My Father, His Beloved Teeth, and the End

One Man’s Quest for the American Dream and a Nice Smile

When my father was at the end of his life he sputtered and proclaimed, delirious and profound, speaking in half sentences and garbled riddles that we struggled to decipher. At one point he sat up in bed and said. “YES, Dr. S, YES” as if he was being implored to do something, but was hesitant (we will call him Dr. S for our purposes). I caught my brother’s eye. In this emotionally devastating period, anything seemed possible. God help us, was Dad molested by the dentist?

Dad’s death-bed conjuring of Dr. S was not surprising since both of my parents held dentists in high esteem. This deference to the profession stood firm even in the early 1970s when neither could eat steak because it hurt too badly. They chalked it up to old age even though they were in their mid-40s. They would sit at their TV trays eating spaghetti, meatloaf and tuna casserole, but the days of steak dinners were now a part of their crazy youth. Cocktails still OK.

Their Daly City dentist had simply been a lovable idiot. “GOD he was a nice guy,” my dad would say years later.

When my parents decided to leave our foggy Daly City neighborhood for a new subdivision in San Mateo with its sunshine and big ranch houses, our lives got better immediately on a number of fronts. The weather, the schools, the house itself were all upgrades. We even had new neighbors who would come over and dance to Charlie Rich’s “Keep on Rolling with the Flow” after I went to bed. It was the 1970s.

And the dentistry was exquisite. Dr. S was so good compared to the last guy that they were both fixed up in no time. My Dad in particular began to enjoy his dental work — an affection which increased over the years. Dad was one of Dr. S’s most active, lucrative patients from the disco era through. Iran Contra, Nirvana and Y2K.

So it was only fitting that Dr. S had a second cameo in my dad’s end of life narrative, around the time he first got sick, when Dr. S recommended two new crowns costing several thousand dollars. This was during the terminal-illness-diagnosis period and Dr. S knew it. But the money was good and he was on a thirty year roll with this particular jaw, and the human attached to it. My mother, whose family nickname is The Bulldog, strongly recommended that the work be “postponed.” Indeed it was, perhaps my Dad’s first undeniable sign that his condition was serious.

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