the last of the bear...

the last of the bear...

Today, marks 17 years to the day that the Bear checked out, went on, ambled away, passed, died. September 29, 1993, my father, Jack Couger, died 3 days after bypass surgery. It was just about two weeks after a massive heart attack during a simple hernia surgery. He was a month shy of 71. Sadly, for a man of science, a verterinarian, an Aggie, somebody who knew better, he neglected to tell his surgeon about the chest pain he'd experienced the previous Sunday while mowing the yard. It was a mistake that very literally cost him his life.

It always pissed me off that he had to endure the trauma and pain of bypass surgery, the cracking and spreading of the chest, the ice cold water poured into the open chest cavity, the attachment to the heart/lung machine, only to wake up up hurting like hell in ICU. Don't let anybody tell you that it is easy. There are some hassles but it is a remarkable feat. When I had my own bypass 4 years later I got some measure of relief because, even though I hated it, wished I'd die, lived with that guilt of wanting to give up, in a month's time I could walk 4 miles again with no discomfort. My anger about my father's anguish was eased to an extent.

His last words to me were, "Not if I die first." I'd spent a week in Austin trying to follow his directions and take care of things for him during the week they waited for him to get strong enough to endure future procedures. His heart attack was on a Tuesday and by that Friday I was called in the middle of the night and told to get the family there. Somehow he pulled through and by the next Monday was in a room waiting. At the time I credited his ventilator, a machine labeled Bear 2000. My father was called Bear for 2 reasons. He claimed his friends gave him the nickname after marching behind him and/or seeing him the shower. That always made sense to me.

As I left the last morning I saw him alive I'd said, "Well, I'll see you next weekend." There was no way to know his last words would be so accurate.

I still remember that 29th vividly. I was in a team meeting of 4th grade teachers. From out of nowhere I knew my father had died. I tried to tell myself that the premonition was silly. I was being dramatic. I didn't really focus on what was being said and instead watched the clock. When the bell rang I left the room headed for the office hoping I was wrong.

I remember entering the office and being ushered into what was then called, "the phone room."
Crager was on the phone, calling from Austin, doing his best to convey a message that few want to express and even viewer wish to hear. Haidee entered the room figured out what was going on when I said into the phone, "So, Crager, what you are telling me is that Dad is dead." Haidee, almost 6 months pregnant with Isaac lost all color and began stomping her feet like a small child, repeating the word, "no" over and over. The pain of watching her reaction, knowing she felt that much fear, anger, and depression all at once almost equaled the pain of knowing my father was dead.

Within minutes, Clarence Holliman, our former principal and friend, came and sat with me until we were able to leave. In my office he held my hand and said a pray. At that point in my life I didn't really have everything sorted out. Mr. Holliman's words comforted me in ways I had learned as a child. I was resolved to discover just how I felt I fit into this world.

In America we have become spoiled when it comes to death and dying. We have seen medical marvels keep people alive beyond what might be in their best interests. Advances in medicine have allowed those that would have died earlier just generations prior to live on at a high price. Too many of us have never taken the time to square ourselves with the reality that each and everyone is gong to die. It is going to happen. We can prepare ourselves or not. For me it took reading a book by Thich Nhat Hanh to piece together and express what I felt I understood. After reading his, No Death, No Fear, I experienced a personal clarity that has helped me almost a decade in dealing with the deaths of those close to me.

Understand, I don't suggest that the book will benefit anyone but me. I don't suggest my views aren't subject to change or that my answers are any more valid than what anyone else might claim. It works for me. The finger is pointing at the moon. However you find to come to grips with the subject is fine by me. I just think folks ought to get that taken care for no other reason than it might help when you face it.

During the last week I spent with my dad he reminded me of what he had told barely a month earlier as we worked on the house in Graford. I had asked him if he was serious about his often voiced request to be cremated and his ashes spread in the Brazos beneath the dam at Possum Kingdom. He laughed and told me he was just, "popping off." Whenever he said it he got such interesting reactions he just couldn't stop saying it, but he wasn't serious. During the days between his death and the funeral I was reminded of his "wishes" by too many folks to recall.

I was a rookie when it came to dealing with the death of someone you couldn't imagine dying. Even with the two week notice of his impending passing I didn't force myself to confront all that goes with death. Maybe I was lazy, in denial, or just to scared to try and wrap my head around death.

I remember thinking that there was no way I could survive without my father in my world. Okay, true, when I was a kid I hated his guts. I couldn't wait for him to need to go out of town so there would be peace in the house and a little quiet. My father was an emotional man, big emotions to match his big persona. For such a short guy he seemed larger than life. He was the Bear. He was very physical, both in a loving way and in a mean way. One of my proudest moments as an adolescent was when he broke his foot kicking me in the ass. I thought that would teach him. It didn't. When he died I asked my mom for his Aggie ring. I told her I had an indention on my forehead from being backhanded with it so often.

By 1980 when I was 25 I had matured and I was friends with my dad again. The last 13 years of his life we shared many adventures. He gave me Big Bend. He needed a driver to cart him down there on Government business when his cataracts made him afraid to drive long distances or at night. It changed my life forever. I got lots from him. I got a temper, a love of profanity and vulgarity, the inability to shut up and just not say what is on my mind, the ability to shout, but he also taught me an amazing thing that is hard to describe.

Looking back I remain amazed that somehow he was able to manage and juggle life with three kids and a wife who was "mentally ill" before it was fashionable. There were great chunks of time when he relied on family and friends to get by. My mom wasn't just crazy she was state hospital crazy and it seems to me to be a defining factor in how I grew up. She gave me some of the best lessons I learned because of her situation. Dad did too. I might not have appreciated them until much later, but there is nothing that makes me prouder than to say I am the son of Jack and Sammy. With all that was against them they made it.

After the Dad's funeral Haidee and I saved flowers from the casket and the arrangements. We dried them and filled a mason jar, a quart one, with the dried petals. On October 29, 1993, what would have been his 71st birthday, we drove out to the bridge beneath the dam at the lake. It snowed that day. I'm not joking. It was cold and the wind was blowing. By the time we got to the lake it actually was sticking to the grass. They were big giant flakes, wet and special, coming down hard, blowing frantically in the headlights at dusk. Both a trick and a treat and it wasn't even Halloween, yet. We spread the dried petals in the Brazos and said a prayer for my father as they floated away during an excellent McCabe and Mrs. Miller kind of day.

The Bear was something. His life and his death blessed my own life. His genes jacked me up big time, but I'm not holding that against him anymore. Facing what I have with the heart and lungs has made me a much better happier person so I guess I owe him. I love him and my mom too much to get mad about it now. In 1994, 14 months later Mom died after teaching us a lifetime worth of lessons in such a short time. I still see them all the time in my dreams. Just last night I saw Dad. He was giving me grief about cleaning up a mess at Granny's he thought Paul and I made trying to feed Armadillo World nachos to a bunch of little kids we were watching. Last time I saw Mom she still hoped I wasn't disappointed. I never was.