A Series of Bungee Cords: Part Five
by Fiona Landers
Hospice is great. It’s GREAT. And Lily had the hookup with a wonderful hospice service because she had been VOLUNTEERING with them because she is a BETTER person than I am. She and my mom (also better than me) would visit hospice patients and SING to them. They invited me to sing with them and I said “Sure sure, sounds good. Where is it? Agoura Hills?? Sorry, no can do, tell Gladys I’ll see her on the other side!”. Because Lily volunteered, she had a hospice training video that we watched together. We watched it way before Dad was on hospice. The three of us, Mom, Lily and I actually watched it when my mom was having some health issues and it freaked her the fuck out. While we were watching it, my mom, truly “Fearing the Reaper, Baby”, hopped up and started riding Lily’s recumbent exercise bike like “Hahaha you’re not gonna get me, Death, I’m reclining and coughing on an exercise bike, so there!”. I, probably also fearing my own mortality, dealt with the video by making fun of literally everything about it. The woman hosting it (Tani, definitely her name). Tani’s outfit (Mojave Desert Casual). The re-enactors’ bad acting as they pretended to be a dying man and his sad wife — “Oh, they are GOING for it.”. The shitty lighting. The SHITTY music. The $15 production value. “Where is she? Why is she standing in front of an armoire? What’s in there?? She just made a Woody Allen joke, what the fuck? Look at that plant, they couldn’t get a better plant? It’s fucking wilted, is this a joke??”. I made up songs to all the segments which featured hits like “Changes in Eaaating and Driiiinking” and “The Use of Touch!”. But even through my dumb jokes I thankfully retained a lot of the information. Because it helped. I mean I was still totally clueless but at least I could rationalize some of my dad’s behavior. The apathy — we were lucky it wasn’t all-encompassing, but it still hurt when it came up. When my mom was raving to him about the new musical I had written, showing him the video of it and him not giving a shit at all. That was out of character. I have a video from the previous year that is more telling of his actual character.
I am not a rich woman. I am not a famous woman. I haven’t booked a commercial since I was a baby, bay bay (BRB gonna go jump off a Toys R Us). But I am LUCKY. Because before my dad’s diagnosis (the big one), in 2013 he flew out to LA to see my one person show at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. I worked very hard writing it and Eva Anderson directed it and really made it a show (she’s awesome). It’s a scary thing, a one person show. There’s a big chance that everyone might HATE you and you, ALONE. It’s like what standups do all the time, it’s very brave. Thank goodness mine was a musical so I had my trusty, genius, musical director, Scott Passarella there to support me on stage. Scott is my Barry Manilow. I’m clearly Bette Midler in this scenario and UCB is our bathhouse, and it’s the 70’s and we’re all having a blast. I’m eternally grateful to UCB for this experience (many other experiences as well!) because there I was, a broke writer/performer/nanny but that night I got to perform my show in front of a packed, awesome audience at a top-knotch comedy theatre in LA and my dad was there. I have the video of the show and if you watch it you can hear one guy laughing harder than everyone else at times and it’s him, it’s my dad. And I just feel so lucky to have this memory, to have proof of it. When he died, everyone made a big deal about him being alive long enough to walk with my mom and I down the aisle at my wedding. And they’re right, that is amazing. And he was alive long enough to give me an epic dance lesson at that same wedding to ‘Come Saturday Morning’ by The Sandpipers which was beautiful and hilarious because my dad was an excellent dancer and I was wearing difficult shoes. But to me, him being alive long enough to laugh the loudest at my show, the thing I had created, that was really something. Something that will keep me going for a long time. So, UCB, thank you for giving me one of the most extraordinary moments of my life! Here’s a quote from my dad about the show: “I experienced my amazing daughter Fiona’s one person show, PARADISE VALLEY (with her original songs and characters) at UCB-LA last night. Sold out and knocked out! Proud Poppas of the world unite!”.
