My Dad Was Nearly James Bond Read online

  DES BISHOP

  My Dad Was Nearly James Bond

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Like Father …

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part Two: … Like Son

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Part Three: Storming It

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  For my Mom, Michael John and Aidan the show must go on.

  And for Mr Paccione, do I get extra credit for this?

  It was always a dream of mine to tell my dad’s story. In the end I turned part of it into a one-man show called My Dad Was Nearly James Bond. The story was that my father had another life. He was an actor and a model in London, his friends had been famous people and, most exciting of all, he had once had an audition to play James Bond. But after I was born he gave all that up to give his children a more stable life than the unpredictable world of entertainment, and we settled in the semi-suburban world of my mother’s hometown of Flushing, Queens, New York.

  On 3 November 2009 my dad was diagnosed with stage four small cell lung cancer. I was inspired to tell his story then because I was so impressed by how he dealt with a terminal illness and what that did to our family.

  When you do a show about cancer, everybody commends you for being able to deal with dark material in a light-hearted way. But the truth is that while my dad’s illness was heartbreaking, it was not a time of darkness. For us, those last fifteen months were also a time of joy and laughter.

  The real darkness lies in the part of my dad’s past that I did not talk about in the show. It is the story of a boy whose mother was jailed after she tried to kill him, who was near destitute in his early twenties, and whose drinking could have destroyed him. That my dad survived all that and became a kind and hard-working father is even more remarkable than his encounters with fame during his years as a model and actor. And it puts his final struggle with cancer in an even more heroic light.

  Some of his story I knew. Some more of it I found out during his illness. And the rest I’m still discovering. This is the real story of me and my dad, the man who was nearly James Bond.

  PART ONE

  Like Father …

  1

  It was Halloween 2009 and I could not have been having a nicer time with my nephew, my brother Michael John, my sister-in-law Maritza and my mother at Central Park Zoo. If anyone ever needed evidence of how oblivious I was of how much my life was about to change, I spent most of the day dressed as the Cat in the Hat from Dr Seuss. Although, as my father was such a performer, it was probably apt that the story should begin with me in costume.

  When my mother and I got back to the house, my father was still feeling terrible. He had had pneumonia for at least two weeks by that stage and he was not getting better. I felt bad for him because normally Halloween was a fun day for him and he always loved giving out candy to the trick-or-treaters throughout the early evening. I felt extra bad because I was really enjoying it. I loved all the surprised looks on the kids’ faces as the Cat in the Hat answered the door. It was the first time I had been back in Flushing for Halloween since 1989 and I had forgotten how well New Yorkers celebrated the day.

  I realized how sick my dad was when he did not want to have anything to do with the festivities. He was complaining about pains in his stomach and later that evening he started to experience shortness of breath. My mother had begun to entertain the idea of going to the hospital at around 4 p.m., but my dad was adamant that he did not want to go. Being an amateur doctor, I suggested he should eat some yoghurt as it might settle his stomach. In hindsight it is quite funny that all of us were trying to come up with simple cures to what turned out to be a terminal illness (I don’t believe it has yet been proven that natural Greek yoghurt eases the symptoms of stage four lung cancer or metastases of the liver).

  I went for a nap around half past six as I was tired from all the performing at the door. I passed out quickly as I was not really that worried at all about my dad. I was delighted with myself because I wasn’t even home in order to see my sick dad; I had actually come home to spend time with my nephew. So I fell asleep, deeply content with the day we had just had.

  I was woken by the strong New York accent of my cousin Jen, who is a nurse. I could hear her saying loudly, ‘Awnt, you gotta get this guy to a hospital!’ I could hear my dad protesting and then my mother coming up the stairs. I knew she was coming to wake me.

  My mother is a chronic worrier who lives in a state of perpetual crisis, so I saw that familiar look of panic on her face, mixed with a hint of guilt that she had to disturb me from my sleep. Normally I might have been annoyed by my mother yet again taking a tiny drama and turning it into a crisis, but this time we had a genuine problem. Yoghurt had not done the trick and it was time to get real. I, along with my dad, had resisted going to the hospital until that point. I don’t mind admitting that up till then I did not want the hassle. I had no idea how serious it was. But I could hear it in Jen’s voice that she was genuinely worried.

  Of course my mother said I did not have to come. I knew she meant ‘I would love you to come’. So I packed my complaining dad into the car and off we went to what we know locally as Booth Memorial Hospital but which is now officially NY Hospital on Booth Memorial Avenue and Main Street in Flushing, Queens, NY.

