Take Another Little Piece of My Heart: A Groupie Grows Up (19 page)

When someone you love is really sick, there is a constant sorrow behind everything you do. Even when great things happened I would think, Wow! Isn’t this wonderful?! Oh yeah, except for the fact that my daddy can’t breathe. Still, he stayed around longer than the doctors expected, and a whole lot of his stay-around strength came from little Nick. He would sit on my dad’s hospital bed and watch him take apart a little motor or fix a dusty, old broken watch and laugh with glee like a miracle had happened. He called him Da, and for four years he had a grandpa.

Since my mom was used to the longtime routine and the gradual decline, she was so exhausted that the big picture eluded her. I knew my dad was about to face the final curtain before she did. Toward the end O.C. finally stopped drinking beer and playing poker. Coughing hard and constantly had taken precedence. There was no more mighty, hopeful laughter. His beautiful fingers had become twisted knots, and his color was way off because there was no oxygen getting inside where it counted. His lungs had become lumps of coal. The TV was on, but he wasn’t watching.

Michael was in San Francisco with the newest band he had put together, so Nicky and I decided to spend the night with Nana and Da. Good old Aunt Bert was visiting from Dayton, and I thought Nick should get to know her. It was the day after Thanksgiving and even though Daddy hadn’t eaten a whole lot, he seemed to really enjoy this extremely rich chestnut cream goop I had concocted the day before, and that’s all he wanted for dinner. I sat there with him, watching him struggle to eat, but he didn’t want any help. We never pretended he was about to run the triathalon, but he didn’t like us to dwell on the fact that he would never get out of bed again. I tried to squeeze in a little spiritual info as we chatted about the inconsequential nonsense that lightened his weighty load. “Let me know what’s going on over there, Daddy,” I would say. “When you see that bright light, be sure to follow it.” I told him I thought Mom
Miller would probably be there to meet him with her sweet smile, but he said that when you die, it’s like turning off the TV; everything goes blank. I trembled to the core and pointed out passages in my spiritual books that tore that concept to shreds, but I think he was looking forward to the blankness. Too worn out to squabble with me about the hereafter, he had even conceded to all the aunties who had been trying to save his soul for several decades by accepting Christ as his savior on Thanksgiving Day. He did it for them, and I thought it was such a gallant gesture. They wept with relief and evangelical joy, but I knew Daddy was still totally confused. He kept the Bible by his bed, along with all the love-laden literature I had bombarded him with, but he really wasn’t a reading kind of guy. He had always lived his life with his hands, and they didn’t work anymore.

My old GTO friend, Sparkie, met me on Lankershim Boulevard for a spot of sushi, and I told her I thought my daddy was on his way out. She was a little horrified that I could tell her this so casually, but I didn’t feel casual at all. I was in touch with something beyond what the eye can see. O.C. had been sleeping so much he was probably halfway to where he was going already. This was an opinion I didn’t share with my aunties. They would have checked my forehead for a fever.

Science of Mind had brought my many varied and incoherent beliefs into a clearer focus. I truly believed that death was just another step in our vast and immeasurable journey and that it could actually be perceived as an adventure. I wish I could say that I conveyed some of this to my darling Daddy. I tried, but he was hurting so bad, suffering so hard, clinging to his mortal coil so desperately that my newfound faith trembled under the weight.

It was about nine o’clock when I got home from sushi with Sparkie and had a panicky urge to tell my dad what an inspiration he had been to me and how much I loved him. He nodded. “I know the first thing you’re going to do over there is take a big, huge deep breath,” I told him, and he smiled and closed his eyes. I asked if he wanted some of the chestnut goop, and he whispered, “That’s all right, baby, that’s all right.” It was the last thing he said.

Since Aunt Bert was in from Dayton, we set up a roll-away bed in the living room, where I was going to sleep, and I put Nicky down on the couch and read him a story. All was quiet in Daddy’s room, except for the wheezing of the oxygen tank. After Nick conked out, believe it or not, Mom, Aunt Bert, and I got into a quiet discussion about the pros and cons of lard. I saw no pros at all in the use of
pig fat, whereas Aunt Bert had cooked with it her entire seventy-five years and with the exception of a stick-out tummy, she was fit as a squeaky old fiddle. Even though she was quite adamant about the many fine uses of lard, she spoke in hushed tones. Old folks seem to tiptoe around death, giving it a wide berth and a lot of respect, peeking at it between their fingers like it’s a real scary movie. If we’re quiet enough, maybe it’ll go away.

