My dad was a hero. During the invasion of Normandy, the destroyer he was serving on, the USS Corry, hit a mine. As the vessel was sinking he saved the lives of two men. Before he abandoned ship, he lowered the ship's flag and took it with him into the English Channel. Fifty years later a picture of the Corry's flag graced the cover of National Geographic magazine.
In that edition there was an article titled "Untold Stories of D-Day." When the article talked about my father's destroyer and the flag he saved, the author accidentally misspelled Dad's name. If he had lived long enough to read the story, I don't think he would have cared much. But I do. For the record, the correct spelling is "Garay." In addition to saving our country's flag that afternoon so long ago, my father was also awarded the Bronze Star for bravery in action.
One other small act took place that day the article didn't mention. Before he abandoned ship, Lt. Paul Nicholas Garay was standing on the Corry's bridge alone with the captain. As the ship sank beneath their feet, the lieutenant turned and said, "Captain, I think you had better remove your shoes because they're about to get wet."
My dad didn't have a lot of luck on ships during the war. His next assignment was in the Pacific theater, where his new ship was also knocked out of action, this time by a lucky (if there is such a thing) kamikaze. My father ended up getting wounded in the melee and was subsequently honorably discharged from the Navy.
Up in flames
After the war, Dad married Mom, and the two of them began raising a family. Despite my father's experience in the war, he remained enamored with boats and the sea.
My father built the first boat we owned as a family from scratch. It burned up during one of our trips to Shelter Cove, California, when someone left a metal tackle box on top of the boat engine's battery. The entire boat went up in flames next to the highway where we had pulled over to inspect the plume of smoke that was billowing out from under the canvas tarp lashed over the boat. I remember Dad standing with the spent fire extinguisher in his hand, looking wistfully at the boat's charred hull resting on the trailer and saying, "At least she didn't sink on me."
Back home, Dad shrugged the fire off and started to build another boat, this time out of steel and cement. Over the years, we ended up owning lots of boats. My family was never wealthy in the monetary sense of the word, so most of our boats were old and in need of repair. Consequently, all of our boats spent a great deal of their lives propped up in boatyards waiting to be made seaworthy. Camped out beneath the shade of his desires, my father would patiently scrape, sand, paint and caress the hull of each boat until he was intimate with every detail. My mother was an exceptional woman. She never became jealous of my father's relationship with his boats or the sea.
The last boat my family owned was a wooden 32-foot Grand Banks trawler that my father named Tradition. Though Dad loved sailboats, with age I think he came to enjoy the ease and comfort of the iron jenny over the canvas propulsion of some of his earlier crafts. The last few years of his life would find him motoring around the sloughs and backwater eddies of California's Sacramento River Delta, where he kept her. Toward the end when he was getting too old to operate the Tradition by himself, he would still visit her every weekend at her moorings and putter about finding things to paint or repair.
To me, Tradition was the most special boat Dad owned. When I was aboard her, I forgot all about the world beyond the maze of dikes and levees, which contained and channeled the delta's broad and slow-moving waters. Exploring the river's many muddy tongues, our family fished, swam, loved and lounged around basking in our perfect balance. Back on land I buried those memories deep into my heart for safekeeping.
Opening that chest today floods my face with tears. When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, my parents made the decision to sell the Tradition so my mother wouldn't be burdened with it after Dad passed away.
'How long have I got?'
His cancer first came calling on Christmas Eve. My parents were spending the holidays with my family and me in Alaska. In the evening, close to the children's bedtime, my father remarked to no one in particular that he was having a hard time catching his breath.
Dad was the kind of man who could be choking to death and say, "I'm having a bit of a hard time breathing." Pain was something he was able to exercise great control over. At the dentist's office, he would have his teeth drilled and cavities filled without Novocain.
In the middle of the night, we rushed him to the hospital. They stuck some tubes into his lungs, drained them and then pumped in some fresh air to re-inflate him as if he were a flat tire. Dad spent three days there.
The next episode took place a few months later. Same deal. He couldn't breathe due to fluid in his lungs. Same procedure. Yet still no firm diagnosis as to what was causing the fluid to collect.
It only took a few weeks before his lungs began to fill a third time. After a bunch of head scratching, the doctors finally diagnosed him with lung cancer and moved him up to the oncology ward. "Lung cancer? It can't be, my father has never smoked," I said.
When the doctor told my father the news, Dad asked, "So how long have I got?"
"Six months, maybe more."
"So I'm a goner."