  No one wants to be in the emergency room of any hospital on Halloween night. If my father was writing this story, then I think there would be two chapters about that first night alone. There were people with horrible genuine injuries they sustained while drunk at Halloween parties, and people who had painted horrible fake injuries on their bodies coming in with asthma attacks and allergic reactions. You could not tell whether the injuries were real or applied! Most of them were way too loud for my dad, who felt terrible and did not sleep throughout the night. It is hard to get sleep when you feel like you want to die and the Grim Reaper is sitting next to you waiting to get his stomach pumped.

  The next day my father was admitted. He had a small room with no windows, but it was totally private and he was very happy there after the trauma of the emergency room. He was asked a few alarming questions in those few days such as, ‘Mr Bishop, are you a heavy drinker?’ My dad took pride in telling them that he did not drink at all. By then, he had not had a drink for over thirty-five years.

  For the next three d
ays they sold us the story that he had very bad pneumonia and there was possibly something wrong with his liver. They say ignorance is bliss – and in my case it was true because, while we were sitting there watching the NY marathon on my dad’s TV, I was not especially worried. I am almost embarrassed about that now, particularly because he was showing such glaring symptoms of lung cancer. I just did not know about them then.

  I can’t remember which of the initial three days it was, but we were told that he had a collapsed lung. I received the information with delight: I had a friend who had had a collapsed lung, so I knew that it was not a big deal. This must have been the Monday because he was scheduled for a bronchoscopy the following day, Tuesday, 3 November. Maritza, whose father had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, was the only one who sounded any real alarm. She had been looking things up online and knew that it was not a good symptom. I just put her concerns to the back of my mind. I was not even conscious that I was doing it.

  The pulmonary specialist had requested a meeting with us after the bronchoscopy. At least three staff members of the hospital reminded us that it was important that we meet up with the specialist after my dad’s test. My ignorance clearly turned to arrogance because I did not have a care in the world while I waited in the waiting room of the Lung Center. Ellen DeGeneres was on the TV and I struck up a conversation with an older man. I felt sorry for him as I could hear his shortness of breath.

  My mother was with me. She was a wreck. She had obviously been on the internet and was expecting the worst. It was not until we were in the waiting room that she let me know that she was worried that this could be very bad. I told her that there was nothing to worry about. I was always telling my mother to chill out. Once again I thought she was panicking over nothing.

  I know now that everyone was being overly nice to us. Even now I can see the reaction when I told the receptionist who we were and that the doctor had requested a meeting with us. We were VIPs on that day. When I think of all the doctors and nurses we dealt with in those few days, I wonder how they managed to pretend not to know what they knew. Now I know they knew and were just waiting for us to be told. They did an amazing job at keeping it from us. Those three days would have been hell if one of them had even planted the seed of worry in our minds. It was bad enough for my mother as it was.

  The specialist tried to find a quiet place along a corridor. Normally he would have this chat in his office, he told us. His kind expression gave it away and, even before he said another word, I could feel my mother squeezing my arm more and more. The specialist was lovely. His main concern was finding more privacy for my mother. In the end there was nowhere else to go, and I just squeezed her close to me to protect her from the public as they strolled past.

  ‘Malignancy’ was the word he used. My mother squeezed my arm so hard it actually hurt me and then the pressure eased as she moved her hand to her mouth and started sobbing. I could feel the tears welling deep inside me too, but I tried to keep them down long enough to hear what the specialist was saying.

  I asked if that was why they had been asking about his liver, and he said he could not say for certain but it was most likely metastases. The rest is not important, other than that I am pretty sure he told us that the prognosis was not good. I think he used the word ‘terminal’, but I can’t be sure. I know that I did not leave the conversation with any hope. I thanked him.

  I don’t even know why, but I had an immense desire to be outside. My mother was crying in a way I had never heard before. I was literally holding her up. I wanted to cry too, but I was not going to do it inside that hospital. I pleaded with my mother to just try to walk. She was close to being physically unable to move.

  It was quite a way to go to get out of the Lung Center. We had gone only some of the way when my mother saw a chair outside the cafeteria we had sat in many times over the last few days. It had been a great place to take a break from the room and the coffee there was surprisingly good. She begged me to let her sit down. As we sat there she was crying and I could see everyone looking at us as they went inside for their lunch. The normality of their lives seemed an affront. We are not safe here, I thought to myself.

