Ben Stein's Diary: Au Revoir, Pop
Stein, Benjamin J.
This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text. When he calmed down—and he always is calmer when my sister or I am around—I asked him about why...
...He's stabilized now and the doctor is coming out to talk to you...
...Her perfect blue eyes were filled with tears...
...Now the doctors have called my sis-loneliness and fear...
...He lifted open his eyelids...
...But when I went in to see Pop, he looked awful...
...Wednesday D -Day...
...He did indeed look much better...
...I stayed and he slept and then he awoke and looked surprised that I was there...
...The doctor told me they had stopped his antibiotics because his lungs looked so well, but I think he's still very, very sick...
...Waking him up all night when he needed his sleep...
...Pop," I said, "your X-ray is perfect...
...That perfect X-ray...
...How will I live without him...
...She looked serious...
...Just please, please 1, my bed, looking out at the September fog, wake up...
...r MOVING...
...Then I looked at Desiree...
...What do you think could possibly be more important to me than helping my son...
...Where else can I go where I feel totalAdvertiser In . ex ly safe and protected just lying on the By patronizing the companies and products posted in this issue, your positive couch while my Pop watches Michael response rewards them for advertising in one of the gems of American publishing, Jordan or Pete Sampras...
...I said...
...He helped me so much when my husband died right after your mother," she said...
...on his pad...
...Then the skinny doctor and Desiree told me my sister and I could come in...
...A top ICU guy, a thin, healthy-looking fellow who incongruously smells of tobacco, told us we had to leave...
...He has had an endo tube in for weeks...
...He is so amazingly smart...
...He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty," I read to my father...
...His oxygenation monitor began to ring...
...But maybe not...
...B. is here...
...I'll rake the leaves...
...He's still there and I need him...
...It'll run great and everyone will want to see it...
...Rachel back to the Watergate in my rentplease wake up...
...She said she had a plan...
...You are not going to take him off life support...
...es, he is...
...That's the respirator...
...He's being dialyzed around the clock, but it's still bad...
...I'll But alone, at night, in the River Inn, in clean up the wood pile...
...Maybe...
...He's sleeping and the This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text...
...My sister (whose behavior has been literally perfect) and I constantly reassure him that he's getting better, but I have gotten to a low state and so has she...
...You're going to be with Mom, now," I said to him...
...But a moment later, the nurse reappeared...
...In a minute, the room was filled with doctors and nurses, shooting him full of fluids, turning on and off machines...
...This kind of display is rare indeed...
...I have to go now," I said...
...He looked happy (maybe he thought I was on my way to California) and I left...
...Still, his chest is going up and down perfectly...
...Box 655, Mt...
...I don't care if he watches so raptly that he never talks or if he turns off the sound and reads War and Peace while he's watching Sammy Sosa...
...I don't want to bother you," I said...
...Pop," I kept saying to him, "you have to get better so we can go back to the hunt country near Middleburg and eat at the Red Fox Inn...
...Pop...
...Others whose names have temporarily Santa Lucia Eye Drops p. 51 failed me...
...And you're going to play with Nixon and with George Shultz and Murray Foss and you'll all play great...
...Now, Pop has had his heart opened up for surgery...
...Goodbye, Pop...
...He shook his head...
...Time to let him stop suffering...
...A great day at the Mg hospital...
...We're having a lot of trouble stabilizing him," she said...
...A doctor, the same thin athletic man who had said they could beat any germs that attacked my father, said, "It's very bad...
...I think should take away life support and let him mate refuge, the place I can go when fame he was saying goodbye...
...The American Spectator • November 1999 I stayed with him (my sister is on her way down from New York) and prayed with him endlessly...
...ed Buick and talk about how he has beatPlease...
...We talked a lot about Pop and both of us cried...
...Morris, IL 61054-8084 1-800-524-3469 IMPORTANT: Allow six weeks for address change...
...November 1999 • The American Spectator This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text...
...When I started to leave, he squeezed my hand unusually hard...
...In a thick Ukrainian accent he said that things were very bad...
