With it being Father's Day, I thought what better time than to write about my dad.
Marshall Monroe Pratt, Jr. was born October 18, 1940 at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, Maine. His grandmother (my great-grandmother) Elsie said "There will be no Jr.'s. We'll call him "Sonny"", so he was, his whole life.
My dad graduated from Winthrop High School in 1959, where he played football and was the senior class treasurer. One more important thing happened his Senior year though. On his 18th birthday, while working at the roller skating rink, he helped up a beautiful young woman with curly auburn hair who had fallen.... Ita "Tay" Mary O'Hanlon...my mom.
After graduation Dad enlisted in the USMC. On July 4, 1963 they were married (maybe this explains my Patriotic family!). They moved to North Carolina where he finished out his service, then moved to Lynn, Massachusetts for a short time (where Marsha was born), before purchasing a beautiful farmhouse on 15 acres in North Jay, Maine, where they lived when Carolyn, myself, Chris and Jason were born). Dad worked at the paper mill (as did most families in town) while mom stayed home with the kids. Dad often took extra shifts to make overtime, at one time he even tried to take a 3rd shift after working a double. I know it sounds primitive, but mom would see our clothes and had a huge vegetable garden every summer and would can and freeze the vegetables for the winter.
A highlight of every fall was helping our neighbor, Clarence Fletcher, hay his fields (OMG....this sounds like Little House in the Prairie or something). We kids would get so excited, but the extent of our help was riding on the tractor and playing in the barn while the men stacked the hay.
One winter Dad decided to build the kids an ice skating rink in the backyard, but fell and broke his arm. With him being out of work, dear Clarence brought a wood stove from his farm and set it up to keep the house warm and the heating oil cost down. I must have been about 4 or 5 because I vaguely remember the actual event, but that wood stove stayed in our dining room until we moved when I was 9. We didn't have cable television, but barely watched tv anyway. We played outside all day, all seasons.
When we got a pony (he was half blind and not very well mannered), I remember Dad asking me if I liked it, and I said I loved it. Then he told me it was mine, because I was the middle child and always got hand-me downs. I was so excited!!! Well, I know he meant well, but when you have to go out to the shack (it wasn't a barn but it was a nice size) in freezing weather and 3 feet of snow before school (Thank God for very small towns where the bus drivers wait for you) to bring hot water to cover the iced over water from the night before...not so exciting!!! His names was Patches because he had black and white patches like a cow.
I did take riding lessons from one a Clarence's friends' daughters, and I remember Dad teaching me to ride a purple bike with streamers on the handles down the same rural road Patches ran down after getting out during a blizzard (again....not so exciting trying to catch him).
Dad put up a tire swing in the crab apple tree, and put two swings in the garage (which he added on with my uncles and friends) from the rafters so we could swing during the winter.
Another thing we kids looked forward to every year was apple picking. Mom and Dad worked at this apple orchard not far from our house. As they were on ladders, we would pick up the apples that had fallen to the ground. No apple tastes better than a fresh from the tree McIntosh!!! Only during the 10 months that I was Dad's caregiver did I find out that the mjoney they earned from apple picking was Christmas money. If it was a good harvest, Santa was very generous. If it was a bad harvest, Santa wasn't as nice. I remember very few actual gifts. I remember getting a Baby Alive one year, and a vanity table another. What I do remember is going into the woods to cut down the Christmas tree (many times they looked like Charlie Brown trees). I remember going to my paternal grandparents on Christmas Eve and having Christmas dinner with my maternal grandparents. The memories are the time spent, not the gifts received. I am sure my brother and sisters will agree we had a wonderful childhood.
We moved to Pennsylvania in 1978, to Michigan in 1981 and to Louisiana in 1983. In 1986 Dad started doing contract work at different nuclear plants around the country, but he instilled in us a very strong work ethic, as well as taught us the value of helping others. Because he was always one to help others he formed very strong friendships.
While I was married to #1, I knew it wasn't going to work (I won't get into that here, but I will say it wasn't just a mindset), so I started going to school to get my paralegal degree.. I knew I couldn't support James and Amanda on minimum wage. For those 2 years I was working as an assistant manager at Domino's -65 hours a week and going to school full time at night. Right after I graduated, I was going somewhere with Mom and she said.."You are Daddy's Little Girl. He is so proud that you went to school while working and got your degree." I was dumbfounded!
When Mom was diagnosed with leukemia (in 1995) he worked even harder to make sure she got the best medical care possible. Although they had their problems when we were young, her illness strengthened their marriage. When I would visit them with James and Amanda, they would always hold hands in the car.
When Mom started developing tumors and decided to stop treatment in 2006 (the nurse told her the chemo was feeding the tumors so Mom told her she was done and had her take the IV out right then), he tried to retire, but they wouldn't let him and set him up remotely (he was working in Nebraska, their home was in Wisconsin). He worked so hard to make her last days comfortable. This was an especially difficult time because we were supposed to be celebrating Chris and Sarah's wedding (Finally!). They got married in Lake Tahoe on 7/2/06, Mom and Dad's 43rd Anniversary was 7/4/06 and Mom finally earned her wings on 7/7/06.
