He was a great Dad when I was coming up. For one thing, he was unusually demonstrative and attentive for a father. He was a single father for a long time. He said that meant that he had to be both mother and father and took both roles seriously. We hugged and touched frequently – real hugs not awkward man-hugs. He was not afraid to put his arm around me or hold my hand. He was gentle with me both physically (never laying a hand on me in anger) and emotionally (he called it non-critical parenting).

Dad took my care seriously and was personally offended if anyone questioned it. An example comes to mind when he had a bit of a dust up with my middle school principal. Dad had met with the principal to let him that I had been late because he kept me home deliberately to rest. The principal told him to buy me an alarm clock which made dad livid. His response was that I did not need an alarm clock because he woke me every morning with a kiss. That wasn’t rhetoric. Dad really did wake me every morning with a kiss.

He was devoted to his children and never seemed to tire grow weary of helping us to thrive. I got my first job at 14 working weekends on a Rhododendron nursery. Dad was working five 12 hours shifts at the time as a pipefitter. Rather than sleep in on the weekend, he woke up early to make me a hot breakfast and pack me a lunch. I made $20 a day. The lunches he packed cost him $10 a day. It was not a very economical arrangement for a man on a razer thin budget. I asked him about that years later as an adult. He shrugged and said ‘it takes a lot of groceries to turn a boy into a man.’

More than half of my relationship with dad was as an adult son. As great a father as he had been to me as a kid, I think he may have been a better father to me as an adult. We managed to stay very close despite our geographic distance by speaking on the telephone daily and regular visits. He was indispensible to me as a source of advice. He had such a sharp mind that he could provide genuinely useful advice on all topics. Even as a lawyer, I continued to look to him for advice on how to handle my cases and his advice continued to be right on.

I would not call him my best friend because he was much more than that. I relied on the sense of safety that he somehow managed to provide even as I was an adult. I am not quite sure how he managed to do it but I always felt safe and stable knowing that I could reach out to him.

Dad’s death was of the protracted sort. His heart attack occurred just before his Seventy-Fifth birthday in October and he died two and a half months later. As it turns out, I was glad that I had an opportunity to say goodbye.

Dad loved adventure. He and I backpacked through Europe together twice. On one trip, he Chris and I cycled across Ireland and then packed in England, France, and Italy. Dad was sixty-six years old and suffered from RA but that didn’t stop him from doing what he wanted. He was that kind of man.

Mostly, what he wanted was to spend time with his children who lived in three different states on both coasts. He made the circuit of his out-of-state children several times a year. Dad was making the California circuit when he had his heart attack, which meant that I had had a good two week visit with him while he was still healthy.

It was a really good visit. Dad and I had an opportunity to talk. And he had an opportunity to spend some time with his grandchildren. We got lucky.

His heart attack marked the beginning of a different journey. Over the next two months, Dad’s health was up and down and he was in and out of four hospitals. I was able to visit him twice while he was able to speak. And twice when he was unconscious. I said a lot of good byes over these trips.

Dad has been a constant help on my life journey. He was sometimes my cheerleader, sometimes my moral compass, always my friend, always safety. Now that he is gone, I’ve been trying imagine how to go it alone and find myself coming up sort.

The irony is that some of Dad’s numbers are looking up. He has not had a problem oxygenating for over a week. His breathing is doing so well that RT believes that Dad could come off the vent if he would wake up enough. His blood pressure has also stabalized. He is almost off of the vaso pressors which are supporting his blood pressure. His kidneys are the bad news. They appear to be shutting down. Dad, who always hated how much he had to pee, doesn’t produce enough urine anymore.

Thats the way it has gone. When I got to the hospital for this go-around we were watching his respirtation – overbreathing the vent and o2 saturation. Then it was his blood pressure and the titration on the vaso pressors. Now its urine output. This number is 15 cc / hour. 30 cc / hour is the minimum. Dad would call this a piss poor performance.

We can choose the way Dad dies but we cannot choose that he live. Another day with Dad, another telephone conversation, another whiskery kiss is the only choice that any of us would make. The burden of decision weighs heavily on me. To authorize the hastening of his death seems a mean thing to ask of one who loves Dad so much.

On Thursday, my father and I spent a good day discussing family, politics, and the Lewis and Clark expedition. Our conversation was interrupted frequently – by the nurse who routinely measured his blood pressure and by the respiratory therapist who administered periodic breathing treatments – but it was a satisfying conversation. Talking is what dad and I do best. Its is how we relate to one another. I’ve been chatting with him at least once a day by telephone for years. We discuss life, politics, history, anything really.