...He's getting more epinephrine in an hour than you would get in a week...
...I would like it," I said...
...It's back, and now the doctors say (after just telling me yesterday they had a "bug juice" to kill any bug) that he may have a "resistant" staph such as you get only in hospitals...
...Now there's just fog in that bubble...
...My father is an extremely affectionate and playful, but not at all demonstrative, man...
...He's tough...
...Then hear about norepineph-other he has a chance if only this or that about life eternal and "the House of the will start going right...
...Okay," said a doctor...
...His monitors still tell a tale of life, but he is getting more oxygen, more EPI, more of everything to keep him alive...
...For he shall give his angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways," I read as I held his hand...
...The pneumonia...
...He has no chance at this point," said the whippet man...
...Anyway, he did not look well at all to me, but the doctors assured me his pneumonia was far better, that his lung X-ray looked great, and he was en route to recovery...
...Come in...
...Ice chips...
...Nurse Desiree came in and put her hand over my hand...
...He has intestinal bleeding, and he has liver failure...
...It has to be done in one day, so there is no time to mourn right now, only a lifetime of mourning later...
...Desiree nodded very encouragingly...
...It was indeed totally clear...
...When I think of 'after,"' he wrote, "I think of chocolate ice cream...
...He had cardiac arrest," they said...
...If it happens again, he's gone...
...So this is it," I thought...
...Please wake up...
...The blood pressure monitor was now twenty-five over twelve...
...Phone: 703-243-3733, gling...
...It was as if my parents were in my sight all night long...
...We're only keeping him going with a ton of life support...
...He still looked dubious, but he held my hand and my sister's hand with each of his hands...
...We could give him morphine, a larger dose...
...And Mom's going to have made somethi ng great for dinner, and you two will get along great...
...Yes," he nodded...
...I talked duplicated in our lives...
...When I got over to the hospital, my sister was already there looking ashen...
...71 "All right, I'll stay," I said, tears welling in my eyes...
...Something's happening," I said, "my father's collapsed...
...It was as if I were in a snow bubble with them...
...No...
...Once, during the great blizzard a few years ago, snow fell for days...
...Pop," I said...
...We'll just take down his life support to a manageable level, one that won't make his heart explode, and he'll die in an hour...
...I said probably not because of my new show, unless he were very critical...
...Hours of Psalms...
...I think it's time for some decisions...
...Cavalry...
...God, I hope so...
...No, not goodbye...
...He is sinking fast...
...He'll make it...
...Yes," I said to Dr...
...Where will be my ultifeather's touch...
...With doctors and nurses...
...He's my only father...
...He's still asleep, Fannie Mae P. 5 and the nurses give us a guardForbes 3 ed "he's hangin' in there," when we ask Fox News Channel p. 87about him...
...and "Am I recuperating...
...Read to you from the Washington Post Style section...
...Early in the morning...
...Do you have anything you want to say to B...
...And Pop, we won't ever forget how you helped us with anything, no matter what it was," I said, through sobs...
...I kissed his forehead over and over and then his cheek, with its familiar stubble I have kissed for so long, so many decades, so many tears welling up in me, now overflowing...
...He had a warmth about him, and you and your sister were so devoted to him...
...He looked doubtful...
...You have to wake up...
...He'll make it.' ?, he always did...
...He had dreamed of being on a sea cruise...
...Are you kidding...
...Pop," I said as I held his hand and kissed his forehead...
...When will I ever be able to feel safe AdvertiserPage # again anywhere if this kind of thing can p. 26happen to someone like Pop, who not American Spectator Online p. 57only talked the talk of ethics and family Blackstone Audio Books p. 2values, but also walked the walk...
...He's dead...
...Young America's Foundation p. 33 Please say hello to B." To learn more about the benefits of advertising in The American Spectator, He actually looked as if he were strugcontact: John Funk, Associate Publisher—Advertising...
...Pop, you have to get well so you can go to the opera with your pal, B." He occasionally nodded, but mostly he looked just exhausted...
