Fathers

“Why is Grandma picking us up? I thought we had until 4:00 to skate today? Well, see you later, got to go, Sally”.
“Larry, David, we have to go now, Grandma’s here!”
“Grandma, I thought we could skate until 4:00. Why do we have to leave so early?”
“Your Mother will let you know as soon as we get home. Hurry up and change out of your skates”, said Grandma calmly.
“Hey, Mom! Why did we have to come home so early?” No answer.
“Where’s Mom? Why is the Minister here, Grandma? Where’s Daddy? Okay, I’ll go upstairs and change and wait for Mom.”
In my room, changed into dry clothes, I waited for my Mother to come tell me what was going on. I was sitting on the floor cleaning up my clothes and putting them away. Soon she came to my bedroom door with her bathrobe on.
“Dotty Lou, your Father is gone. He didn’t want to live anymore and thought it was best for all of us that he leave us now. It happened while we were at church. He told me he had to go to the office to work so that is why he didn’t come to church today with us, but he didn’t work after all. I had no idea, except he had been very sick for quite awhile,” said Mother, slowly, breaking with soft tears and snuffles.
“Sick? What do you mean? He seemed fine to me all the time.”
“He hid it very well. He tried very hard not to let you three know anything, but he was very ill. Remember when we all went to Boston? And we went to the magic store and saw the home of Paul Revere? Well your Dad went there to get treatment for his illness. They told him that he would have to go into a Mental Institution. So he decided not to do that in order to spare us all the shame, plus he wouldn’t be able to take care of us anymore, so he ended his life instead. He left a note saying he thought that was the best thing for all of us. He was very determined, because he had a gun, a noose and a syringe.”
Crying softly, I kept putting things away in my drawers. Then I started sorting out my drawers and cleaning them out while Mother went to tell Larry and David. The Minister and Grandma and Grandpa came into my room to say how sorry they were. There was not much more to say. Mother would not answer any more questions. My Father’s parents were not around that I can recall; it was Mother’s Mother, Grandma Evelyn, who picked us up from skating. Later I found out that my Father’s parents blamed my Mother for his illness and not telling them about it. They never spoke to her again.
My whole life had changed. The light seemed dimmer and surreal. I felt like I was moving in some sort of strange world, not the one I knew. A few days later I went to public school. We could no longer afford Old Trail School where I was in ninth grade and where all my friends were, nor could we afford to live in our house. Grandpa eventually bought it from Mother and then sold it when he could later, so Mother could have enough money to move into a much smaller home. Life insurance doesn’t pay when there is a suicide. Mother had never worked, but she had a career, Medical Technology, so the hospital hired her as Head of Blood Banking and life went on.
I don’t remember my Father much. He was a doctor who went on house calls. He had his black bag filled with pills and pink sugar pills and a stethoscope and tongue depressors. He went out in the middle of the night and was there when the man next door died of a heart attack. He had cool machines in his office. He took us on drives in the country on Sundays and we picked weeds. He would distill them and make shots out of them to desensitize people with allergies. He came home every night and had dinner with us all at 6:00pm. Then he went down to the basement into his laboratory (the old coal storage room) and sometimes let me look into the microscope. He diagnosed my appendicitis about a year before he died. I had it taken out two hours after he diagnosed the condition.
I don’t remember a funeral, but I visit my Father’s marker where his ashes are in the Rosemont Cemetery in Akron, OH whenever I am in town. My Mother’s ashes are there now, too in the same plot with Grandma and Grandpa. The headstone says Smith. My Mother’s maiden name was Smith and she married my father whose last name was Smith.
During college, for some ironic or subconscious reason, I dated “Bucky” Robert Smith, an SAE, Robby Smith, a Theta Chi, and later Bob Smith and Dr. Richard Smith. My Father’s name was Dr. Robert Benjamin Smith.

Two years after my Father’s suicide, my Mother’s insurance agent introduced her to a man named Maurice Patry. He was newly divorced and was leaving the business of selling farm equipment to buy a bankrupt company that made adjustable lawn lighting and flag pole posts, called Adjusta-Post Manufacturing, still in business today.
Maurice was the ugliest man I had ever seen – balding, grey hair, short, stubby, and wore thick glasses. My Mother was taller than Maurice and I, by two inches. He had twin children about two years older than I, Lee and Maurita. They were grown and out of the house, so that is why he felt he could get a divorce.
Soon Mother and Maurice were married and we moved into a really nice bigger home in the suburbs and I had a pink and red room. But I was a teenager, raging with hormones and angst. Maurice and I didn’t get along at first. However, after a year or two, he kind of grew on me. Maurice was a genuinely “happy” human being, told jokes, and had a winning, ‘always a salesman’ smile. He started the hugging that we do to this day in our family. I was taken by his astute observations on almost anything – politics, the economy, and business in general. Mother asked me to call him Dad as a Christmas gift to him one year, and I always did after that.
Dad had heart trouble. But I was the one who read in Reader’s Digest that Cleveland Clinic had a new procedure to bypass clogged arteries and fix his heart. Dad had the operation and lived a full life for another ten years. The two of them traveled all over the world, especially to France, where he was born. Maurice spoke perfect French. One year they came to visit me while I lived in Switzerland and took me to Geneva, the part of Switzerland where French is spoken. I was living in Bern, where I spoke German.
I always remember that Maurice took me to the finest French restaurant in New York City the night before I was to embark on the ship “Bremen”, for Switzerland, all by myself. He wanted it to be a special meal and ordered the finest on the menu. However, I was so scared about my trip, going to live and work in a foreign country for a year all alone, that I couldn’t eat and actually threw up.
A few months before my wedding, Dad went into Cleveland Clinic for another bypass surgery. This time it wasn’t so successful. He died five days before my wedding. When we got back from our honeymoon, there was a check from him in the mail for $500.00 which he had written to cover the costs of the wedding, like a real Father would do, and apologized for not being able walk me down the aisle. He was the most handsome Step-father a girl could have.
Even today, catching a glimpse in a crowd of people at the State Fair, I sometimes notice a man with a round, balding head about the same height as Maurice. I wistfully wish it was really him so I could give him a hug, hear him comment on today’s political situation, the economy, and things in general.
4/3/09