THE
WEIGHT OF MY FATHER'S SOUL
by Charles Deemer
(originally published in Oregon Magazine)
If I didn't know better, I would
have concluded that
I'd just watched my father's soul leave his body. Of
course, this possibility did not occur to me at the
time; Dad was still about thirty seconds from falling
dead. At the moment, on this fall day in New Jersey,
where outside the leaves were brilliantly colored in
their own ritual journey toward death, Dad was still
standing on the scale in the kitchen.
"Chick, you've gained some
weight," his cousin Gubby
said.
Then the scale suddenly registered
zero.
"The battery went dead,"
said Gubby.
Dad stepped off the scale and moved
toward the
hallway, where around the corner was the door to the
bathroom. A moment after he disappeared from sight,
during which Gubby winked at me as if to say, You've
been feeding the old man well, we heard a crash, and
my father lay dead on the bathroom floor.
I was in New Jersey on an errand
from Oregon. Mom had
been dead for some time, and Dad's remaining primary
family were his two sons, both of whom lived in
Oregon. Although Dad loved New Jersey, where he had
grown up and where dozens of cousins were ready to
listen to his tales of a career in the Navy, Bill and
I decided he should live in Oregon, closer to us,
closer to "real" family. We'd scouted out a nice
residential building for him, with a good mix of
retirees and younger couples, conveniently located in
Eugene near where Bill had lived for over a decade.
Our plan was to bring the old man closer to his sons,
and it was my job to go fetch him.
None of the cousins wanted him to
move and probably
Dad didn't want to leave New Jersey either, but he
didn't have the heart to reject an offer from his
sons, especially when the offer sounded like a demand.
So he agreed to move west, and I flew to New Jersey to
help him settle his affairs and travel with him.
I was in the middle of my own
upheaval. Gary O'Brien,
the Artistic Director of the New Rose Theatre in
Portland, where I was playwright-in-residence,
recently had resigned, and I'd been informed that my
professional services were no longer needed either.
I'd been spoiled at the New Rose, learning that an
immediate access to actors was the best way to write
for the stage, and I felt abandoned and homeless to
have no stage to call home. At least I had lots of
time on my hands, hence my appointment to the family
mission.
What I remember most about that trip
are the final
minutes of my father's life. We were invited to
Gubby's for a farewell dinner, and the drive to his
country home was spectacular along country roads lined
with the bright oranges and reds of a New Jersey fall.
I pulled into the parking area near the secluded house
and turned off the engine. Reaching for the door, I
felt Dad's hand on my knee.
"I'm sure glad I got to see the
leaves change before
I go," he said.
This remark haunted me for years. At
the time, of
course, it made perfect sense in its literal meaning:
he was happy to see one final New Jersey fall before
moving to Oregon. In retrospect, however, I wondered
if he were referring to a different kind of "going,"
if he were speaking of his own death. After all, in
only several minutes after the remark, he would be
gone from this world.
Gubby and especially his wife Betty
were loving
caregivers to my father. They phoned him daily and saw
him as often as possible. They'd been concerned, I'd
learned, because Chick had been losing a little weight
lately, and when we walked up to the house, the first
thing Gubby said was, "Chick, I think you've gained
back some of that weight."
We entered the kitchen, and Gubby
immediately came in
behind us with a portable scale.
"Step on this," he said,
setting the scale on the
floor.
I didn't see what the weight read
but Gubby said,
"Look, you've gained three pounds!"
They had a weight chart for Dad on
the wall, and
Betty wrote down the new figure.
Then the scale went to zero. Then my
Dad stepped off
the scale and without a word headed for the bathroom.
Then he fell dead.
The shock, of course, was
considerable. It took an
ambulance some time to reach the secluded home, and my
memory of the hours that followed is fuzzy. I remember
spending a long time alone with my Dad's body, which
was stretched out on a table in a room at the
hospital. I'd never been alone with a corpse before,
and what I remember most is the grotesque and horrific
appearance of him, like a body deflated of air, of
life, of spirit, all imploded skin and jarring bone.
Maybe that's when I began to speculate
that Dad knew
he was going to die, perhaps even willed his dying.
"I'm sure glad I got to see the leaves change before I
go," he'd said. And even more significant, he had
touched my knee. We were not a family of touchers; in
fact, I couldn't remember my Dad ever touching me on
the knee before.
It was late when I returned to
Gubby's. I'd been
invited to spend the night and accepted, rather than
returning alone to my father's apartment several
hamlets away.
I was sitting in the kitchen,
drinking a beer, when I
noticed the scale on the floor. I got up and slowly
walked to it. Then I stepped up onto it.
The scale registered my weight.
I stepped down and up again. My
weight appeared
again.
"The battery isn't dead,"
I said.
Gubby and Betty came forward, and
each stepped on the
scale. It was working perfectly.
"Why did it register
zero?" I wondered aloud.
Somewhere I'd read that, according
to some ancient
superstition or wisdom, the soul left the body at the
moment of death. Had the scale registered the
departure of my Dad's soul from his body, only moments
before he came crashing down onto the bathroom floor?
It's a ridiculous possibility, of
course, and one
that still haunts me.
The next day I returned to my
father's apartment with
a new array of accounts to settle. When the phone
rang, I was astonished to hear the voice of Peter
Fornara, who was Artistic Director of Sirius
Productions in Portland. I had no idea how he'd
tracked me down. Peter had heard that I'd left New
Rose and was wondering if I'd be interested in being
playwright-in-residence for Sirius at their Cubiculo
Theatre. Of course I would.
So I flew back to a new theatrical
home, bringing
along a part of my father's ashes, the other part
having been scattered in New Jersey. I split the ashes
with my brother and buried my share in the Shakespeare
Garden in Washington Park, where the fall leaves were
not nearly as splendid as in New Jersey.
I still have made no conclusions
regarding the weight
of my father's soul.