...Not until there is no and stardom and riches and girls evaporate Maybe he was saying au revoir...
...Just a They say there's very little hope...
...1.Please write your new address in the space provided...
...Now, when he can, he writes notes like, "Am I ever going to get out of here...
...But for right now, goodbye to a righteous man who lived for love, to the only Dad I ever will have...
...Onto the beautiful photos of North Idaho I had put up in his room...
...He is in pain and despair...
...Anyway, I left Pop with his pal for a while...
...Box 549 , Arlington, VA 22216 and reached out and held her hand...
...It's time to let him go," said the whippet-thin doctor...
...The part where I'm just out here in the jungle on my own...
...But that's not happening...
...2.Attach the mailing label from your most recent issue...
...The blood pressure monitor was on and falling fast...
...Maybe we'll see you there...
...Right after my mother died, a family friend had asked me how I would feel if Pop had strong feelings for another woman...
...I'll do anything, but please, I feel as if I will simply disintegrate with please, please wake up...
...I held his hand until he fell asleep again and then when he awoke it was past visiting hours and I was hungry for dinner...
...It was someone else's...
...If God chooses to let him be "Pop," I said, standing next to him sob-pressors and fluids and with us instead of with Mom...
...Oh, please wake up...
...I held the Bible...
...He was only partially conscious, had a tube in his mouth, a tube in his nose, many catheters throughout his body, a ventilator helping him breathe, and monitors tracking his heartbeat and his blood pressure every instant...
...And we tell each to him about grass withering...
...What do you plan to do first after you get home...
...What do you think his chances were when 44 'I'm not supposed to get attached to patients,' Desiree said...
...Terrible," she said...
...He can barely notice her any longer...
...How's Pop...
...When I returned to Foggy Bottom, I met his pal, B., a stunningly lovely woman with grown children and many grandchildren, for dinner...
...Just be sure to allow six weeks for your change to take effect...
...Just a few parameters...
...When he awoke, my mother was coughing and unable to breathe, wheezing and gasping on the side of the bed...
...You have to get better so we can drive to Oxford and take that ferry across the Miles River...
...B. and Rachel and I looked ashen...
...He's gone...
...Pop would like this news a lot...
...He doesn't really feel healthy right now when I hold his hand...
...Are you sure that's my father's picture...
...So this is it...
...And Paul McCracken will be there, too...
...Remember that little yellow boat...
...He looked at B. She took his hand...
...A nephrologist came over and told us that if they could clear his blood stream of the uremia from his kidney failure, he could recover...
...He has become dependent on loving and being loved and Mom did that...
...He raised it, with his left and right hands, with every tube in America attached to him, and put it to his lips and kissed her hand...
...I wiped them off and they still kept coming...
...I could write a book— hmmm, now that I think of it, I do write books —about all the screwups at this hospital...
...You're going to play great...
...But that night, I started to feel desperate...
...Was it because they were looking at the wrong photo then, too...
...The morning my mother went into the hospital, the morning of the day she died, April 21, 1997 , my father had been sleeping next to her as 44 'He's a fighter...
...Look at his chest...
...He's dead...
...rine and epinephrine and work, or if his pneumonia clears up, or He did not wake up...
...Address: The American Spectator, P.O...
...But he does not look well...
...Subscriber Service PO...
...She looked up at him with her big, lovely, pitiful hazel eyes and asked, before he had said one word, "Are you going on a cruise without me...
...44 He hauled out his electric drill, put on a rubber disk, and applied it to the flywheel...
...Turn to another channel...
...His heart is shot...
...You and Rachel can wait outside and we'll tell you when he's gone...
...You'll be in a place where you won't ever know any sorrow and you'll never even know what unhappiness means and you won't ever know anything bad and you'll just lie in bed listening to baseball and then you and Rachel and I will get up and walk up to Four Corners and buy the New York Times and there'll be a big review of your book and they'll love it...
...It's starting to wall me off from my father...
...But he has only one restart in him and he's had it...
...Where might have squeezed my hand...
