIDS-related complications brought on by intravenous drug use. It still kills me to remember how badly you took that news.

I know you have gone through hell, my son, and I wish I could just take away all your pain. I wish I could have been a mother to you. No matter how much a father does, a child wants and needs a good mother.

Neither of us care to acknowledge Mother’s Day. Your Mom is still a very hard topic for us both.

And so, my son, I did the best I could for you with what I had.

Love,

Dad