Mom's funeral was the first time I ever saw my dad cry. I was sitting next to him and the tears were just flowing onto his tie. Because Mom was cremated and wanted to be buried in Louisiana, 6 weeks passed between the funeral in Wisconsin and the burial in Louisiana. After Dad went back to work, I worried about him so we would either talk or email every day. When Christmastime came he called me because he didn't know what to do. Mom had always handled the gifts. I suggested to him that if he was ready, maybe he could give all the granddaughters some of mom's jewelry (he had bought her some nice pieces over the years). I told him not to worry about the adults, just worry about the grandkids. He called me and said he didn't know what to give Dr. Sarah (my sister-in-law). I asked if he still had Mom's cameo ring (he did so he gave that to her). That Christmas, all the females got some jewelry with a note that it was mom's/Grammy's. He had picked out Mom's pearl earrings for Hannah which she first wore on her First Communion.
Chris and Sarah dated for several years before they got married. Sarah said she had to finish her PhD first. Dad started calling her Dr. Sarah so as not to be confused with Sarah Denise (my niece and Godchild).
He gave me a credit card and I became his personal shopper (I was the only one that used that card and I only used it for his gifts...and a one way ticket to Wisconsin when he was hospitalized/diagnosed). I really enjoyed doing it for him.
The following Christmas, Taylor was here so I asked Dad if he still he Mom's monogrammed "Tay" necklace (sinceTaylor was named after her). We had all gone to Carolyn's for Thanksgiving (2007). and exchanged gifts then. When Dad gave the necklace to Dr. Sarah (since Taylor was only 4 months old, Dr. Sarah teared up).
It was during this trip that I noticed Dad had lost some weight, but I attributed it to his grieving because he went to Wisconsin every year for a physical. The following summer he went to St. Thomas with my Uncle Johnny (Mom's baby brother). Right before the trip his good friend Harold died of a heart attack. Dad called Harold's companion, Bonnie, and said he was going to cancel the trip. Bonnie told him"Don't you dare. Tay has wanted you to go on this trip for years but you couldn't with her illness." Bonnie was one of the sweetest women you could ever know. Unfortunately, she list her battle with cancer last year. I miss her.
After St. Thomas, Dad went to Maine to visit my grandmother and the rest of the family. For years Dad had wanted a family reunion. He called me while he was there to tell me to get with Aunt Lucy because it was going to happen the following July (2009). I will have to write another post just about that, but it was amazing!
Thanksgiving 2008 - Dad came to visit. I almost missed him outside of baggage claim. He had lost so much weight, his eyes were sunken in, his skin had a strange, grayish look to it. I didn't know what to say. He had been complaining of shoulder pain for months and the doctors sent him to physical therapy, but he was in so much pain. When we got home he took off his button down shirt then took off his turtleneck (Louisiana is much warmer than Nebraska), and the skin was just hanging off. It reminded me of mom when she was going through chemo. I felt bad afterward, but I blurted out "is something wrong?" He said "not that they (doctors) know of." I told him that he had to promise me to tell me if anything was wrong and he promised. Dad stayed on the couch, with a heating pad on his back and taking pain pills for 5 days. On Sunday morning he left for a little while to go to the cemetery and visit Mom. When he got back we talked about what tests the doctor had run, I offered some suggestions then I asked him if he had a medical power of attorney. He said he did but had to update it because it listed Mom and Chris. That whole visit my husband kept saying "if something was wrong the doctors would tell him" but I knew better.
Dad retired Christmas Eve 2008. He was in so much pain he couldn't concentrate at work anymore so he drove back to Wisconsin overnight to beat a blizzard.
After New Years Dad went to the doctor and was told he had Pancoast Tumor that was wrapped around the blood vessels and nerves to his right arm. He was to go in on January 6th for a biopsy. I did research and learned that type of tumor is hard to diagnose and that it was a form of lung cancer (Dad never came our and said the word cancer). On January 6th I tried to call him several times with no answer. The morning of January 7th...no answer. I talked to my niece Sarah who lived in Wisconsin but was down here visiting. I asked her for the neighbors number and told her I was calling Bonnie, I didn't care if he got mad at me. I called Becky (the neighbor) who offered to go check on dad and called me that his phone had died and he was there but didn't look good. I called Bonnie and explained his pain, that he was supposed to have a biopsy. She called him and talked to him for a while and called me to tell me she was going to bring him soup the next day (Sarah was driving back that day). Later she called and told me he didn't look good and needed to go to the doctor,but he refused. When Sarah got back she took him to the doctor who sent him right to the hospital. At first he refused but she said she would call ambulance so he agreed. While they were checking him, Sarah called me and told me to get up there and to charge a one way ticket on his credit card (she was an accounting major so helped him with finances and was on his checking account).
The day I flew up was the day President Obama was inaugurated (because it was on every tv in the airport). When I walked into Dad's hospital room I had to run to the bathroom to cry. He looked like a 90 year old frail man. At the time I didn't know how out of it he was and I didn't want him to see my reaction.
They had done another biopsy and the doctor said "it's lung cancer, but we kind of knew that" except I didn't really know. I suspected but when they say those words you just go numb.
What I found out during his week in the hospital was that they only got nerve during the first biopsy, so sent Dad home with a prescription of morphine. He would take one and go to sleep, wake up thinking he had slept 8 hours and would take another one. At first we thought he had taken 12 extra, but while cleaning and sweeping, it was only 6 (some had fallen and rolled under the couch). Because he had taken too much morphine he was incoherent and hallucinating. His doctors said he couldn't live alone so after discussions with Chris, his doctors and my sisters, it was decided he would move to Louisiana to live with me and my family so I could care for him. Carolyn flew up from Florida, we packed him up and drove him down south.
My next post will be about the year of care and treatment.
Part of the reason I am writing this is because it's therapeutic for me (thanks BE!). The main reason I am write it though, is because I had a GREAT dad! I miss him and love him and wish he was still here.
(To be continued)
