Ann looked from me to the bed where my brother had nodded off with sister morphine in the ICU at the massive midtown Nashville hospital.
He'd just had one of his many parts replacements. I guess he had a dozen surgeries to replace head, shoulders, knees and toes -- hold it, that's a nursery school song. Besides that, his head was fine until the end, but he had replacements and tuneups for hips, knees, elbows and other joints during his too-short 74 years on earth, most of them spent by Ann's side. He'd also had prostate cancer radiation-seed treatment and was diabetic.
Most of the joint replacements were required because of a violent life as an offensive football tackle, from the Grand Rapids (Michigan) junior Rockets to the Deerfield (Illinois) High Warriors to the Iowa State Cyclones. Actually, briefly I became even more violent when I took my turn at football, but decided I didn't like it, as I was a Give Peace a Chance guy and the coach was a sadistic asshole who honed my All-State brother's career by beating him over the helmet with a baseball bat. Well, I'll get back to that topic some other day. I eventually told the coach to go to hell, or, knowing me, something anatomically specific.
Back to the hospital, where Ann always sat, with a smile or perhaps crocheting or knitting (I don't know the difference nor do I care to learn. I'm old, you know if you know me.) by Eric's bed. If he awakened, she wanted to be there to talk to him.
"In sickness and in health" is how the preacher man put it more years ago than I care to remember (or know at all) when they wed. Actually, I can't remember specific occurrences and their dates as my 73 years have turned to a fast-paced blur of good times, depression, laughter, love, inebriation, sobriety, good friends, dead friends, mourned family and an increasing number of funerals.
Ann Ghianni's funeral September 27 may have been the saddest of them all. Perhaps that's hyperbolic, as my brother's death broke my heart and will, and I still dial his number when seeking counsel. If he ever answers, I might be startled but I'll be glad to answer his standard "What's happening in the world of high adventure?" I miss my parents, grandparents and dead cousins every day. And that's not counting my cats and dogs. Hell, the little catfish bottom-feeder from my aquarium tank in my Iowa State dorm room lived for many years after the betta fish and blue gourami died. He was a damn nice fish, buried with honors in my parents' back garden.
But Ann, who had been fighting vicious, rabid, full-on cancer for more than two years, wanted to live more than anyone I've known. She didn't complain about the sometimes thrice-weekly treatments my wife took her to for much of her battle. She missed her husband -- "he was supposed to be here to take care of me," she said, weeping eyes actually glowing with love when she spoke of Eric.
Anyway, I was right there near the altar, or whatever they call them in the Methodist church, and by my brother's side, Ann's wedding ring looped desperately on my clammy pinky. If I recall correctly (never a sure thing), I was in a chocolate-brown tuxedo (I'm colorblind, so it could have been as purple as Prince or Barney). I was the best man (of course ... and he was mine later.) There was a bit of deja vu in both lives, but that's not important here.
I'd put it as somewhere near 40 mostly beautiful years they were together. At Ann's funeral, their daughters, Maria and Ana, said that Ann and Eric were as one, a single unit of love when they went through life. Love kept them together and mostly arm-in-arm and joyous for all those decades. I like most funerals, and I've covered many for newspapers during my career. I've watched as cities said goodbye to raped and murdered teenagers. I've been there when Dolly sang "I Will Always Love You" to Porter's casket. I consoled Johnny Cash when he sat next to June's casket and hugged Tom T. and Dixie Hall when they said goodbye to their good friend, Cash. Of course, the latter two, my dear friends, died, and I had to let them go as well. They gave me a carved, wooden angel from a trip to visit the Cashes in Jamaica. I keep that in my office, with Mardis Gras beads draped over her shoulders and sometimes wearing an autographed Lone Ranger mask.
I've never broken into tears and sobs until Ann's funeral, though. Mainly it was caused by the photo slideshow on the double screens. Most of the pictures featured Ann and Eric, smiling -- my brother being silly and at least once sticking out his tongue -- arm-in-arm. Ann was my connection to Eric, who died 18 months ago or so. Now she is gone, too. That wonderful and warm couple, made for each other, will never smile at me again, gentle reassurance as I continue warring with life's assholes and bullies and setbacks. I'll miss that warmth, since I'm planning on 30 more years before I enter the ether or become a shooting star or whatever comes next. My fondness for funerals does not include my own, though I suppose I'll attend unless everyone else precedes me in death.
My tears were fueled by remembrances of "Mommy and Daddy" by their daughters, who did their best to hold it together at the service. I cried, but I was so damn proud of them. Then Ann's brothers, Neal and Matt, and Matt's wife, Victoria, and Ann's sister, Ginger, and nephew, Ben, conducted a service filled with music and upbeat Christian joy and heavenly promise. My cousin, Michelle, even felt the need to speak. I didn't.