...He has major fluid buildup...
...My father, you see, lives for love...
...No, he's not...
...A four percent chance...
...I could see the Watergate, where my parents lived, in the snow all night long...
...I have bought a Bible with the great King James text and I read him the Psalms night and day...
...You're much, much better...
...But your father was different.' 77 he was born the son of a mechanic at Ford Motor in Detroit to have become the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to two presidents...
...No," I said...
...You're going to play golf every day...
...Rachel said, "We'll miss you, Pop...
...I rushed into my father's room...
...Then he opened his eyes just a slit ext...
...If his kidneys start to Lord forever...
...6 His two fabulous male nurses, Mark and ProFutures p. 11 Mike, whom I would trust with my son's Quotesmith.com p. 23 life...
...You won't even know what unhappy means...
...What are they doing...
...There shall be no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling...
...I couldn't have made it without him...
...I wish I could adequately Hating Whitey and Other Progressive Causes P . 9 describe how much I love his nurses, MauHaverhills p. 55 reen, Pat, Gail, Kathy, the perfect Desiree, Heritage Foundation p. 11 many others, all brave, smart, learned...
...Well, I hope it won't come to that," I said...
...We both said together, "We love you, Pop...
...him as another patient, while we see him "And if by reason of strength they be as Pop, indispensable, unique, infinitely four score, yet is their time and labor All day and night we worthy, irreplaceable, and never to be and sorrow, for it is soon cut off...
...We don't want to alarm you, because he's doing fine, but there are just a few parameters we can measure better in the ICU...
...The fog is telling me that I am about to lose him...
...If he's this sick, he'll die on his own...
...In his condition that must have been like lifting zoopound barbells for me...
...He did not have a living will and he wanted to be alive to go to the opera with B." "All right...
...He is catheterized...
...A doctor came over to me and told me my father's X-ray of his lungs was perfectly clear...
...No," I said, "the doctor showed me your X-ray...
...They made us leave but we did not leave and then they pulled a curtain...
...The American Spectator • November 1999 Another doctor whom I have come to like a lot came over...
...He has never cried...
...B. comes to visit every day...
...We've done everything we could do," said the Ukrainian-born doctor...
...We're putting your father back into the surgical ICU," said the doctor...
...The part without the man I called five times a day just to attach myself to something good and clean and decent in a world without much purity, goodness, or ethics...
...Then she left...
...Then we'll run that boat some more and it'll be perfect...
...For the first time, I knew he was gone...
...Cavalry...
...Suddenly, all of his monitors began to ring...
...It reminds me of all the times I called him over the past two years and I asked him what he was doing...
...and fluid exploded around his room...
...That boat, Pop...
...I'm not going to have him die alone...
...His father was in the U.S...
...We started him with shock...
...What that meant was that he was having kidney failure...
...Then he let go of her hand and his eyes closed...
...El Renew my subscription for one year (ten issues—$34.95) O Payment enclosed El Bill me later O At various times TAS rents its subscriber lists to other organizations...
...That's all there is to it...
...We all started to cry...
...He wrote on the pad, in a weak hand, "Maybe they have a different prediction of future interest rates...
...But tonight, to our horror, they gave his dialysis machine to another patient and the one they gave him would not work...
...I read him more Psalms...
...Mail to: Aihitrican Spedator...
...But when I told him of Betsy's plan, big huge tears started to come out of his left eye and then his right eye...
...Please, please, uremia and blood gases...
...Three score and .4 confident front to the doctors, who see ten are the days of a man's life," I said...
...It's very serious...
...They have been giving him shots and drawing blood and he still does not wake up...
...What were those odds...
...We went into an empty lecture room...
...But my best friend, my mentor, my confidant, could no longer be reached on the phone...
...I think it was the greatest effort of his life...
...But I have hope...
...We love you, Pop," I said...
...Turn over in bed...
...I'll cut the grass without your ever en great odds before and how he will again...
...He's much better," she said, all smiley faced...
...Giving him Haldol when he had a bad reaction to it over and over again and after they promised to stop giving it to him...
