Dad's Final Summer- A Ten-Year-Old's Memories

I will never forget the day Darwin S Warriner, our Dad, passed away.  Summer was winding down and school was getting ready to start back up in a week. I was going into 6th grade and was 10 years old.  Dad was 58 years old.  He worked the swing shift at Teledyne Ryan.  He went to work in the afternoon while we were at school and came home after we had gone to bed, around 11 PM or closer to midnight.

When he worked this swing shift, he would come home in time for Johnny Carson.  Mom would already be in bed, but she sometimes made him a batch of popcorn (popped on the stove because there were no microwave ovens yet) And she had some soft butter on the stove in a little yellow ceramic melting pot for him to heat up and drizzle over the popcorn.  Sometimes instead of popcorn he would open a can of pitted black olives and munch on them while having a late night goblet of Old Crow.  I know this because sometimes I would sneak out of my room and quietly visit with him. If he was in a good mood he would let me stay up and share his snacks.  If he was feeling grumpy, he shooed me back to bed.

 It seemed like Dad's work schedule changed every few months.  Sometimes he had a regular day shift, then it would change to nights, and we kids had to make sure we were really quiet during the morning because he would be asleep.

He had been really busy that summer with home projects in addition to working.  He had spent the month of July redoing Jeff's bedroom, which had originally been known as the sun room. This was the room that everyone walked through to access the swimming pool, and it was always getting wet from us kids dripping pool water all over the place.  The walls had been covered with Chiquita Banana, German cross, and Nazi stickers, compliments of big brother Darwin Don, who was the previous occupant of that room in the sixties before he ran away from home, got into all sorts of trouble and never lived in that room again.

The day after his final birthday

Dad put up light tan colored wood paneling on the walls, pulled up the carpet and  laid down small white ceramic tiles with blue grout on the floor.  Every day he would try to get a little bit more done on the room before getting ready for work.

New piano, new tile on the floor, new wall paneling

When the den was finished in August, he bought me a new piano to replace the ancient stiff-keyed player piano that was getting harder for me to play. The piano was delivered on August 30,  and they put the new piano back in the newly remodeled den.

 There was also the excitement of a new granddaughter, Lynda's daughter Sara, who had just been born in early July.

Normally, Dad smelled like pipe tobacco.  But that summer he smelled like Heet. Heet was a topical painkiller that came in a bottle.  It was like a giant nail polish bottle, but instead of a brush being attached to the lid, there was a sponge.  His left arm had been killing him for several weeks, and instead of going to the doctor to see what was wrong, he painted that stuff onto his upper arm and shoulder every day.

 He was also having stomach problems.  I remember he and Mom often sending me to the bathroom to get them the "chalk." It was a thick white chalky medicine and came in a dark blue glass bottle. Its real name was Milk of Magnesia. Dad said he had an ulcer, and was treating it with "chalk," at night,  and by drinking glasses of Half and Half in the morning with his Folgers coffee.

September came, and the mailman delivered a package from Aunt Amy.  She had made pajamas for all of us kids in addition to some new play clothes.

Here I am, posing with my new piano and my new nightie that Aunt Amy made for me. Mom took this picture to send to Aunt Amy with my thank you note.  That thank you note was never written. The date on the wall calendar was September 7.  Little did I know that Dad had only one more day to live.

Wednesday, September 8th was just another day.  Dad worked in the afternoon.  I don't remember saying goodbye to him when he went to work.  Like I said, it was just another day.  We kids didn't interact too much with Dad, because he was either asleep, tackling a home project, or working at Ryan.

Thursday was trash day on Eagle Street. This was before plastic bins on wheels, automated trash trucks, or even Hefty plastic trash bags existed.  Everyone put their kitchen trash in paper grocery bags and put them out in the big metal trash cans that sat near the garage. My bedroom window overlooked the driveway where our trash cans lived.

On September 8, after our usual TV dinners and my hour of piano practice,  Mom sent Jeff, Tabatha, and me to bed.  I spent the next couple of hours on the top bunk, under the covers with a flashlight reading, because that's what I always did when I was sent to bed way too early.  I had been asleep maybe an hour when I heard a familiar sound that woke me up.  Dad, just home from work, was in the process of getting the cans out to the curb.  Since the cans were metal, they made noise.  It was the sound of metal scaping on cement that woke me, and it seemed noisier than usual.  But, knowing it was just Dad taking out the trash, I turned over and fell back to sleep.

Suddenly I was shaken awake by Mom.  She was nervous and upset.  She told me I needed to go find someone who would stay with us kids, because Daddy was sick and had to go to the hospital.  I jumped off the top bunk and ran down the hall.  When I got to the living room, the lights were on.  Dad was lying in his La-Z-Boy,  unconscious. He had a sheet covering him with only his face showing. His face was white, and he was completely still.  I looked at him briefly while Mom urged me to go outside and find a neighbor who would come over.

 I ran out into the dark stillness of night, wearing my brand new nightie from Aunt Amy.  I couldn't go to our next door neighbors, because there had been a long-standing feud between our family and theirs.  I crossed the street to Bob and Margaret Raymond's house, and pounded on their door.  No one answered, because they were elderly and hard of hearing.  I ran to the next house and knocked urgently, but no one answered.  My bare feet and nightie were getting wet from running across damp lawns.  I glanced across the street at our house.   Mom was looking out from the porch, awaiting the ambulance.

 The next house I tried  had brand new neighbors who had arrived in August.  The lady was an oil painter and had thrown out some of her paintings the week before.  I was pulling them out of the trash when she came out and introduced herself as Katherine DeSanti.  She was a nice lady who thought it was funny that I liked her painting failures.  When I knocked on Katherine's door, she answered.  I told her we needed help and she rushed right over, just in time to see the ambulance pull up.  Mom tried to shield me from what was happening.  I could see the men working over Dad briefly, then they put him on a gurney, hurried him out of the house, bounced the gurney down the steps. They slid him up into the ambulance and slammed the door. I don't remember red lights or a siren. I just remember that suddenly Mom and Dad were gone.  Katherine took me inside and just sat with me.  I remember telling her that he would be fine, because one of my favorite TV shows was Marcus Welby MD, and no one ever died on that show.  I was going on and on telling her that he would be in the hospital a few days and then he would come home. It didn't even cross my mind that we wouldn't have a happy ending.

Dawn broke. The dark sky slowly began to change to light, the birds started to sing, and the little kids woke up.   They had no idea what had happened just a couple hours earlier. Mrs. DeSanti was still with us, just quietly watching and waiting.  I think she knew what we would soon be told.

Then Mom was home, crying hysterically.  She thanked Mrs DeSanti, who left for home.  Then she told me that Dad was dead.  I really couldn't believe it.  I felt betrayed by my favorite TV show.  As Mom cried, Jeff and Tabatha started crying too, although they really didn't know why they were crying. I left the house with our two dogs, Tiny and Collette, and walked them down to the end of the street, where a rickety white fence separated the dirt road from the canyon.  I stared out at the dead wildflowers that grew along the canyon's edge and wondered what this meant. Everyone had a dad. This was new territory.  How would we go on without our Dad?

Dad was Dead on Arrival at Mercy Hospital.  I believe he was already gone when I stopped to look at him on my way outside to get help.  Since he was DOA, he had to go to the medical examiner for an investigation.  The findings are not surprising.  If Dad had gone to the doctor earlier in the summer for his arm pain and his constant indigestion, could he have been saved?  In 1971, perhaps not.  All I know is that from September 9, 1971 onward, without Dad, our lives were never the same.