Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I don't have any what can be called real memories of my father. Just mental snapshots or short video clips of daily life unintentionally gathered through the years. He was a presence, but that's about it. Nothing stands out. He didn't say much, he reacted minimally. We never had a conversation. He was a background character who never loomed large. Ooh, there's my toast if I had to give one.

The mental snapshot of him when I walked into the ICU room at the hospital Thursday was pretty grim. My mother repeatedly said he looked like he was sleeping. I had to take her word on that; to me he looked as dead as they get, aside from the ventilator doing the breathing for him.

He had a hematoma on his left forehead the shape of Devil's Tower in Wyoming rising about an inch and a half above the surrounding landscape. It was where he hit the ground with such impact that his cheek bone fractured. They said it was twice as big when he came in.

It was a massive stroke at about 2 p.m. the previous Saturday. The bleed out filled his skull and he was dead before he hit the ground, which is why he hit the ground with such force. He literally . . . dropped dead!

I imagine he might have felt the initial moment of the stroke, some sensation without processing it intellectually, but then lost consciousness within a second or two as blood drained in a cranial torrent, and dying by the time he was going down.

My oldest brother observed that if it happened 12 hours earlier or 12 hours later, he would have died "peacefully in his sleep" of what would be called "natural causes". Usually when that happens, it's the result of a stroke or a heart attack, so I don't know about the "peaceful". There's violence in there somewhere, even if no one experiences it. I digress.

No, he didn't look like he was asleep. He looked like he would never move again. He looked like a model for a death mask. He also had a black left eye, presumably also from the fall. It was grotesque, if I had to describe it. With a machine breathing for him.

The prognosis was that he would never regain consciousness. He was brain dead. There was discussion about the result of removing the ventilator and if he kept on breathing on his own. That was taken into account, but it was medical consensus that he would never wake up again.

Now that I had arrived, it was time to remove the ventilator and my brother drove up from Philly and an uncle from central Jersey, and finally my oldest brother after he finished up at his office. They're all doctors so they were the medical consensus.

It took several hours for everyone to arrive. I suppose it was a vigil of sorts. I kinda automatically went into walking meditation which probably looked like pacing, a cliche in hospitals, just very slow.

I don't think any of it was awkward or surreal aside from the lack of expressions of grief. There were times my second oldest brother appeared solemn in thought, maybe even sympathy, but any conversation was just a slightly bit hushed under what we may have had anywhere else.

My mother was obviously sad, but more as stoic exercise than overt expression. Maybe she kept it in for private, but I wouldn't be surprised if this was the extent of her emotional expression. Either we're not that close a family or we're not that emotional a family. Take your pick.

We asked for a neurologist to make one final examination and prognosis, and she only confirmed the medical consensus, but added that there was still neurological activity. It meant that the breathing centers of the brain could still be functioning and he might be able to breathe on his own for a while, but not to expect more beyond that.

With that we requested he be taken off the ventilator, all of this having taken place in a family waiting room. When the ventilator came out, we were rushed into his room as he was breathing on his own, but it wasn't clear how long it would last.

That was as dramatic as it got. The pressure for the ventilator had been set fairly high for a good reason at the time, but the result now was that he was struggling to breathe without the ventilator. It was a hideous, noisy, snore-y labored breath. It was the brain's breathing center functioning mechanically. It was organic, but the last vestige of function of life.

We stayed a while longer as his breathing rasped on and it seemed he wasn't going to die right away. His breathing seemed to settle as morphine the nurse gave him likely kicked in. We decided to go out for dinner, after which my mother returned to the hospital and my uncle went home. That was Thursday, the day I arrived.

He died on Friday, Nov. 18, around 4:30 p.m., soon after being transferred from ICU to palliative care. My mother spent most of the day with him and was there when he died. My brother and I rushed to the hospital when we got the call to go right away. He was already dead when we got there and our oldest brother arrived soon after.

The nurse told us to take our time to be with him for the last time, but there wasn't any sentimentality or emotion. There was some possible gruesomeness involving photos with the body and cutting off hair as keepsake. I had nothing to do with that. We didn't stay long, just long enough to take it all in and then realize there was no point in staying any longer.

By law, the body had to stay in the hospital for 24 hours. On Saturday, arrangements were made for cremation on Sunday. There was nothing ceremonious about it. The body was delivered in a hearse and when they were ready, we were brought to a room where behind a window the ovens could be seen.

Ovens? Is that the right word? When we drove in, we followed signs to the "Crematorium", and I thought how awful and tactless it would be if the sign pointed to the "Ovens". But I don't know if there's a word for the actual burny things. Cremators? Cremadors? Creme freshalators?

We got a short explanation of the process and then were instructed that when we were ready, to flip a switch that would start the burn which would last about four hours. We watched the body brought in in a plain box and entered into the oven. Again, we only stayed long enough to realize there was no point in staying any longer.

My brother from Philly went directly home from there. He had taken exactly four days off from work, from my arrival to the cremation. That's some uncanny planning whereby there was zero disruption to his life (his life was disrupted earlier in the week, though, as he rushed up when the stroke first occurred). No disruption to my oldest brother's life, he finished appointments at his office before he came to anything. Not that disruptions are a gauge of anything, I'm not suggesting anything of the kind.

My mother suffered the biggest disruption, of course, but she's going on an already planned-on cruise next Saturday with her brother and sister-in-law, minus my father. Mind you, it's a very good idea for her to go ahead with the cruise and everyone's glad she's not canceling.

Me, I didn't even want to come. I didn't want my life disrupted and that's how I viewed having to come here. I had planned on a short trip, returning after the Thanksgiving break, but as long as my mother will be on the cruise for the whole week and the house will be empty, I decided to change my flight and go home a week later, making the disruption worth it.

I don't know what's going on in anyone's head, but it's a passing that seems to hardly be registering any notice whatsoever.