...You're on your way to recovery...
...This has been a big issue in the financial press lately...
...His blood pressure plummeted...
...I don't know what I'll do without him," she said...
...I keep getting angry that they cut off the antibiotics so soon last time...
...I said, "You'll be on our minds and in our hearts forever...
...Love, Pop...
...He was cool to the touch...
...But the doctor, actually two doctors, did not have great news...
...Goodbye to the miracle of caring that was Herbert Stein, who lived to love and be loved...
...I plan to keep some on hand forever now...
...I ran out to the nurses...
...It's clear and beautiful...
...Life sustaining but barely...
...Now comes the bad part, the part without Pop...
...Now, there is a fog that has sunk in around the Watergate where my father and mother lived for so long...
...But I think I felt it...
...I can see it every night and every morning...
...I kissed his cheek over and over and his forehead, and he felt far away...
...Sara, I think, and Mary, and Sarkes Tarzian Inc.p...
...I want him home watching baseball with me right now...
...Oh, no...
...His father was in the U.S...
...Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day...
...One of my great pleasures is feeding him ice chips...
...Are you sure you want to...
...I love you, Pop," we both said...
...Saturday peaking of which, here my sister and I are at Pop's bedside, and B., Shis special friend, has just come over to see him...
...43 bit stronger...
...No," I said...
...His heartbeat trailed off rapidly...
...The nurses had turned off his oxygenation monitor...
...I sat with him for a long time and then I held the Bible and looked at him some more...
...Name: (Please Print) Address: City: State: Zip: Date of change: VCAFRM "I will say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress...
...My sister and B. and I sat in a tiny waiting room...
...I used to love that view from the River Inn to the Watergate...
...When she left, she was still crying...
...Sunflower University Press p. 69 I prayed with him for hours and then T. Rowe Price p. 17 B. came over...
...Herr, "I want to be with him...
...He wrote, "When are you coming back...
...The doctors and nurses fiddled with the instruments...
...He did not wake up but I thought he ter, B., and me into a tiny waiting room...
...He's there with Morn in a better place, on that cruise...
...Like a high school athlete's...
...I sat with him for a few minutes and then began calling to set up his funeral...
...He even showed it to me...
...5 4 November 1999 • The American Spectator...
...His eyes were open, but he saw nothing...
...It was, of course, the exactly right answer, and it had eluded me, who was not drugged and in perfect health, for weeks...
...78 even one named Dawn...
...Bose Corporation Classifieds p. 83 Conversation Confidence p. 37 Tuesday M y father actually seems a tiny EL.A.M.E.p...
...We each took a hand...
...They pierced his side (with a lance...
...I looked up from his face...
...There is an ESP among family members who are close...
...Positive," said the doctor...
...I had the secret hope that they would take away his life support and his strong Cavalryman's heart would take over and he would confound them all by living...
...Have fun with Morn, and get that little yellow boat ready to race...
...Besides, what's the harm in having him on antibiotics at his age...
...Lear Financialp...
...and Tommy only has time for girls and me again...
...The daughter in question is a physician in Philadelphia whom my father just loves, who has a daughter he super loves...
...Years ago, when my father was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, in the midst of some damned currency crisis, I called to ask him for help on a question that probably involved fifty dollars about my mortgage...
...The part without the man who sent me a letter for my 53rd birthday that read, "Happy Birthday to the best son in the world, my best friend, my confidant, my advisor, my son...
...But amor vincit omnia...
...He'll be a couple of weeks in rehab learning to walk and to breathe after having been on the ventilator so long, and he'll need home health care for a while, so you'd better start arranging for that," they all told us...
...The doctors are optimistic...
...Still, there is some hope...
...He looked at her as if he would capture her with his eyes, install her forever in his soul, and then take her with him into eternity...
...Do you want something...
...I'm going to be with him...
...Listen to this: Betsy is going to come over on Rosh Hoshana and read you the service so you won't be alone...
...She's come to say hello to you...
