The Attic: A Memoir

Called Back

CALLED BACK T he next time I returned, UncleJack was approaching his eighty-fifth birthday; he seemed much thinner and shorter. I recalled the big man he had been most of his life, six feet tall and weighing 220 pounds or more. Now in addition to his gaunt physique, he had lost that inner vitality and optimismwhich kept him young and up to the minute, a keen witness and participant of the day. He sutTered from bone cancer and was in considerable pain when the medication "didn't take"; there were more ulcerating sores on his legs. To pass the time he half-watched kiddie cartoons on TV JACK, IN HIS WORLD WAR I ARMY UNIFORM, WITH HENRY AND ANNA, 1917. 33 34 TIlEATIlC but from a great distance. Normally he would be out in the machine shop, but now after breakfast he spent hours close to the bathroom. The period indoors forced him to consider his present state, and he didn't like what he knew but was unflinching in the face ofit. While I was home perhaps for the final time, what needed to be done had to be done; things still to say must be said. Businessfirst. Jack had always acted asagent for theeightyacres my siblingsand I owned. Land-renting arrangements could be put in the hands ofa man at the local bank, for instance. I offered to take away right now the burden of his handling our "eighty," but he insisted on continuing to serve ascaretaker-part ofhis fatherly role. He passed me a packet of records pertaining to that land for me to look over. His daughter Lois told me later, yes, as long as possible he liked to feel needed; and being our land agent did just that. Another thing: he'd never progressed as far as he'd hoped in sorting family memorabilia, which was to be mailed to each of us. I found my stack-a few letters from my year in Iran; copies of The Mill, the high school newspaper, ofwhich I was editor; photographs of classmates and relatives; plus a lot of other stuff I hardly recognized but decided to haul away with me in order to show him my appreciation. In another section ofthe room his sisters' costume jewelry lay in old Christmas card boxes-interesting baubles from the twenties, which I knew my wife would like. "Take what you want," he said. "Only I'm keeping the gold watches. Each of us Pa gave a gold watch. I'm putting them in a case for display." Luckily I made the visit when I did, for a few weeks after I returned to New York, Jack became worse and Lois placed him in a nursing home near the hospital in Le Mars, eleven miles away. I phoned, but he was never at ease talking long distance and now trying to speak in a corridor with others nearby made it even more ofan ordeal. I mailed food parcels for Christmas and kept checking with Lois as to how he was faring. She mentioned his roommate, a cousin by marriage who had farmed a few miles away. One of the nurses on the staffhad been a high school classmate ofmine. All the nurturing that small-town lifetime acquaintances can give were in place and providing comfort. Neighbor Nilles drove Jack back to the farm for a couple of visits, so that he could sit in the house and have a sense of still belonging there-see that everything wasjust as it had always been. CALLED BACK 35 THOUGH ON SOCIAL SECURITY AND PARTIALLY RETIRED, JACK CONTINUES TO FARM SOME OF THE LAND; 1960s. His trappings of personality filled the place, mingling with those of his parents and siblings and us children. Very understanding of that neighbor to realize Jack would need a meditative period in this setting. "I took longer at chores than I would have had to," Nilles told me later. "To give him a little extra time in the house." Sitting at the kitchen table with pencil and notepad, Jack wrote down obituary facts about himself and funeral instructions to be carried out "when the time comes." The coffin was to be oak, "unless it's too expensive"; the hymn, "Abide with Me," which had been sung at his wife Lizzie's funeral and probably at his two sons' services as well. The sermon text would be...