Hanging with Joe: Time to start writing about my dad

(Author's note: I started writing this a few weeks ago, got sick and wrote some more, hence the mis-timed first line.)

It’s been a month and a half since my father passed away. Finally, without thinking too much about him specifically, I think I can write about his passing and our life together without breaking down. That’s my thought at least; we’ll see if that’s how it works out.

Officially he passed away at 4:14 pm at Edward Hospital on December 7^th, the anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. To some degree that’s somewhat poetic as he was always very patriotic. In reality, he passed away the day before sometime around 12:30 I believe and in the driveway of their house, where I grew up from the time I was 10, coincidentally just down the street from the hospital. He and my mom were getting into the car to go to a doctor’s appointment for him at Edward. However, when he got mostly into the car, he just sort of slumped. My mom got out to of the car (she was the only one allowed to drive the last few years) and was just barely able to get his one leg into the car enough so she could close the door. They went straight to the ER where he was already unresponsive. After working on him for some undetermined amount of time, they did get his heart start again. Just recently, probably a month earlier, he had a pacemaker put in as his heart rate was around 40 bpm. The pacemaker bumped it up to 60 bpms and was supposed to increase his quality of life by circulating his blood a bit more. Some doctors had recommended this procedure a few years before and it was probably a good idea. We’ll never know how his quality of life would have improved over that last 18 months at least if he had received one a few years earlier.

Dad never regained consciousness and had no brain activity by the next morning. His grandson, my son Thomas (named after dad), was going to celebrate his 4^th birthday on Saturday the 8^th and I didn’t want to forever associate dad’s passing with Thomas’ birthday and the whole family knew two things: 1) they agreed with me about Thomas’ birthday and 2) knew dad would never want to be kept alive on a machine with no chance of being normal again. So we took him off the ventilator and machines around 4:00 or slightly after and he did not stay with us long.

Several priests came by to administer last rights earlier in the day. Dad was an altar boy growing up and went to school at Altoona Catholic, so he had been pretty religious growing up. Even when raising us kids, we went to church and attended a few years of Catholic grade school. His stories about nuns hitting him and such were common place. Apparently dad could imitate the head priest at the school and one day got a hold of the PA microphone and dismissed the school. Unfortunately for the priest, he could never prove that my dad did it. Years later, after the family came along, we stopped in a neighboring town to visit an auction house. The guy who would be running the auction got to talking with dad while I sorted through a box of baseball cards. Finally the guy remembered my dad and said, “Oh Lord, you’re Thom Sutton! You’re the guy who dismissed the school!” My dad was not very secretly proud of that moment.

So where am I now? Well, I don’t break down crying during the day anymore as I had for the first month. Periodically, I can talk about him without tearing up. I miss him a ton while driving home from work, the time we usually talked. Pretty much everyone else I know is filling that void: my mom, Laura, Joisey Ken and random work calls. It’s not the same, though I appreciate people putting up with my extra calls, especially my mom. She even called me the day after a Bears game to see how I was doing and if I wanted to discuss the game. Pretty sweet of her! That’s part of why I’m trying to do more things for my mom and help her out more. She’s on her own now (physically) at the house, so all of us kids are helping out.