Thursday October 7, 2004 The Last Days of Mr. Upton

Thursday October 7, 2004 The Last Days of Mr. Upton

Today, I want to tell you about my Dad and his friend Mr. Upton. I’m using Mr. Upton’s real name because he died recently nearing 100 years of age and with him his family line expired. There is a Thomas Hardy poem that laments this finality so well but it is beyond my recollection.

Mr. Upton was at least 10 years my father’s senior. He and his mother came into our lives when I was still an adolescent. His mother was infirmed and the two rented a house near ours in El Paso, Texas. My mother and father became close with Mr. Upton and his mother and in time, my parents began to share the load of caring for Mr. Upton’s aging mother, who became progressively more bedridden over time. Finally, she became too much for the three of them to handle, what with their jobs and us four kids to care for.

Mr. Upton reluctantly decided to put his mother into what today we call “assisted living” center. Back then it was called an “old folks home.” In a matter of months Mrs. Upton passed away, but the friendship between Mr. Upton and my parents continued. He became a regular guest at dinner on Sunday and the practice continued for as long as I can remember. My mother loved anyone who would sit at her table and eat their fill of her cooking, her version of Filipino and U.S. Deep South fusion. It was her way of showing love. Mr. Upton never left anything on his plate.

In his later years, Mr. Upton became increasingly withdrawn and housebound. This was quite a contrast to the man we remembered in earlier life who exercised daily and delighted in walking long distances. Old age had begun to catch up to him and at some point he retired to his home a few blocks from ours in El Paso and seldom came out on his own. My father would visit him regularly becoming the caregiver to the aging older man. When he turned 80 my father began to offload some duties of caring for Mr. Upton onto a Mexican maid named Eva, a bubbly, rotund middle-aged woman, who threw herself into domestic service.

My dad had reduced his duties to ensuring Mr. Upton had everything he needed—food, bills paid, medicine stocked and administered at the correct time each day, the house in good repair, etc. Eva was the one who manhandled Mr. Upton, shaving him every day, helping him clean himself, keeping his house clean and his laundry taken care of.

The toll of taking care of Mr. Upton began to show on my father over the past few years, though he never shirked his duty. He did begin to lament that he was bound to the old man and the burden of his duty was getting heavier and harder to bear. The older man must have realized the tough state the two of them were in. He had given up on this world and was anxious to get on to the next. He asked my dad one day, “Mac, why is death taking so long? I just wish I could go to sleep and get it over with.” My dad looked at his friend and said, “Mr. Upton we have to wait for nature to take its course.”

It wasn’t long after that Mr. Upton passed away. The day was like any other that my father recounted to me concerning the old man. Mom had prepared Mr. Upton his breakfast—grits and eggs, which my Dad had taken up and fed the small amount the old man was willing to take. Toward evening Eva had gone to the house to spend the night. Eva has a home in Juarez but likes to stay over on the El Paso side of the Rio Grande during the week to cut down the commuting. Having her stay in Mr. Upton’s spare bedroom was convenient for Eva and my dad who always wanted someone at Mr. Upton place overnight in case he had an emergency.

Dad had asked him what he wanted for dinner earlier and Mr. Upton had immediately answered “a bologna sandwich.” That evening dad brought the older man his bologna sandwich and he took a small amount before declaring he was tired and wanted to sleep. By the time my dad had returned home, Eva called to say Mr. Upton had stopped breathing. Dad called the ambulance and when they arrived, the old man had gotten his wish. He had died if not in his sleep, in his bed. The body lay in wait for a doctor to arrive and sign a death certificate.

From there Mr. Upton was taken to the funeral home where he had already made arrangements for his final rest. The arrangements were as follows. Mr. Upton’s family had a burial plot in Watertown, New York—just outside of Syracuse. He had a place in that plot that was paid for a hundred years ago. Everyone in his family was buried there and he wanted to join them in death. The El Paso funeral home was to prepare Mr. Upton’s body for travel and he would fly one-way in his coffin to Syracuse and from there by hearse to the cemetery containing his family plot for burial.

The first problem came when my dad checked in at the funeral home in El Paso to make sure Mr. Upton’s body was being taken care of according to his wishes. The body wasn’t. It was not in the coffin Mr. Upton had bought and paid for but in another coffin. His model, the funeral home owner declared was no longer being made and he had to be placed in another model. The coffin wasn’t much different from any of the others in the home but my dad admitted he was not up on the differences in coffins and they could easily and probably had stiffed Mr. Upton.

The El Paso funeral home’s job was to get Mr. Upton on a plane bound for Syracuse. At the other end my dad had made arrangements with a local funeral home to take possession of Mr. Upton’s body and ensure it was buried in the family plot. Once the body arrived in Watertown, another problem quickly arose, something the New York funeral home was unaware of or was reluctant to discuss with my father in their earlier conversations.

The family plot where Mr. Upton was to be buried was full. Some time years back a road had been run through the cemetery and it had cut into some of the Upton plot and the area that was set aside for Mr. Upton was now the imminent domain of whoever put in the road. You’ll have to purchase another plot the funeral home declares. Unwilling to argue across the distance my father reluctantly agrees to purchase another plot in the cemetery so that Mr. Upton could at last be laid to rest.

Besides the plot, did my father also want a headstone? Of course, he couldn’t allow his friend’s grave to go unmarked. Now, my father had yet another problem. It seems that the Uptons had decided to have one large headstone for the entire family in their plot. And the names of everyone in the family would be listed with their date of birth and when each passed away, the date of death would be added.

You guessed. There on the headstone as plain as day was Mr. Upton name and his date of birth all waiting for a date of death to be added. Not only did Mr. Upton name appear on two headstones, on one he was shown as still alive. This could not stand, my father concluded. He would have to journey to Watertown, find someone to add the date of death to Mr. Upton family headstone. And he would have to verify that the new head stone he had ordered for Mr. Upton new plot was correct and the old man was resting peacefully in his new home.

My Dad’s sojourn to Watertown, tomorrow and Mr. Upton’s legacy the day after.