Edward Cowell
My father was the youngest son of 4 children; Warren (the odlest), Delores (oldest sister), Edward (my father) and Ethel (youngest child). Born in 1928, dad grew up during the depression in Hawaii on the island of Oahu. He would vividly recall the day he, his mother and step brother, were walking on the street when they heard the announcement that Pearl Harbor had been bombed on the porch radio of a neighbor's. They were all in shock!
When he was a senior in high school he dropped out and joined the Army. Stationed in Alabama he was a member of the 82nd Airborne and became quite a skilled parachuteist. At this same time he was ranked 7th among the amature boxers in the nation and would have gone on to a professional career had he not broken his jaw in three places in what was to be his last fight (which he won on a TKO).
In 1951 he married my mother and they both left the south and returned to Hawaii to set up housekeeping. My father worked hard to put food on the table and a roof over our heads. Sometimes this meant working as many as three jobs! Door-to-door he's sold vaccum cleaners and books; he was a dry cleaning delivery man, and he sold tires at a local auto store. Later he found work as a welder and with that career change things began to look much better. Jobs were steady but sometimes it required his going to another island or even California. He left, reluctantly so that he could make a good living. But, unfortunately, this meant he was hardly at home and so he and I didn't get a chance to really get close when I was young.
But when I was about 15 my father suffered a terrible fall from one of the buildings he was welding. It seems that the shift before his had listed some I-beems as being welded when they had not been. So when he took hold of one, to get his balance, he fell forty feet to a cement slab. It was many long months in the hospital before he even came home. The only good thing was that worker's compensaton awarded him a life long pension. This was, I suppose, a fair exchange considering he lost the total use of his right arm! But my dad wasn't to be kept down. About a year later he and my mother began their own general repair business.
My mother and father fought a lot when I was young. It wasn't until I was nearly 23 that I found out that it was because of a lot of lies my mother was telling about him and that he was trying to ignore her constanct badgering but after a week of steady harrasment he'd loose his temper. [Now I am not condoning violence or even fighting or argueing ... but I do know, from this and my own experiences, that there are limits we all have and we don't all make the right choices when our limits are reached. Thank goodness domestic violence is not as closeted as it was when I was young and people are learning they have choices ... other than striking back.]
When I turned 18 my mother told me she had filed for divorce from my father. He moved out a few days later and the already distant relationship we had became an impossible-to-cross sea of anger and resentment.
In 1973 he moved to New York City and that was the beginning of 4 long years of silence between us. But in 1977 I found myself without a job, and no prospects. I was being evicted from my house, my dogs had to be given away and I had no place to go. I called my mother and asked for the $150 it would take to fly me home (I was in California at the time) and, inspite of her having over $30,000 in the bank, I was told no. She needed the money for her old age. This forced me to call on my estranged father. One call and he agreed to send me a bus ticket. A week or so later I arrived, for the first time, in New York City. I moved into his Brooklyn apartment and began looking for work.
I lived with my father in Brooklyn for about 6 months and then moved to the East Side of Manhattan. The short time we lived together almost completely mended the break in our relationship. He was open to my questions about him and my mother and their fighting and eventual divorce. (That I will cover when I do the page about my mother.)
In 1979 I moved to Washington State and married a man I'd met while in New York City (he was from Washington). A year later I had my daughter. Two years after we were married he left us. With no support from him and jobs very hard to find, my father moved from Brooklyn to Washington to help me with my daughter. This was in 1983. In 1985 the three of us moved to Los Angeles. From 1983 to 1998 my father and I lived together except for three years in the middle.
In 1993 his health began to get very bad and we thought he might have a brain tumor due to a bad case of poor balance and mood swings. There was no tumor. But two years later he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. I think he had this for much longer than the five years prior to his death but we'll never know for how long.
With his health so much worse by 1995 I began trying to get him to consider a nursing home/retirement center but he would not even consider it. So my daughter and I would spend nearly all our free time making sure he was ok. His falls became more fequent, sometimes several in a day and he began to leave the house and wander, not knowing what he was doing or where he was. He would usually be found by either a neighbor or the police and be taken to the hospital where we would be contacted and have to come down and get him. Once, though, he fell outside and no one found him for several hours. My daughter came home before me and found him. He had laid on the hot asphalt for about 3 hours and suffered 1st and 2nd degree burns to his arm and shoulders. It was the worst accident he had had to date.
I began, at this point, to try and put him in a nursing home by court order, if it came to that. We both were very worried that he'd burn himself or fall and break his neck. It was a lot of closed doors with no help. "He makes too much money," to qualify for this program. "He's not old enough," to qualify for that program. It was an endless list of caseworkers that swore they'd call back and never did and paperwork that would wall paper the Vatican ... all to no end!
In December, 1997 I took a four day weekend and flew to Oregon for a MUCH needed rest. On the very day I was flying to Oregon (while I was in the air) he suffered a stroke. He was home alone at the time. My daughter was working and didn't get home until after 5pm. She called the paramedics immediately and he was rushed to the hospital. There he was diagnosed with encephalitis, Parkenson's Disease, and a left side of the brain stroke. Before I could return home he was placed in a nursing home in hopes of recovery from the stoke. A week later he contracted pneumonia. A month later he died. It happend all so quickly ... I am still stunned over just how fast we can loose someone we love.
My father was a generous man ... often giving his money to people that had little or none. I had to always stop him from giving to every person on the street that had their hand out! He would always say, "Thank God I have it to give ... " He loved me and his granddaughter and I'm very grateful for that. I am also very grateful that we mended the cavern that my mother had put between us and were able to spend the time together that we had.
I do not feel, though, that I was the best of daughters. I lost my temper with him a lot and had a hard time dealing with the falling and his not being able to do as much for himself as I knew he wanted to and that he needed to. I doubt if I'll ever forgive myself for all the times I wasn't as good to him as I knew I should have been. My daughter was wonderful in taking care of him. I only hope that he understood how hard worked (with my job, raising my child, and taking care of him ... little or no time left for me) I was. I certainly hope so.
I miss him very much, though I'm very glad it's over. The last week was awful and he was so helpless and in pain. If I could have chosen, it would have been to make him 100% better. But since that was never an option, I'm glad that he's at peace now.
I love my father and always will. He was the most positive man in my life!