But back to hospice. Hospice nurses are HEROES. When my dad’s dying-process began to speed up, he started feeling chest pains. I said “What does it feel like, what kind of pain?”, he said “It feels like my heart is bursting. Like my heart is going to burst.”. One of the many amazing things about hospice is that they have a hero/nurse standing by the phone at all times so we could call them in the middle of the night and say “MY DAD’S HEART IS EXPLODING!” and they could say that chest pains are totally normal. It meant his organs were going into emergency mode because they knew the ship was about to go down. Which is a heart-bursting thought. Even though my dad’s psyche was getting to a peaceful place about letting go, about dying, his body was fighting to soldier on, to survive. Our bodies are amazing. Our bodies are like Rocky Balboa, they’ll NEVER QUIT QUITTERS ARE LOSAHS, ADRIAN. Our bodies are also like Sylvester Stallone, they are like willing to STICK IT OUWT, YOU KNOW even if audiences (our minds) are thinking “It’s okay you can be done, thank you for making Rocky, holy shit man the first Rocky is SO good! Even the second one was good and parts of the other ones. Oh, okay you’re gonna go ahead and do Expendables 3? Okay, man, coooool, you got that eye of the tiger and you just can’t help it, you little beefy devil!.”. The nurse/hero told us which drugs to give him for the heart explosions and it eased his pain, eased his anxiety. I remember him saying, while Lily was calling the nurse, “I didn’t even think about a heart attack.” and he looked at me and said “Fiona, I don’t want to go anywhere.” and I said “No, Dad, you get to stay here. Everyone comes to you, you get to stay here no matter what.”.
The hospice health aides are ANGELS. Rita (her name is definitely not Rita), was young, beautiful, sassy (perfect combo for Dad, what a fitting perk), kind and great at her job. She would come over and professionally take a shower with my dad or give him a massage or a sponge bath — I’m pretty sure it was an enjoyable experience for him. She was so great and the only time we spoke alone she made me cry because she asked how old my dad was. I said sixty-two and she said “Sixty-two is so young.” and I lost it. I was like “RITA, get out of here you little sassy angel!”.
The hospice social workers are OKAY. Haha oh my god I didn’t like the social worker assigned to us and my dad could tell that I didn’t. She pranced in and tried to assess our lives in one meeting and I hated it. When my dad said he was concerned that his daughters would feel abandoned by him when he died, she said “Oh no they won’t. They’ll feel lonesome for you but not abandoned.”. Well here’s a followup, Linda (her name is definitely not Linda), you TWAT: I do feel abandoned! I absolutely do. My dad was right and you were wrong and also fuck off for assuming how anyone’s going to feel after someone dies. Everyone’s different, LINDA, you don’t know what it’s like to be them, go listen to that Tom Petty song and get back to me. She also immediately made passive-aggressive comments about the way my dad was using the little oxygen tank nose thingy. Like he was doing it wrong. I was like “The fuck, LINDA?! He’s dying! He can wrap that little nose plug thingy around his dick if he wants to. Give the man some peace!”. And when she saw the glass of water next to his bed with a straw in it, she was like “We suggest cutting the straw so he takes in less air. Filling the glass all the way also helps him take in less air. He’ll be more comfortable that way.”. And I was like “Listen, LINDA, I’ll cut the straws but I’m not gonna keep putting a constantly full glass of water in front of a dying man’s face. Have you ever heard of symbolism, LINDA? We LET the glass get half empty/full so he can decide for himself if it’s a half empty or half full situation, it can’t be ALL THE WAY FULL, LINDA, YOU DULLARD. We were all doing fine here on Zen Death Mountain until you showed up, LIIINDA!”.
I, of course, didn’t say these things to the social worker. But my dad could tell I was thinking them. So much so that when she left the room, he said “You were looking at her like, “If the revolution comes, I’m gonna have to kill her.”. And you know what, he was right. The revolution CAME and LINDA is DEAD. I killed her when she asked me what I did for a living. I said “HOLLY HUNTER IMPRESSIONS.” and then I pushed her down my sister’s stairs. I kid, I kiiiid. I put a halo over her head like my dad asked me to. And then I called her a twat in a public forum. He would be very proud.