Our conversation was very much like hundreds we have shared in the past despite our surroundings. His finger was hooked up to an oxygen monitor, his arm a drug infusion pump, and he wore a small oxygen mask connected to a spigot on the wall by a length of clear surgical tubing. The infusion pump delivered medicine to him via a PICC line, a port that runs from his arm directly to his heart. His oxygen mask is light and does not prevent him from speaking clearly. It is surprising how little the hospital intruded into the intimacy of a private conversation between father and son.

Dad’s voice is strong. His wit and humor are intact. He is dad. As we talk about the “undaunted courage” of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Dad greatly admires these men and considers them American heroes. But it is the man in the hospital bed who I admire. I marvel at the courage with which he faces his illness. Dad’s ability to be himself gave me strength. I was aware of the irony that I was taking comfort from him not the other way around. Even at 41 years old, even in the ICU, I look to dad for reassurance. I was not disappointed. In typical Cravens fashion, Dad had a plan. We brainstormed what he will need for his return home from the hospital. He predicts that he will be too weak to walk unaided and reasons that he will need ramps, rails, a wheel chair at home. He tells me how to build the ramp, what equipment we can jury-rig (dad could build a lunar lander with a little bailing wire and an old lawn mower motor) and what will need to be purchased. Dad is still in charge. There is much hope in the room. There is talk of his coming home. I believe that it will happen and soon.

His condition suddenly worsened that evening. He coded that night. Though he was resuscitated by means of CPR and a defibrillator, he revived to very different circumstances. Now he was surrounded by three infusion pumps, each one delivering three or four different drugs, a ventilator, and two monitors. The vent delivers life-sustaining oxygen by means of a tube inserted through the esophagus into the lungs. The tube is so uncomfortable that a patient receiving mechanical ventilation must be sedated. One of the infusion pumps carefully titrates a mixture of fentanyl and propofol into his superior vena cava in order to maintain him in a constant state of conscious sedation – i.e. he will respond if roused by touch or voice but otherwise will float just below consciousness. The sedation means that I cannot speak to him. The tube means that he cannot speak to me, though he sometimes tries. Dad can’t talk to me. This fact is impossible to bear, a glimpse into the inevitable.

An ICU doctor is deeply distrustful of the patient’s body. This makes sense because, after all, the patient would not be in intensive care unless his body was failing. The sicker the patient, the more trust the doctor places in technology and the less in the flesh. Dad’s doctors do not trust his failing body. The infusion pumps impose an artificial sleep. The ventilator breathes for him, carefully calibrating and recording each breath. His heart is watched suspiciously like a wayward child. It is left to beat on its own for now but a machine stands ready to take this task over if necessary.

My experience of dad is now completely mediated by the potent medicine that sustains him. The only way to connect with him is to hold his hand, and even that is made difficult by straps and tubes. I try to memorize everything about the hand and the tactile experience of holding it because it is the only bit of dad left. If I lose him, the hand will be my last memory of dad. His hand is warm because his heart still beats. It is thick, meaty still even though the rest of him has atrophied. It is rough and callused despite the fact that he is long since retired. His are hands that chop and carry wood, repair fences, and feed livestock. Hands that labored over 50 years to provide home and safety to his family. They protect, reassure, and caress.

I may have felt the first stiff gust of that storm the other day. I am not sure that this incident was as a bona fide tantrum because William was sick with an ear infection. Everyone deserves some slack when they are sick, especially if they are very small and have an ear ache.

Will had slept like a champ that night. Both he and his sister go to sleep at 7 p.m. without a fuss and generally sleep until at least 6:30 the next morning. He woke up in an excellent mood and then about an hour into the morning he just melted down.

He wanted me to pick him up. When I picked him up he wanted to lie down. Once we were down, he wanted back up. He wanted his diaper off, then back on when it was off, then off when I tried to put it on. In the end it stayed off.

Meanwhile, Claire camped out on my bedroom floor, head on her blankie, and just looked at us like we were crazy. Not an unusual look for Claire. She is cut from altogether better cloth. Eventually, she’d had enough and started to cry herself. Perfectly understandable when you are very small and your twin brother has been hogging all the parental attention for forever and ever.

I left William crying on my bed and carried her down stairs to watch “doggies” with Chris. Claire was instantly transported to her happy place. It turns out that a Disney addiction has its advantages. (See the previous post).

I returned to find William standing on the edge of my bed, considerately peeing over the side onto the floor. No need to change the sheets. Whatever else you may say about William, that boy has range. Props. Bladder empty, he was finally prepared to lie down with daddy to cuddle. After 15 minutes of snuggling on my chest, he was good as new.

I recounted this story to some friends, each of whom is parent to older children. “The terrible twos can be tough,” said one. Nods all around. “You know, I found the troublesome threes to be worse,” said another. More nods and general agreement that trouble really begins to brew in the third year. A daddy speaks up, “If you ask me, its the f*ing fours that kill you.” Much rueful laughter.

He was joking, right?