The Third Death

The creaky, wooden kitchen chairs arranged around the Franklin stove awaited the ‘reading of the will’. My insides harbored sparks of anticipation mixed with twitches of sadness. A December snowfall worsened the foreboding gloom on this mournful Sunday, bringing dreariness inside the room. I hated snow. Every Pennsylvania winter while growing up on the farm, it meant trudging through drifts, no electricity for days and huddling around the fire for warmth. It meant my father struggling to plow the drifted, mile-long lane in the cold, blowing wind.

Mother had requested that my three adult sisters and I meet at the house, our first gathering since my father’s funeral two weeks before, asking that we leave our husbands and young children at home. Taken at age 60, ravaged by a cancerous brain tumor, my dad never had a chance. I stared at Mom as she paced back and forth, tapping the sealed envelope in her hand, looking like a lost teenager. In contrast, her sunken eyes, turned-down mouth, her hair now grey with routine coloring forgotten, had turned my 58-year-old mother into a scared, elderly woman.

Always dependent on my father, she was afraid of being alone, afraid that no one would plow the lane, afraid of showing relief that the stink of illness had left her house. Seeing my mother, a frightened child and a sad, aged widow wrapped into one, made me squirm. I drifted from this unbearable scene back to even more agonizing ones at Massachusetts General Hospital several weeks earlier.

I visited my father there prior to his brain surgery. His once huge frame, reduced to a frail collection of skin and bones from months of life-depleting chemotherapy and fruitless radiation, left surgical removal of the tumor as the last hope. Days before the operation, I asked him, “Daddy, what would be the greatest gift I could give you right now?” ‘A cigarette,’ this life-long smoker begged through tearful eyes.

My husband retrieved an ashtray from our room at the Sheraton Hotel; I bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, his favorite, ordered my sisters and mother to the hospital snack bar, cleared the room of the oxygen tank and closed the door, with my husband standing sentry. My father and I had our last laugh together, as he coughed and choked on his old friend. I smiled at this memory as we took seats around the stove.

Reflections of sitting in the hospital corridor after the surgery and hearing the ‘code blue’ over the intercom flashed through my mind. Nurses careened down the hall, pushing the crash cart, running, running. This scene, which I witnessed often at the hospital where I worked, resonated in my soul. The doctor had neglected to order the DNR – Do Not Resuscitate – which my family had requested. They brought my father back to life – for what? He died once, was revived, then after the order was written, he died again. He never had a chance.

My mother’s tremulous voice brought me back to the present. “Your father wrote his will in long-hand the day before his surgery. Two nurses witnessed it and gave it to me after he died. It’s the only copy and I haven’t opened it yet. I thought we should all hear it together,” she said, anxiety brimming through tears, as she glared at the envelope.

 I could hear Daddy saying repeatedly, “I’m going to beat this thing, so there’s no need for a will now.” I wanted those words to stop playing in my head.

He must have sensed the outcome before the surgery and dealt with its finality. My dad knew every penny they had. He knew the value and location of the accounts, the approximate worth of the house, the car, the truck, the farm, and the equipment. By design, my mother knew nothing.

The yellow-lined legal-sized papers fell from the wrapping. The words looked squiggled with jittery edges as the tumor had robbed my father of his familiar pen strokes. The struggle he must have had to write pages and pages in long hand pained me.

As she read aloud the contents, my mom’s voice faltered and fear spilled from her entire being as his wishes unfolded. He outlined how much money each daughter was to receive and with great care, reassured his wife that the remainder would keep her comfortable and not wanting. She stared into space. The papers rustled as his instructions shook in her hands.

Without a word and with a striking swiftness in her step, my mother bolted from her chair, clutched the handle of the Franklin stove and threw my father’s last will and testament into the roaring fire. My sisters and I gasped, competing with the sound of crackling wood igniting a promise. Mom staggered back and in a nervous rant, shouted, “Your Daddy was not thinking straight. I can’t possibly live on the money he left me. I can’t give you a cent. You girls must understand.” She fell into her chair, reduced to an impulsive, terrified child, afraid of life, afraid of her future.

The hot coals seized the pages. A flare of light exploded as the entire packet became engulfed in flames. My father’s final words, his last conscious thoughts and effort turned to ashes as the fire sprinted through every line, erasing his desires forever. For me, it was as if he were dying again, dying a third death. She never recanted. He never had a chance.