29 Jul Unplanned and Perfect

by Kate Guerrina

A family story in our archive from 2005.

My father came to Vermont for a visit in July of 2003. He rented a car and drove from his home in Virginia, making only the briefest of pit stops in order to make the trip in one day and see his granddaughters before their bedtime. He didn’t look old enough to be a grandfather but he was, four times over.  

He was young, strong, smart, and independent. To get a quick visual . . . imagine a lean, well-tanned 58-year-old man with dark curly hair, moustache, sparkly blue eyes, and a quick smile. He’s the one you’ll find sitting on the porch steps strumming his guitar with a beer beside him, or perhaps he’ll be in the grass squatting on his heels with his forearms resting on his thighs, smoking a cigarette. He always sat like that, squatted down like some kind of nomadic Indian that could make himself comfortable anywhere. 

We had a great time during his visit. We swam in rivers and pools (watching Dad’s signature swan dive), cooked big meals together, played guitar and sang songs by Crosby, Stills & Nash, John Denver, Jim Croce and James Taylor. When it was time for him to leave, we said goodbye while laughing that houseguests were like fish, because after 3 days they both had to be thrown out. We all knew that his vacation time with us was limited. After all, we had jobs to get back to.

A few months later, Dad called with some frightening news. He had cancer. Here was a man who had really only been sick a few times in his life, and suddenly he was the kind of sick that takes your life. It wasn’t easy to wrap our brains around that . . . so I think he and I defaulted to the “glass half full” way of thinking. The more we focused on the positive things, the less often we went to the dark, terrified thoughts of the unknown and what was to come. 

We’ve always wanted to live closer, to see each other more often and spend time together. Here was the perfect opportunity! We converted the home office into his room and packed his most valued possessions for the move. My father, my husband and I spent the next several months balancing the adjustment to “housemate” status with raising 2 kids, maintaining a marriage, holding down 2 full-time jobs, and negotiating the rocky path of cancer treatment, doctor’s appointments, and endless insurance paperwork. 

Those first few months we spent nearly every night sitting up late together. Sometimes we talked nonstop about the past, the future, and sometimes about nothing at all. We were conscious every minute of Dad’s prognosis, and did whatever we could to be “normal.”

The cancer eventually outran the chemotherapy, and the decision was made to stop treatment. This brought forth a whole new wave of reality, and thankfully Hospice was there to gently guide all of us. The tasks at hand became the nitty-gritty details of death . . . Is there a will? What about a funeral?  How do you write an obituary? Burial or cremation? 

Dad and I talked for a long time about a funeral. He had spent almost a year living with us in Vermont, but really we both considered North Carolina “home.” We were very spiritual, but neither of us went to church. He didn’t care to be buried. I don’t think he could stand the thought of being forever linked to one plot of ground. His spirit was much too nomadic and independent for that.  And neither of us could imagine asking our Southern-based family to drop everything spur of the moment and hop a flight to Vermont to spend an hour in a church that Dad had never set foot in.

Here’s how it ended up. . . he wanted to be cremated, and he liked the idea of “walking off” into the sunset at his favorite beach in North Carolina. What he liked even more was realizing that for the same price as an average funeral, burial, etc., we could  rent a huge oceanfront home with enough room for the entire family (along with a number of close friends) for a week; food, drink, sand toys and popsicles included.

So back to the nitty gritty.  Dad died 11 months after he was diagnosed, and one (seemingly never ending) month after moving into the Hospice Room at Eden Park Nursing Home. It was not a surprise, but that didn’t make it any easier. His personality changed with pain medication and cancer mets to the brain, but that didn’t make it any easier either. The understanding words of Noree (Brattleboro Area Hospice Care Coordinator) and the compassionate silence of the Hospice volunteers did make it easier, and we relied on them heavily.

The funeral home in Vermont shipped his ashes to a funeral home in North Carolina, so when we landed at the airport for his “funeral” we went straight to pick him up. While I ran inside to pick him up, my husband carefully explained to our kids (for easily the 10th time) what to expect to see. We chose the direct approach, assuming that the facts would be easier to understand than any veiled analogy or vague references. 

I returned to the car with the shipping box in my arms (it was surprisingly heavy), and started to open the trunk when my older daughter yelled at me to stop. . . “Mom! You can’t put Grampy in the trunk! I want to hold him!” I glanced at my husband in awe, and just carefully placed the box on her lap. She wrapped her arms around it, laid her cheek down on the lid, and promptly fell asleep. 

When we arrived at the beach house, we quietly put the box near the fireplace in the living room, where it would be in the middle of the action but not obvious unless you knew to look for it. 

It was amazing. Three generations of aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, brothers, sisters and friends all came together for Dad. Some flew, some drove, and one even drove back and forth twice so his daughter wouldn’t miss cheerleading tryouts. We spent time laughing, crying, appreciating each other, looking at pictures, celebrating life, sharing meals and chores and reassuring ourselves that death isn’t really the end.

Mid-week, late in the afternoon, my closest cousin and I were in the kitchen sharing a glass of wine and peeling shrimp for dinner. Suddenly she realized that it was time. She was right. It was the perfect time to help Dad walk off into the sunset. There had been no plan, and none of us had done this before so we just went with our gut. 

We put dinner on hold and spread the word. The kids (6 of them, aged 3-14) dropped what they were doing and ran onto the deck and down the stairs into the sand. The adults (13 of us) did what adults do . . . we gulped, composed ourselves, tried to formulate a plan in our heads, shrugged our shoulders, and walked down to join the kids.

What we saw was breathtaking. The 11-year-old boy was writing in the sand . . . WE LOVE YOU GRAMPY REGE and REST IN PEACE. The smaller kids were drawing hearts and crosses. They ran to the ashes and took handfuls, sometimes placing them carefully in the surf, watching them dissolve, and sometimes they danced and spun around in the surf, letting the ashes fly. The light from the setting sun glowed off their tanned skin, and illuminated the sand and water with silver sparkles. It was magical.

The adults stood back, watched, and learned about freedom.  

Later, over dinner, we all agreed that it was exactly what Dad would have wanted. We had never seen anything like it, it wasn’t well thought out, and it was perfect.