Chekov's Olga Seregeyevna Prozoro and me. Remembering my father's last days.

Following up to yesterday's post, I will tell you that my father did not leave the hospital on the "Monday after Thanksgiving," as he had hoped to do, which is indicated in the audio playing during the video clip in that post. Instead he was still in the hospital on the "Monday after Thanksgiving" and declining quickly. He died a week after that Thanksgiving — November the 30th, fifteen years ago today at 7:35 AM, due to complications with septic shock.


The year he died, Thanksgiving Day was November 23rd. He had evidently recorded a tape (that is being played in the movie-clip in yesterday's post) on the eve of that Thanksgiving, November 22nd — the day Kennedy was assassinated thirty-two years prior — as I recalled in an earlier entry.

My father had been in the hospital due to consequences brought on by severe emphysema, which was caused by his intense Pall Mall cigarette smoking. Although he had quit smoking a few years prior to his death, his wife continued to smoke. He insisted her second hand-smoke did not bother him, and even through his wheezing, as he was declining severely in health, he joked that when he died, the tobacco industry would raise the price of cigarettes in a phenomenal way, saying they would begin to miss his revenue.
My father may not have been prophetic about the doctors having him out of the hospital the Monday after Thanksgiving; but he was right on the mark about the rising costs of cigarettes. I am a non-smoker, but am very conscious of cigarette prices because I live in New York City, where our Mayor Bloomberg has not only managed to raise the taxes and costs on cigarettes; he has banned them from restaurants and bars stating that secondhand smoke contributes to high rates of asthma and cancer while poisoning the air. Bloomberg' latest attempt on banning smoking is to disallow it in parks, beaches, and even in Times Square. All of these actions by Bloomberg make me think of my father's "prophecy" regarding cigarettes — even though it has been fifteen years since he died; survived by his wife, her children, a brother, a sister, an adopted son, my mother (his first wife), and my two sisters and me.

The loss of my father through this horrific death still resonates for me, although I am not certain how much it reverberates in my sisters' lives. The last time we were together as three sisters (I have seen them both separately on many occasions since that day) was when we were all gathered in the intensive care waiting room — pulling "all-nighters" —  and going into his hospital room to see him one at a time — even though he was hooked up to tubes and the only way we knew he was alive was by the monitor in his hospital room.

I was the last one in the room before he died and I told him, "I'll be OK," and the monitor instantly went blank. His wife had left earlier to go their house to get some rest. Upon being informed that my father had died, she was furious that he had passed away without her being by his side. Later she begrudgingly handed my sisters and me copies of the tape he had made the last week of his life (which plays in the clip in yesterday's blog entry).

Today, as I recall the day my father died, I think of the character, Olga Seregeyevna Prozo (Olya), one of three sisters from Anton Chekhov's play, Three Sisters. As you may know, this play begins with Olga speaking to one of her her sisters saying, "Father died a year ago today. May fifth, your saint's day, Irina. It was cold and snowing; I don't know where I found the strength to get through that day."

As for me, I found the strength to get through 'that' day of my father's death by prayer, Alprazolam (a  form of Xanax), and a stiff cocktail, though not necessarily in that order. My father's death should not have been such a loss to me that November of 1995, a week after Thanksgiving. For my father as I knew him on a Thanksgiving in 1963, when I was a child (depicted in the photograph at the top of this post), the Thanksgiving after  John F. Kennedy had been assassinated, had died long ago, when he left our family that following year. And as for my sisters, if they are reflecting on my father's death perhaps they are like Olga's sisters — for when Olga recalls their father's death, her sister replies, "Why think about it?"

Why think about it? To mourn? To relive? To rewrite family history? May all my readers be blessed with any needed consolation over a lost loved one, as each one of us moves into the holiday season. I'd like to second what my father said in that tape he recorded eight days before his dying day: "I want to wish everyone a lot of love at this time of year."

The Monday after Thanksgiving

My father can be seen in this photograph playing the frying pan. His brothers are accompanying him with their instruments. Perhaps those earlier musical endeavors gave my father his apparent "love" for pop music. Most people when recalling my father's antics will remember him for having his own takes on "Top-40" music hits. For example, with the song, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden," the lyrics go,"I beg your pardon, I never promised you a rose garden . . ." but my father's take on it was,"I beg your pardon, I never farted in your rose garden . . ." 