After he said this, my mom broke down and started to cry. The doctor began to mumble something about the importance of not giving up.
"Doctor, can I please speak privately with you outside?" I asked as I motioned him to the hallway with my hand.
Too much pain
Outside Dad's hospital room I told him that my father was not giving anything up. "He is a man who knows when it's time to let go," I said. Ignoring this, the doctor went on to explain how my father could probably be kept alive another six months or even longer if he'd agree to undergo a series of procedures that would slow his lungs from filling up with fluid.
"Thanks, I'll let him know what his options are," I said.
Back in the room I explained to Dad what the doctor had told me about continuing treatment with the siphoning tubes and the air compressors. He looked tired and without humor when he said, "No, I don't think so Peter. The quality of my life is not so good anymore."
I realized that for the first time in his life, pain had become too much.
Before sending Dad home to finish dying, they kept him in the oncology ward for a few more days of observation, thinking he might change his mind. The only thing he ended up changing were the channels on his TV.
Once we got Dad home and set up in the spare bedroom, he began to let go. Since I was there along with my mother, the only person he had left to say goodbye to was my brother, who was at sea. We learned from his employer that it would be two days before the vessel he was sailing on would reach port. I asked my Dad if he could wait it out for a few more days so Randy could bid him goodbye.
No matter what anyone tells you, the truth is, the tough part about going to sea is the being gone. This time, I was fortunate to be home. My brother, on the other hand, was with our shared mistress, the sea.
When Dad finally gave in to his pain and asked for help, I called hospice and they were at my father's bedside within the hour with pain medication. As I offered him a big, heaping tablespoon of morphine, Dad said, "Go easy on that stuff Peter, I don't want to get addicted."
"Dad, you're in the checkout line here, don't worry about getting hooked."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," he replied with a defeated grin.
Manly tenderness
He took his medicine and made a sour face like a small boy swallowing a spoon full of castor oil. When he had finished smacking his lips, his merry blue eyes grew cloudy as his eyelids twitched closed. Lying there in front of me, I began to notice small things I had never observed before. His skin was transparent, with blotchy bruises of varying hues beneath its surface. The strong muscles that had once pulled me out of the water when I had clumsily fallen off our boat now hung limp from his withering frame.
Back in my youth, I had yet to learn how to swim. After saving me from the sea, he held me out by the scruff of my neck in front of himself with one arm as he inspected me for damage. As I hung in the air, sputtering and kicking, he repeated his cardinal rule of boating safety: "For crying out loud, Peter, how many times have I got to tell you this? That's why you never stand up in a small boat!" Then he gently lowered me back down.
As he lay before me now, I rubbed and patted his bald and soft head with the palm of my hand and wondered why I had never been able to touch him with such tenderness before. I guess men just have a hard time touching each other unless one of them is dying or one of them is not a man yet. Like my son.
I still hear his little voice filling the air with joy as he broke away from his mother's side and ran to meet his grandpa in the airport that day yelling, "Papa Paul! Papa Paul!" No sweeter sight on Earth could I behold than watching my father reach down and sweep up my charging son.
'Take your shoes off'
I continued to stroke Dad's head a long time, all the while talking to him.
Two days later, my brother called from overseas. It was difficult to watch Dad try to regain control of his world long enough to be coherent in his goodbye. Most of the words he managed to speak tumbled out of his mouth in a jumbled-up slur. In the center of his struggle he managed to find five clear words that he was able to sort into their proper order.
With his last moment of clarity, he said, "I love you too, son." Then like an invisible quicksand, the turbulence of his confusion sucked the rest of his words under.
I damned the morphine for this disabling feature, then thanked it for quietly cradling him away when he was finished talking to my brother.
I whispered into his ear, "Remember to take your shoes off, Dad," and then kissed him.
And that was it. The shadow of death let its veil fall.
In the end, my father didn't rage against the dying light. Instead, he chose to go gently into the good night. His death was fitting for a man who loved the sea as he did. He ended up drowning. The cancerous fluid filled his lungs to capacity, his mouth dropped open, and he emitted a little gurgling rattle. The quiet man named Paul Nicholas Garay slipped away beneath the waves and was no more.
Pete Garay is a state-licensed marine pilot who lives in Homer with his wife and three children. His hobbies include fishing, gardening and oil painting. His favorite quote is said to be "Dry again?" said the crab to the tide pool. Replied the tide pool, "So would you be, mister crab, if you had to satisfy the insatiable sea twice a day."