Memory of Dad, Warm Coat Will Keep Me Warm

The Boston Globe

He says not to come and I don’t. I respect his wishes because he is my father.

He is old and he is sick and he is leaving me. The cancer is killing him and the chemotherapy is its unwitting accomplice. He has been in a hospital for more than a month now. He’s a good patient, everyone says. He was a good soldier, too. He doesn’t complain and he does what he is told.

The first round of chemo knocked him off his feet. He needed weeks of physical therapy to walk again. The second time won’t be as bad, the doctor said. It will buy you time.

But it was bad. He tells his wife, Louise, not to visit. And he tells me the same thing.  So I stay home and try not to think about him. But he is all I think about.

He bought me a green wool coat for my honeymoon. I was the one in bed then, in my parents’ house, in the downstairs bedroom of the small Cape that was home. “Go away,” I told my mother and him. “Leave me alone.”

They called Dr. Thompson from Randolph, and he came. He made house calls. He said I had the flu, gave me a shot, and told me to rest. It was just three days before my wedding, in January 1968.

The coat was August green, not the color of leaves in May when they’re new and tinged with gold. But full-blown summer green, a shade that breaks your heart because you want it to stay deep and lush forever. My father had never bought me clothing before.

He came into the room and handed me a big, white box and said, “You need this,” and I opened it and smiled.  “It will keep you warm. Once you get better, I don’t want you getting sick again.”

My mother told me later that he’d picked out the coat himself.

“Leave me alone,” I’d said. And he did. But when he returned, it was with a gift. I still see me in that coat all these many years later. Whenever I wore it, I felt my father’s arms around me.

I got over the flu, got married, went on my honeymoon, and wore that coat until it didn’t fit anymore. And I lived my life and he lived his and now he’s sick and it’s not the flu and there is no coat on earth that I can buy that will keep him from getting sicker.

I bring him mints and music instead. And I respect his wish to be alone. I stay away for a day.  

And then the next day I show up at his side.

He smiles when he sees me. “Sit down. I feel a little better. That’s it for the chemo, though. I’m done with that.”

And he talks to me. He tells me that he’s worried about Louise, what she will do without him. He tells me where things are and what he wants and how he’s not afraid to “go” because leaving is part of life and he’s had a good life. “I had 42 years with your mother, I have Louise, and I have you.”  

I want to say, I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry there was only me. I’m sorry Mom was sick for so long. I’m sorry you had to fight a war. I’m sorry your father was never there for you the way you have always been here for me.  

“Remember the green coat, Dad?” I say instead.

“What green coat?”

“You bought it for me for my honeymoon.”

He says, “No. I don’t remember a lot of things anymore.”

Then he continues to talk about what needs to be done so that Louise will be OK after he’s gone.

“Keep an eye on her,” he tells me.

It doesn’t matter that he has forgotten the coat, because I never will.