  I dragged her up. I told her that I was going to get her out of that hospital whether she liked it or not. In my mind, not making it outside meant defeat. I begged her to keep walking. I wanted to get outside and to be able to open the floodgates where no one else was around. I could feel all her weight in my arms as we finally made it to the door. It was a beautiful day and there were only a few clouds in the sky. I scanned the scene and saw, down a grassy slope, a bench facing the wall of the hospital. The bench was well below street level and it faced away from the street, so even if people could see us we could pretend they weren’t there.

  My mother said to me that we were not supposed to walk on the grass. I didn’t give a shit about the grass. All that mattered was getting to a safe place. The safety was an illusion, but the desire for it was intense.

  We cried together on that bench for a long time. My mother’s repeated cry was, ‘What are we going to do?’ I told her that, no matter what happened, I would look after her forever.

  I could not believe that we were having this conversation. I had thought many times about what would happen if one of my parents got sick, but I did not see it coming this fast. Now I was squeezing my mother, trying to protect her from the world. I cried more for my mother than anything else. Her world had just fallen apart and all I could do was hold her. Sad as I was, I had never felt closer to my mother. Later that day I took a picture of the bench on my phone because I wanted to remember that moment always.

  She told me on the bench that she could not handle this and that I was going to have to deal with it. For the time being she abdicated her role as a parent. I was now the parent of my parents. In fact, I had felt that transition almost immediately after I had heard the news and when I was carrying my mother out of the hospital.

  While we were still on the bench, I left a message on Michael John’s phone and I left it a while to call my other brother Aidan because he would have been alarmed by how early it was, back in Ireland. I called my cousin Kevin to get the word out to the family. It just helped a little to try immediately to organize things or at least get into the drama of it for a minute after crying for a spell. We then decided that it was time to go see my dad.

  I didn’t actually cry again until I saw my brother Michael John. I left my dad to meet him on the street to give him the pass to the hospital room about an hour later. The minute we saw each other we broke down. It’s strange the way certain things just set you off, but in this case I guess it’s easy to see why. We were both thinking: Dad is dying.

  I was told by the pulmonary guy that I would be the one to tell my dad the news, so I was trying to prepare myself. The minute I saw him I knew there was no need, as it was clear that he had been told. He looked so defeated, sitting on the edge of the bed. He half turned his head to us when we arrived and then looked back down through his exposed knees to the tip of his toes just touching the floor. It looked as if he had shrunk because the height of the hospital bed did not allow his feet to touch the ground. There he sat like a child, with his legs, all swollen from water retention, dangling, most likely feeling that his time was up.

  He told us that his heart specialist had been in to see him. My father had a great relationship with his heart doctor and I guess he had asked the pulmonary guy to let him know the results straight away.

  ‘He said that they found something, so I asked him to tell me if it was bad. He said it does not look good, so I asked him, was it the big C, and he said it looks like it. Not good, man. Not good.’

  My father always repeated things for emphasis. This was a big one. His close friend Ed Higgins had died from lung cancer only a couple of years before. Ed had had a horrific time and fought until the very end with no real quality of life. Since then my dad would always say, �
��If I ever get the big C, they won’t do to me what they did to Ed Higgins.’ He always used to say to me after he came back from the doctor over the last ten years, ‘I told him I don’t care what it is once it’s not the big C.’ So to my dad this really was ‘not good, man’.

  I think he said he might have asked the doctor about some of his options. He said a few more things and then went silent. There was nothing left to say.

  I was glad a doctor had already told him, because on the long walk back to his room I had been dreading telling him the news. I sat down next to him on the bed and put my arm around him and, unexpectedly, he just dropped his head on to my chest. He did not cry but he just rested his head there for ages. I held him and stroked his coarse, grey hair. I said nothing but I just tried to scream silently from every pore in my body, ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ I was not yet a parent, but at that moment I felt like my father’s father – trying to protect him from the terror life had just thrown at him. It was the most intimate moment I had ever had with him. No words were exchanged.

  I wrote this when I got home that evening:

  From the cradled to the cradler,

  I held his head in my chest

  And I wished that he would fight

  For my sake.

  Defeat and surrender are closely related, and I felt defeat in my father that day. I surrendered immediately to the reality that my father was going to die. I pondered only death as an outcome. To me it was imminent.

  But my mother was not prepared to give up at all. She could hardly remember a life without my father and she was not ready to even consider a future without him. The spirit to fight came first from her and soon after from him. He was only defeated that first day because he was tired. Despite appearing to accept that he was shortly going to die, he would soon realize he was not yet ready to go. Neither of them was ready to give up.