...It's going to be Rosh Hoshana soon, and my daughter, Betsy, will come over to the hospital and read Herb the New Year's service so he won't be alone if you and Rachel aren't there...
...the doctor asked...
...Fifteen over ten and still his chest rises and falls...
...3.Return this form to us at the address listed below...
...Oh, yeah, right...
...But his eyes are glowing with love...
...Maybe we will my home be...
...Twenty over ten...
...Tomorrow," I said...
...His kidneys are in major failure...
...he asked...
...Well, we're going to take it to the Reflecting Pool and get it started with j ust one twirl and then we'll run it around the water all afternoon and it'll be fun every Sunday for a year and we'll come home arid Rachel and Mom will make meatloaf...
...If you prefer that your name not be rented, please check here...
...He had intestinal blockage...
...He knows something the doctors do not know...
...No," I said...
...Pop, B. is here...
...I looked up...
...With his endo tube in (or maybe by that time it had become a tracheal tube), he mouthed, "I love you," very clearly...
...I would say at this point he has about four chances out of a hundred of recovering...
...Friday A nother damned call from the hospital...
...He couldn't have made it without you," I said...
...I asked in a loud voice...
...He's dead, Ben," she said...
...If this is so damned important to him, why don't they get a machine from another hospital...
...Monday ybe not...
...He has liver failure...
...I asked them...
...And when you get home, we'll all ride out to Martin's Dairy and get some chocolate ice cream...
...When he calmed down—and he always is calmer when my sister or I am around—I asked him about why the Treasury would want to buy in long-term debt if they had to pay full present value...
...His eyes were roving from side to side...
...having to ask me to...
...I'm sorry...
...Now the blood pressure monitor was down to about fifty over twenty-five...
...My sister agrees...
...He's a fighter...
...B. worked it out...
...He looks just like Pop, but y he's not moving...
...Just waiting for you to call," he would say...
...How can he be hurt at his age by too many antibiotics...
...So we present a brave, games and my wife realizes how really crazy I am...
...The bad part where I cannot feel as if I had just had a moral shower just talking to a man utterly without guile or greed or cunning...
...I think she would approve...
...in him will I trust," I read to Pop...
...He's tough...
...We'll see you again, and your voice will always be in my ears...
...I'm not supposed to get attached to patients," she said...
...I drive bing...
...Pop, you're going to see Mom...
...something...
...Maybe it's time you let him go home...
...But can you tell me there is no chance he can recover...
...Pop," I said to him in his Washington Times National Weekly Edition p. 15 uremia-caused coma...
...The American Spectator...
...I raced over to the hospital after dinner, through a very, uh, interesting neighborhood with stores with bars and steel barriers in front of them, bluffed my way in, and stood by my father...
...Pop," I said, "you have to wake up...
...Sixty over thirty...
...I am not going to collude in murdering him...
...But your father was different...
...He'll see hope at all whatsoever...
...I stood on his right and my sister, the world's best sister, in a nutshell, stood or sat on his left...
...I kissed him and started to dial...
...You've lived a righteous life and you're going to a place where you'll just be a ray of happiness for all eternity...
...Overdosing him on benzodiazepines (some of which are considered "amnesiac" medications because they November 1999 • The American Spectator This is the background image for an unknown creator of an OCR page with image plus hidden text...
...doctors and nurses (still the same great nurses) have been trying to wake him all day to no avail...
...She asked me if I were going to be there at the beginning of September...
...He looked alarmed and vigorously shook his head...
...A nurse came out...
...If I'm really good to Tommy and Alex and my friends, maybe Au revoir, Pop...
...Let us give him some morphine," said another doctor...
...Not until you can tell me he has no chance at all to recover...
...TAS Address Changes Made Easy...
...Are you just squeezing my hand out of affection...
...You're doing the right thing," she said...
...He loved Mom so much, and he depended on her so much for so many things and for so much affection that he would want to have someone else in his life...
...Wednesday C atastrophe...
...But Mom's there waiting for you with the London Broil you like so much...
Vol. 32 • November 1999 • No. 11