We had all gotten into nightgowns and jammies, and I wanted to check on Dad one more time before heading into a fitful dreamland. The sight of him took all my air out and made me feel invisible. He was curled up on his side, eyes rolled back into his head, bent hands clasped, gasping, wrenching final air into his failed lungs. The death rattle is real, and it stings the ear like a hive full of defiled bees. Instantly I thought of my sleepy mom, rubbing lanolin into her cheeks in the bathroom, Aunt Bert thumbing through
Reader’s Digest
, my little Nicky, who was losing his grandpa and didn’t know it, sleeping peacefully. I had an absurd, agonizing desire to do Daddy’s nails in front of the TV one more time, innocently watching Hoss Cartwright kick the butt of a bad guy, but pressing up against the wall, digging way inside myself, I grabbed ahold of my unbeaten, invincible spirit and pinched it, hard. Pushing myself to walk over to the bed, I took hold of his crumpled hand. “Daddy?” No response whatsoever. His lips were blue, his eyes seeing into another realm; ragged breath, rattling in and out, in and out.

With deep dread I had to call my mom in, and I guess the tone of my voice shook her up. She rushed in confused and fatally frightened, her eyes telling the thirty-seven-year-old story of courtship, love, marriage, betrayal, pain, heartache, acceptance, more love, understanding, profound compassion, and finality. When she saw Daddy she let out a scream I’ll never forget and fell on him—“Oren! Oren, no, don’t go yet…” Aunt Bert came running in, tears flying, her little lady’s voice chirping, cracking, calling to Jesus. Daddy never moved, just that loud, ragged breathing signaling his imminent exit from the physical plane. “He can’t go yet, Pamela,” my mom whimpered in a sore, unfamiliar voice. Daddy’s favorite sister, the talkative Aunt Edna, was called, and since she lived around the corner, here she came a few minutes later, being held up by Uncle Ronnie. Seeing her wild-tempered, beloved little brother with his eyes rolled back in darkness, hearing that god-awful sound demanding release, she let out a shriek and grabbed my mom, “Oh Lordy,” she wailed, taking in the whole sad situation, “he could be like this for a week!” At
that point I came out of my shocked stupor, vowing he would have his release way before the night was over. Relief, respite, deep, never-ending inhalations, hopeful laughter waited on the other side, I knew it. My mom was being comforted by the family, so I took a seat across from Daddy, closed my eyes, and started speaking to his spirit, “It’s time to go, Daddy, it’s time to set yourself free, take a deep breath, let go, let go, let go, my darling, sweet daddy.” It was a precious litany from my soul to his, and after about thirty minutes, I realized his breaths were coming slower and slower, and even though I knew it was for his infinite good, when the final breath was pulled in and never let back out, I collapsed on the bed, curled into him, and felt the living warmth drain away. I stroked the back of his neck where soft gray hairs grew, I inhaled his Daddy scent over and over, until my face was soaked with tears. Mom and my aunts were on their knees, keening; I had never seen my mom entirely out of control before, which gave her a new, vulnerable dimension that made me cry even harder. Uncle Ronnie was the ultimate rock for them, for which I was truly grateful. After my daddy was gone, I kissed his cheek one last time and joined them in their sorrow, praying for O. C. Miller’s terrified soul on its gigantic, swooping journey.

Daddy spoke to my mother the morning of the funeral. She was wandering in the backyard, too scattered and sorrowful to know what to wear, when she heard Daddy’s voice. “Put on that pretty blue suit that Pam bought you,” he said softly in her ear. Mom is very much a realist and certainly did not expect to hear from my dad, but feeling much better, she went right into the house and put on the blue suit. When she told me about it, my faith spiraled and I grinned into the gray skies.

Daddy was buried on a high hill far out in the San Fernando Valley. I was shaken up, so my oldest grade-school friend, Iva, drove us to the funeral. Iva is full of freckles, and my dad had always said to her, “Hey, Iva, have you been standing too close to that cow again?” Every time he said it he hollered with laughter like she hadn’t heard the dumb Southern expression two dozen times before. We reminisced about Daddy’s corny sense of humor all the way up the long green hill. I didn’t want to look at him in the casket, but Mom did, and I heard her cry, “Don’t let Pamela see him! He wouldn’t have
wanted to look like this!” She called out to me in a bedraggled, strained voice, “Pamela, don’t come in here, don’t.” Sitting out in the flat, empty foyer, I tried real hard not to conjure up any images. Michael held Mom close beside him, and I held her hand as we all straggled to the grave site, where Aunt Edna’s nice Christian preacher spoke gently of heaven and forgiveness. O.C.’s poker buddies brought a huge royal flush made out of flowers and stood grimly in a row like See, Speak, and Hear No Evil, looking like sad, uncomfortable, overgrown boys. Mom and I each placed a rose from the garden on the casket. Almost overly stalwart and straight-backed, I felt like I had to be shatterproof for my mom, who was finally letting all those years of wounded strength come tumbling down.

