So I'll read just one more little passage
from the book, which is near the end.
And it's how I got the name for the book.
My father died of cancer in 1969,
and fortunately I had a sabbatical that year,
and I was able to go and take care of him.
There was nobody else to do it.
And I took care of him for three months,
and he dreaded the hospital.
He had been gone to the hospital,
had surgery, and found out he had cancer and came home,
didn't want to have anything to do with the hospital.
He was a wonderful patient and we got really,
really well acquainted for the first time
during those three months.
And then his kidneys failed and the doctor
said he had to have a thing put him, a catheter, thank you.
And then he had to have a catheter put in.
We had to take him into the hospital and just
for one night, and we could bring him home the next day.
We promised him.
Well, we took him in, and by the time
he weighed about 75 pounds.
And he had to go to the bathroom,
I picked him up in my arms and was carrying him
to the bathroom.
As we went by this young attractive nurse who
was bent over fixing his bed, he pinched her on the fanny.
And within-- he was dead within 12 hours.
He was still pinching women on the fanny.
Anyway, so I stayed with him, then he died in the night.
And this is the after-- that afternoon.
After everyone goes I sit beside him through a golden afternoon.
A little wind has come up and the trees
are dropping their leaves as if they
are frantic to embrace winter naked.
It's the last day of October.
Outside the tall Gothic windows of the old hospital
there is a rain of falling golden maple leaves.
I went to write a few lines of a poem,
but have nothing to write on.
I take one of the small paper napkins
with a border of flowers from his bedside table and begin.
My father went in search of death,
like a mole, blind and beautiful.
His life was an unmade bed.
Nobody rich or famous ever slept there.
Old father, it was harder than hell to love you,
and impossible not to.
The ink bleeds into the soft tissue of the napkin
and is hard to read.
Suddenly I'm aware of something else.
Some movement.
Quickly, I look at Red.
His eyes are open, that startling blue,
and his right hand is moving slowly, slowly upward.
The hand is gesturing, yes, Red, I'm here.
The hand is gesturing toward the window and the rain
of the golden leaves.
"Beautiful," he says softly.
Then his hand lowered, his eyes closed,
and his breathing becomes more labored.
I talked to him but there is no response.
Then I looked down at the paper napkin on which I had just
written "blind and beautiful" a few minutes before
he said the word.
I can't recall him ever using that word before,
nor could he have seen what I had written.
I had my blessing.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]