Today is my later stepfather, Antoine Delmenico’s birthday. Had he lived, he would have been 97. His passing in October still affects me, including occasional dreams, etc. What’s odd is that I didn’t think it would affect me at all. And yet, here I am, missing him today. Historically, I would have gone to AZ to see him. I, of course, missed his birthday last year due to Covid, but had just seen him in late January, so it didn’t seem so a long time until it became one. The Virus robbed me of much of his final days, something I’ll never get back, so a few thoughts honoring the man before the day ends.
My adopted father died in Dec, 1987. My mother met Antoine through a mutual friend late summer 1988. He was immediately smitten with her, but she was not even considering dating, let alone marriage at that point. It wouldn’t be until early 1989 that they went on their first date. He was charming and romantic. He lived in MI at the time but frequently visited Colorado Springs where we lived. He wrote her letters and made little drawings in the margins for her. He was a talented artist, though he never did anything with it.
Antoine was especially good at sports. Unbelievably so. In his sixties, he regularly played tennis (his passion), golf, skied, shot hoops, ice-skated, biked, and just about anything where he could show off his prowess. He loved the Detroit Pistons, Lions, and Tigers. Shortly after they married, Antoine won the KRDO tennis tournament, beating a guy in his thirty’s. He won several such matches and had once been ranked (though he never considered it a career, just a hobby.) At times this amazed me, but often it frustrated me as I had very little interest in sports. This would hurt our relationship, as we didn’t speak the same “language” in many ways.
He was Swiss, having immigrated to America nearly thirty years earlier. He spoke with a thick accent and many common expressions eluded him, still. He once commented on some fast highway drivers as driving like, “gang bastards” (which I still think is more appropriate than “gang busters.” He also called brush “bubbleweeds” instead of “tumbleweeds.” You get the idea. In addition to these language oddities, he also didn’t understand a lot of American customs, especially when it can to being part of a family or having a son. In his sixties, most of his family thought he’d be a bachelor until he died. He came from a sizable family but seemed to be the outlier of his brothers. Part of that was his bluntness, which came out often as rudeness. This always surprised him as he was just speaking the “truth.” “Your wife is too fat,” he once told a tennis partner. Not because he was insulting her, but that he thought if his wife would exercise, she would be healthier. This is the type of directness we often see in children or undiagnosed autistic adults. And I’m sure, Antoine was undiagnosed. Once my son had been determined to be on the spectrum, I could see the similarities between the two and did my best to steer my child away from his grandfather’s particular method of communicating. I believed I succeeded, though most efforts to do the same with my stepfather failed.
But before you think I’m being too critical or too harsh, let me tell you this. Antoine was my hero in many ways. The man was proof that God can create superhumans. The tennis match I mentioned earlier is nothing compared to stuff I saw him due in our 30+ years together. He defied all age stereotypes, whether it be going to the park to shoot hoops with kids, to hot-dogging on the slopes, to surviving an injury that would have killed a lesser man.
For many years, after his body and eyesight would not let him do sports anymore, he started walking from his house in AZ down a trail and out into the desert for a mile one way and then a mile back. Mind you, this was his eighties into his nineties. I often worried about him because his pride would not let him A. wear a hat, B. take water with him, C. take a lifealert or other mobile device along. As I expected would happen, I got a call that he had vanished in June of 2018. I told them where the trail was, expecting them to find his body.
They found him already in the local hospital.
He was severely dehydrated, sunburned, and bruised all over. He’d collapsed into a drainage ditch, and a passerby discovered him calling for help. His kidneys had begun to shut down, his muscles atrophied, and he had no idea of his name, where he was, or anything (he’d left his wallet at home, of course.) But he was alive.
In the coming months, he would recover almost completely back to where’d he been before the accident after months of PT and even avoided major surgery on an artery in his leg. He tried living at home with a caregiver, but remember that part about the bluntness? Yeah, they didn’t get along too well. So, left with no other options, I convinced him to go into assisted living. Still, he walked his mile every day, wearing a track in the backyard. He also volunteered to do yard work, like raking or tree trimming.
Unfortunately, the heat stroke affected his mind more than this body. His memory grew worse, as did his eyesight, and he often begged God to take him home less he ever spend a day unable to exercise or know who he was. On October 4th, 2020, God finally answered him.
From the time of my mom’s death in 2013 to my stepfather’s, I visited him easily a hundred times. Not all those visits went well, but we found a language we could speak: food! Being Swiss, he understood wines and good food. I took him out to various places around his home, with the Friday all-you-can-eat Fish fries being his favorite. We went for burgers and steaks and seafood and pizza. We drank beer and wine, and I told him stories he’d forgotten, and he told me ones I’d never heard about his childhood and of his time in the army. He’d complain to me (and anyone who would listen) how much his life was like a prison, except for that last visit in January.
Out of the blue, he said he finally understood why I’d put him in the assisted living place, and that his life was not so bad. He’d adopted a stray cat, or better put, the cat had picked a human familiar, who would follow him on his daily walks and sit on his lap when he rested. He was cooked for and cared for by the staff and other residents. His remaining relatives would visit him, including his nephew who flew every couple of years from Switzerland. Antoine was at peace with his life. I told him, as I often did, it was my duty and my honor to make sure he was safe and happy. I should have known, and maybe I did, that the end was coming.
If you’d asked me, or anyone who knew him, we’d tell you Antoine was going to live until 100 or more. He was superhuman, unbreakable, a hero. But with his eyesight and mind rapidly failing, my greatest fear was what happened when he’d wake up in darkness and have no memory of who he was, where he was, and who was around him. I didn’t want that for him. Despite that, when the call came in that he was delusional and they thought he had suffered a series of mini-strokes, it still came as a surprise. I defied every covid restriction and drove to AZ overnight. I got to his bedside by that afternoon, talked with him, though he was unresponsive. Finally, the staff told me to go to my airbnb, as his condition hadn’t changed. I’d just laid down to go to sleep when they called to tell me he’d passed.
Always on his terms, Antoine chosen to wait until I left so I wouldn’t be there to hear another parent’s last breath. I had already done that twice. He spared me a third one.
I had a lot to say to his body the next day, regrets that I’d been uninterested in rebuilding a car with him or learning more about the sports he loved (I still can’t figure out tennis scoring). I regretted never calling him “dad,” since that was a name that I felt at the time belonged to the father I grew up with. I had thought Antoine hadn’t shown me what I thought I father was supposed to be like, but I hadn’t really noticed all the ways he had until he was gone. He’d shown care for my well-being and health (still telling me if I’d just exercise, I wouldn’t be so tired all the time.) He’d showed as much interest in my writing as anyone who doesn’t read fiction could (he even attended a couple of my readings). He loved his grandson, even though he understood him less than me. He taught me things, shared his life with me, never hit my mother, never threw me out of a house, never stopped trying, even if in his own way.
And I miss him, that curmudgeon who made my life hell at times, but also made it infinitely more interesting. So Happy Birthday, Antoine! I’m sorry we can’t be together today for your birthday breakfast, but I’m sure wherever you are, the hashbrowns are so crispy you don’t have to send that back three times and the eggs are always “looking at you.”
DB
04/26/21