As for the once-upon-a-time hit song,"Bad Moon Rising," the lyric-line is,"There'a a bad moon on the rise". My father's version? "There's a bathroom on the right." And with Paul McCartney's, Band on the Run, where the lyric-line,"band on the run" repeats over and over again, my father's rendition was,"band with the runs."



My father's sense of humor, and apparent relationship with songs, remained with him throughout his life. Even at the very bitter end, when he had hoped to be out of a hospital where he had been for treatment due to severe consequences of emphysema, he recorded a tape giving Louis Armstrong "a run for his money".  In the tape, my father expresses what the doctors had hoped to do: have him out of the hospital the Monday after Thanksgiving. Sadly that was not to be, as he was still in the hospital the "Monday after Thanksgiving" and declining quickly: dying that week after Thanksgiving instead.

On this 2010 Monday after Thanksgiving's post, in honor of my father, I have added some lyrics from a song to  the tape which he recorded on November the twenty-second of 1995, on which date John F. Kennedy had been assassinated thirty two years prior.

The Coming Week: Recalling November 22nd

In a couple of days it will be November 22nd, a significant date in the minds of people of a certain age who will often recall what they were doing on that  particular day in 1963, when they first heard the news that President John F. Kennedy had been shot.


I had stayed home from elementary school that day and was watching As the World Turns (ATWT) with my mother. My mother identified with Lisa, one of the main characters who was a divorcee. At that time, I did not know that my mother would become a divorcee, but I should have surmised this might happen, with all of the arguments that occurred between my mother and father.


In any event, on that November 22nd in 1963, my mother and I were watching ATWT (a You Tube Video of this can be seen below) and listening to the characters, Nancy and Grandpa, discuss their Thanksgiving plans —while my mother fretted about how we'd spend ours. Suddenly the television program was interrupted,

with a special report that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been shot. From that point on the television would be filled with scenes from the motor-cade in which Kennedy had been riding, the subsequent shooting of his assumed assassin, Harvey Oswald, and of course the funeral. However, when I first heard the news on November 22nd 1963, I wondered what was happening at school. I was one of two students in my class of thirty pupils, whose parents did not support JFK. A few years prior, in 1960,  Kennedy had campaigned heavily in Carpentersville, the town in the Fox River Valley where I went to grade school, so I was well aware of my parents' political beliefs.
Their beliefs were no secret to my classmates or teachers either, mostly due to the fact that my father was president of the school board. The area where we lived was a Northwest suburb of Chicago, and during the years Kennedy was running for office our community's votes were crucial to his winning the presidency. My father had refused to go and see Kennedy at our local shopping center in spite of the fact that people clamored to attend.



Now, hearing the news that John F. Kennedy had been shot, as I sat on a plastic couch with my mother, I was somewhat grateful to be out of school. Often the teachers and other students blamed me for my father's strict views, and I certainly did not want any back-lash on such a sad day for our nation. However, on another level, I felt at a loss sitting there with my mother. I longed to share my grief and fears with others and to also find comfort, but that was not to be because from the moment the ATWT's fictional characters, Nancy and Grandpa, had their conversation interrupted with Walter Cronkite's Special Report, I began to assume the role of my mother's comforter which I eluded to in a previous post. She became my child.


Unfortunately, I spent far too many years looking for someone to fill her role, but thankfully have been long healed of that trauma. I ultimately moved to New York City —and even appeared on ATWT in the role of a cop. I did not enjoy the 'on-camera' experiences of the entertainment industry, as I preferred the behind-the-scenes activities which led me to endeavors in photo-art and writing.

In a book-art course, I had the assignment of taking "an existing book and turning it into a personal statement." This is an assignment I invite my readers to try if they are so inclined. As for me, I chose P.D. Eastman's book, Are You my Mother?; and embedded one of my mother's childhood photographs in the cover, and placed the words "Adventures in Self-Reliance" underneath it  which can be seen in the image posted below:

I now do custom books for others, going over photographs of various clients and finding books to 'match' a 'message' or 'feeling' my client wants to convey. If you would like to order one please leave me a comment (this feature will be enabled on November 23rd 2010), or send me an email via my contact information which is listed in both my on-line brochure and on my web-site.


My fulfilling an assignment of rendering Eastman's book into "something else" was to depict that time during my childhood years when I experienced many losses: the death of President John F. Kennedy, the loss of having my father move out of the house before the end of the following year, and most of all losing my mother as I knew her, prior to the day she left mentally, on November 22, 1963.