Daddy spoke to my mom a few more times, and even though it’s beyond amazing when she hears his lovable growly voice, we’re still waiting to find out what it’s like up, out, over there. She was in the backyard picking some white bell-shaped flowers to take to his grave site one morning, and he said, “You know I never liked those, why don’t you bring me a piece of my fig tree?” The old coot was still pretty ornery. The next time he came out of the great nowhere, Mom had been arguing with one of his sisters and it was about to drive her nuts. Pacing around in the backyard under his beloved fig tree, she asked him what she should do about it, hoping absently for a reply. “Fuck ‘em,” he announced in her ear, and it was really just what she needed to hear.

Just recently I was digging around in Mom’s cedar chest still full of faded paper dreams and frothy lace dresses Aunt Bert sent me from Dayton in 1956. I was trying to locate my floor-length Flying Burrito dress, the checkered purple one I wore to all their Palomino shows, when Mom and I came across a beribboned stack of Daddy’s storm-tossed letters from the the middle of the Pacific, where he was serving his country during World War II. I scanned a couple of them; they were factual, homesick, full of longing for his young wife but resolute and unafraid. Mom and I took turns reading some of the most endearing passages, and when we closed the cedar chest, she left the stack out so she could climb back into 1944 after I left. Nick spent the night with her, so I could go to the Palomino to see the band I manage, wearing that Burrito dress, and when I came back to pick him up the next day, Mom seemed far-off, like her eyes were seeing right through me. “Your daddy spoke to me last night,” she said quietly, sort of awestruck by his reappearance after such a long absence. We had assumed he was so far away he wasn’t able to
make contact anymore. I was beside myself to find out what he had to say. “All he said was, ‘Hi Sweetie,” but I had the feeling he wanted to get something through to you,” Mommy told me as she took a folded piece of paper out of her pocket, “and since he spoke to me in the bedroom for the first time, I felt like he wanted me to find something to show you.” She said he led her to the pile of Navy letters and among them she found a note he had written to me while I was doing that dumb soap in New York. She handed me the letter and I looked at it with wonder, like it had floated down from the farthest heavenly realm. It was from a hotel way down in Apatzingan, Mexico, where he was scavenging for gold, and here’s what it said:

Hi sweetie,

Just a little note to you. I’ve really had a rough time the last month here, so much walking and working in the rain, have lost so much weight that friends here in town didn’t hardly know me after being gone for five weeks. I’ll have to get smaller clothes, mine are mostly wore out anyway, am back to my coal-mining days, with a 30-inch waist. I feel real bad about the hard times I have caused you and your dear mother, and if hard work will make them better, then they soon will be. I see you most everywhere I go; one picture up here at the hotel, one up in our house at camp, and one up in my favorite restaurant. I tell them you will soon be famous, so don’t make a liar out of me. No one understands my Spanish so good, so they tell everyone you already are, so keep doing the best you can. I hope one day you will be as proud of me as I am of you.

Love,
Ol’ Dad.

He found a way to let me know he had been proud of me then and was proud of me now. I held the letter and cried a whole bunch of grateful tears, blessing his soul for reaching down to show me that there really is such a wondrous thing as undying love.

Now that Daddy was gone, I mentioned to Mom, “Maybe I should start writing that book I’ve always talked about.” The one about the glorious heyday of rock and roll, traipsing around love-ins with barely any clothes on, my all-girl band, Girls Together Outrageously, touring with Zeppelin, taking psychedelics on the Sunset Strip—the book Daddy wouldn’t have been able to accept. She nodded. “Yes, dear, I’ve always thought you were a very talented writer, go ahead.” Go ahead. Did she know what she was saying? Uh-oh, I had been given the ultimate permission. Still, it would be a whole year before I got the mammary glands to search Mom’s garage for the bargain typewriter that Daddy had gotten cheap after some Sun Valley storage building burnt down to the ground in 1976. After I got a new ribbon, the thing worked great, but it always had a slightly sooty odor.