I was watching and crying, Suzanne's hand clutching my own. I was quiet, not wailing, so if you didn't look me straight in the eyes, or see the Kleenex with which I was dabbing my red-stained baby blues, you'd not have known how desperately sad I was.
I thought -- as I watched the photo display playing on the church screens -- again to the time I stood by the altar, protecting the wedding ring Eric was going to slide on Ann's finger.
Later, the bride's dad, a fine fella named Horace Davenport, told me he always could recognize me from the way I walked, a bit lopsided, John Wayne-like, down the aisle that night and whenever he saw me after. My recent back surgery -- a full rebuild of my spine, from neck to butt -- finally has me walking a bit more steadily, currently with a "temporary" walker and without the years of constant pain. Of course, any friends of mine, most of whom are long dead, as noted above, remember when I walked less than steadily into the post-midnight mist. But that's another story involving Tork's Pub and a lust for life that later had me listening to Clarksville cops spill their secrets as they bought me scotch at a place called Camelot. Unsteady wandering wasn't always caused by the scoliosis and stenosis and arthritis that has plagued me for decades, ending only with an eight-hour surgery this summer. A prior two-hour surgery began the process by getting my neck straight.
I remember well the summer day in 1987, when Eric, Ann and I split a few bottles of Bordeaux as they helped me sort out one of my few failures. They were mumbling semi-incoherent advice as our long day turned to night.
I think of Horace and his wife, Barbara, often, as they are faces I remember as I go through the roster of people I've loved but who died anyway. I did that again Saturday night as I lay, too sad to sleep, in my bed, thinking about those faces, from my father-in-law Glen to my dear Iowa pals Nardholm and Uncle Moose. I thought of Nola, my best friend Jocko's ex-wife (I was their best man, naturally, and they remained friends after the split), newsman Harold Lynch and my beloved News Brothers pal Scott "Badger'' Shelton, all fatal victims of cancer. My cousin Marc -- who went to Camp Spikehorn with me and Eric and Marc's brother, Jeff -- would have turned 76 on the day of Ann's funeral. Cancer most foul murdered him years ago.
Anyway, I'm drifting away from that wedding, which was splendid, even though Eric's best buddy, Ed Yarbrough and others, permanently scarred the finish of Eric's metallic-light-blue Camaro by using shaving cream to write "Just Married" on the sides and trunk. Eric wasn't angry, though. He was proud to drive that piece of signage around until he had a wreck much later, that ended that car. Eric was not a good driver, but he was a helluva brother and, from all reports, a dedicated husband, father, brother-in-law, uncle, grandfather and friend.
That bride was beautiful, a simple beauty not fully captured by the undertakers and corpse cosmetologists. I was proud to be in her wedding. For ensuing decades (remember, they all blur together), she brought bright smiles, comfort, sisterly advice and especially love, into my life.
Later by many years, she brought those same qualities into the lives of my wife, Suzanne, and then my children, Emily and Joe, after they joined my life. She loved my kids as if they were her own, and Suzanne was her count-on sister in crime. As noted, Eric was my best man and always a damn nice guy.
Ann Davenport Ghianni, perhaps the sweetest person I've ever known and loved, died September 23, after that brutal two-year battle with cancer. She was on the verge the day before, but that was her beloved's 76th birthday, so I think she held on so the daughters wouldn't merge a celebration of Daddy's birthday with Mommy's death.
I have a lot of great memories of Ann. And, even though she had been fighting escalating cancer eating away at her body, even after the docs told her they thought they got it all after her double-mastectomy and then found more ... and more, I didn't expect her to die.
At least not now.
She had grandchildren to love, beautiful daughters, sons-in-law, brothers, sister, nieces, nephews and a loving brother-in-law and his wife, hoping, some praying, and all sending the best wishes her way. If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride, my Mom used to say before she died too young in 1999. (She was as old as my brother would have been September 22.)
One of the best memories that has stayed in my mind's shallow thoughts in the days since Ann died is the one noted at the top of this tale, where Ann sat by my brother's bedside, her love shining even as she worried.
"He was a little out-of-it yesterday, as he started coming around," she said, her smile broadening, pale cheeks reddening.
"He said the nicest thing he ever said to me. He said 'Davenport, you're my best friend and I love you more than anything in the world.' "
"I hope he feels the same way when he's not on drugs," I said.
She laughed, because she knew, as much as I did, that Eric always told the truth, didn't know how to lie, even stoned on sister morphine with tubes protruding from his limbs.
