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SUNDAY JOURNAL

In dying, as in living, signs point the way

By LINDA GUGGINO HUMPHERS
Published April 30, 2006

By LINDA GUGGINO HUMPHERS

Two weeks before my father died, his niece Rosann and nephew Jack drove from Tampa to our house in St. Petersburg for what everyone knew would be a last visit. Suffering from emphysema and heart failure, Daddy could barely muster the strength or the breath to talk, and my cousins had to put their ears right next to his mouth to hear him gasp a few words.

Still, the visit was good, full of stories from the old days and a chance to look through photo albums with him. He was too weak to say much, but no one expected him to because he was known in the family as The Quiet One. Although he spoke five languages - three from childhood and two picked up during World War II - when he did have something to say, it was usually a zinger delivered in that Tampa lilt, a combination of Cuban, Sicilian and Florida Cracker, all rolled into one accent.

A master of succinct dialogue, my father followed the Sicilian tradition of letting his gestures do the talking. For him, a cupped hand shaken downward meant "Pass the salt"; a cupped hand lifted toward his mouth meant "Bring me a glass of water"; a flat hand slicing diagonally upward meant "Forget about it"; a flat hand with a little chopping motion meant "You're pushing it"; waggling his thumb up and down meant "Where's the remote?"

For dinner guests who said, "Just a little for me," he'd silently flick two grains of rice or one strand of spaghetti onto their plates, then raise his eyebrows in surprise when they howled for more.

Kids clustered around him not because he told them stories but because he'd repeat his amputated-finger trick over and over, as many times as they wanted. Sometimes he'd liven the pantomime by pretending to steal their noses and then pointing at a mirror, urging them to look. They never did.

He'd set my daughter squealing simply by pointing his index finger at her ticklish bare foot, and he drove my mother up the wall by replying with a shrug that said "Either way" to any question that required a choice. Depending on her mood, this could launch her into a fury, to which he'd answer with a twirling finger aimed at his head.

Despite his devotion to sign language, he wasn't overtly expressive, except in his eyes, which hid nothing and always revealed the true meaning in his gestures: amusement, boredom, mockery, tenderness, love . . . certainly love.

The day after my cousins' visit, Jack called to ask if I thought my father would like to see a priest.

"I don't think so," I said. I had never seen my father go to church, and he had never contradicted my mother's periodic pronouncement that all religion was man-made superstition.

On the two occasions he let uninvited nuns into the house, my mother promptly showed them the door, and Daddy was completely blasé about it. He rarely mentioned religion except to remind us that the priests in Tampa hadn't been any help - to put it mildly - when his mother was widowed with six children in 1930.

And he was brief, as always, regarding his funeral instructions: "Burn me."

Jack said he knew it seemed like a stretch, but our grandmother, likewise known to have little use for priests, had surprisingly agreed to see one in her final days and it had "worked out well."

"It's certainly up to Daddy," I said. "I'll ask, but don't get your hopes up."

Jack said, "That's fine. If he agrees, call me back and I can have a priest over there within two hours."

So that evening I sat down on the ottoman in front of Daddy's recliner and said, "Jack called today."

"What'd he want?" Daddy puffed. His words couldn't have been understood by anyone but my mother and me. He was struggling to breathe now, and paying for the pleasure of yesterday's visit. Think of trying to breathe through a cocktail straw, his doctor had told me.

I said, "He wants to know if you'd like to see a priest."

My father's eyes blazed. Without a word he shakily lifted his big right hand, a fist except for the middle finger pointing straight up. A gesture everyone understands.

"Yeah," I said, "forget about it," and made the flat-handed upward slashing gesture.

The morning he died he was concise one last time. His doctor leaned over him and somberly intoned, "Gasper, is there anything I can get you?"

"Cyanide," Daddy whispered.

The startled doctor jumped back, and I started to laugh. Then I patted Daddy on the shoulder and said quietly, "Not much longer," and we both knew it was all okay. Neither of us had to say anything more.

Linda Guggino Humphers lives in Clearwater.

[Last modified April 28, 2006, 11:22:05]