"Something Funny Going On"

SOMETHING FUNNY GOING ON

June 2006

A few days before June got really strange, my family and my parents and I went to a wedding like no other wedding I had ever attended. Jerry Hu—whose family immigrated from Taiwan in the early 1980s, whom I taught during his time at Soldotna High School, who told me then that he planned to go to dental school and many years later actually purchased the practice of my own retiring dentist father, and who is now known in the community as Dr. Hu—married a Taiwanese woman in a ceremony spoken partly in English and partly in Mandarin Chinese. All of the bride’s closest family, as well as her bridesmaids, had been flown into town from Taiwan at what I can only guess was great expense. A lengthy slide show about the lives of the bride and groom began the ceremony, which clocked in at about an hour. Jerry’s father and mother, who run a Chinese restaurant about five miles from my house, concocted many of the foods at the reception, which, ironically, ran a little like one of their buffets. The flowers and other decorations at both the ceremony and reception were elegant and costly. The wedding cake was tall and cascading, and a fountain of fruit punch gurgled along as waiters bustled back and forth with trays and pitchers and good cheer. Jerry, who is stocky and sweats like a glass of iced tea on a sunny windowsill, had taken waltzing lessons and acquitted himself quite well as he and his bride (whose English name is Sharon) led off the dancing at the reception. He was graceful, smooth, and quite moist. The weather cooperated all day long, despite the promises of rain, and the company was a delightful mélange of old (many of Jerry’s former teachers, some of my dad’s former patients), middle-aged (me, for example) and new (my kids and other people’s kids).

But then June 7 arrived: my mother’s 71st birthday. The plan was: Mom and Dad had things to do in the morning and early afternoon, and after lunch I was going to go into town and buy all of the things we would need for a small family barbecue. That afternoon, I was returning from town and had stopped at our roadside cluster box to pick up our mail when my folks pulled up beside me, their gold Toyota Highlander pointed in the opposite direction of my battered minivan. My mother’s face wore one of the harried looks that she gets when things haven’t gone according to plan and she consequently has some explaining to do. We rolled down our driver’s-side windows simultaneously. “We’re headed to Anchorage,” she began. “Your dad,” she continued, nodding toward the fragile figure of my father in the passenger seat, “needs a pacemaker.”

Dad had not been doing well in recent weeks. Tired all of the time, he occasionally had to stop and catch his breath after doing the most basic things—walking up a flight of stairs, for instance—and he had been having several somewhat alarming dizzy spells and light-headedness. His appetite had diminished to practically nothing, and he was looking gaunt and much, much more frail and old. Tests revealed an arrhythmia, and his doctor said that the implanting of a pacemaker (inside a three-inch incision just below his left collarbone) would make him feel better and stronger almost right away. His surgery occurred the next afternoon, and on June 9 he was home with his arm in a sling. The next day, his face aglow with newfound energy, he ate two hamburgers at my house.

While the reinvigoration of my father was the best part of the story, it was not the funny part. At Providence Hospital, doctors had scheduled him for a 3 p.m. surgery, and my mother, who was frazzled from the three-hour drive the night before and her inability to sleep well in the bed in Dad’s hospital room, became restless and decided that Dad was well enough that, since it was still only late morning, she’d go get her hair done. Sometime after she departed for the hairdresser, however, an operating room opened up earlier than expected, and the doctors decided to operate on Dad two hours sooner. My sister, Janeice, who lives in Anchorage, came by to visit around 1 p.m. and was surprised to find that Dad had just been carted into surgery and that Mom was out on the town. Meanwhile, Mom had completed her hair appointment and had gone shopping for some slacks. After her purchase, she returned to the hospital and was contentedly munching on a cafeteria lunch when my sister, just by chance, spotted her and told her what was up. Mom finished eating, and then she and Janeice hurried back to Dad’s room. When Dad returned from surgery, Mom learned that he had told his doctor and his nurses all about her trip to the beauty salon, and as my prim and proper mother squirmed with embarrassment, the nurses all complimented her on how nice her hair looked. A little later, Janeice called me with an update on Dad’s condition and a recap of Mom’s day so far. About five minutes after I got off the phone, it rang again, and I soon found myself talking to my dad’s concerned sister, Joyce. Aunt Joyce was calling me from Indiana because my Uncle Steve (who lives in Alaska), had called his eldest daughter, Lesia (also living in Indiana), who had called Joyce’s husband, Jim, to say that my dad had suffered a heart attack and was now in the hospital. I laughed and straightened out the story. I also told her the name of the hospital Dad was staying in and the room number, and I related the story of Mom’s hair day. I encouraged Joyce to call my folks, wish Dad well, and then razz Mom about her hair. Mom, when she got the call from Joyce, had no idea how Joyce could possibly know what had happened.

The good news is, of course, that Dad is continuing to improve. Mom and Dad’s big 50th wedding anniversary celebration went off as planned on June 17. All of the company and all of the bustling made Dad tired, but in a natural, rather than debilitating, way.

POSTSCRIPT FROM FEBRUARY 2012: The bad news is that my father lived only one day past the end of that year. For the explanation of that fall from renewed health, read “Descent of Man“ elsewhere in this blog.