Eric, I should note, liked to call Ann by her maiden name. He'd even refer to her as "Davenport" when he was talking to me in our frequent phone calls or our hamburger and tea (two bottles of beer for him) lunches at Brown's Diner. He, like all loving life partners, sometimes was irritated by her, but generally and most often was openly, vocally proud of the fact she had agreed to share his life.
His life ended about a year and a half ago. Infections in those artificial body joints, failing organs and a disturbingly befuddled staff of doctors didn't allow him to live.
I was standing in the ICU room -- only two visitors were allowed at the same time -- back when Eric neared his death throes. Of course, Ann stayed in there, but Suzanne and I would take our turns with her.
There'd been a Code Blue, doctors running through the hallways, and the subsequent application of heart paddles to jolt him back to life. We were told to look the other way. They brought him back around, but docs said his body wouldn't withstand any more heart attacks and shock treatments.
"I don't think he's going to make it, Tim, do you?" There were no tears, just shock in Ann's eyes, as I put my arm over her shoulder. It wasn't the heavy arm of her soon-to-die love. I could only deliver a tentative hug, as she was, in my mind, at least, breakable. Even back then, the cancer had turned what had been a thick and healthy body into a thin and frail one. And the cancer, supposedly, was in retreat.
Cancer lies. Doctors lie worse.
As I stood there with her in the ICU, it was hard for me to agree her beloved, my big brother, wasn't going to make it. I was sure he would die in the next few minutes, but all I could do is answer Ann's question with a nod and a muttered "no.''
He didn't. We all stood in the ICU room and watched him die.
Ann left Eric's hospital that day in melancholy farewell after all of those years, all of those illnesses, all that selfless love.
"He was supposed to live, so he could take care of me," she said, perhaps her only selfish thought. That was natural for her to think that way, as Eric had been there, taking her to and from doctors and lab facilities, helping her when the treatments made her sick. Shaving her head when gray-brown hair began to fall out.
They both were sure she would make it through. Together. Neither of them did. A double mastectomy, radiation, chemo, any kind of experimental therapy possible, extended her life by a matter of months. Her diabetic body, riddled by cancer and the poisons used to combat it, finally succumbed after it was infected with Covid and pneumonia.
For Ann, the 18 months between Eric's death and her own slow demise were miraculous joy, though.
She was able to spend as many days and nights as possible with her grandsons, Emilio and Sabatino (Leo and Tony) at the Ghianni house on Binkley Drive and at daughter Ana and son-in-law Joshua's compact farm in a quiet section of Rutherford County.
She had to talk to the boys some about their late Papa in heaven. They missed him, but they clung to their Nonna, even more when she was forced, by illness, to stay in Ana's house on the farm. They never will find that dedicated, focused love again now that Nonna and Papa are gone.
My wife, Suzanne, who is a pretty damn good sort of person with a massive degree of faith I don't claim to match, tried her best for more than a year to fill in for Eric, taking Ann to her appointments, meeting with doctors, hearing about progress and deterioration. Taking notes and asking questions. They also took time to laugh. Suzanne and Ann were a sort of Thelma and Louise on those treatment days. I joined them once for lunch and felt like an intruder on those good times.
"We had a lot of fun together," Suzanne reflected when Ann's siblings thanked her for spending so much time with their sister.
That's what families do, of course. Ann would have done all of that for her, for us, for my kids, if needed. If she had stayed alive.
My dad, Emilio Ghianni, died in 2019, 20 years, almost to the day, from the time my Mom died.
Suzanne, Ann, Eric and I tried to help take care of Dad, who lived by himself in a big house in Forest Hills. In addition to getting him to his doctor's appointments -- usually Suzanne took care of those -- there also were emergency calls.
My Dad fell sometimes, although he refused to move into a "facility" or a retirement village. He liked his independence. Unless blood started spewing from his latest fall and cut, spurring the late-night calls for help.
Sometimes I'd take him to the hospital in the middle of the night. Other times, I'd just bandage him up.
"I called you and Ann," he told me once, as I washed and bandaged a series of deep gashes in his ancient, crispy skin.
"That's good," I told him, as I looked around the kitchen whose floor looked like that of a slaughterhouse. "Because I don't do blood."
Ann did. She arrived and mopped the blood off the floor and washed it down with peroxide. She didn't mind.
Anything for her family.
Not too many years before my brother died, he and Ann adopted a mutt named Lily from a shelter in Rutherford County. "I'm not sure if I saved Lily's life or if she saved mine," Ann would say of the beautiful fuzzy dog who wouldn't let Ann out of her sight.
In the last year, when Ann was in and out of the hospital, Lily spent much of her time down on the farm in Rutherford County, joining the two dogs of Josh and Ana. Lily's living down there now, but I guess she's moving with Maria and Michael to Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he's a youth minister and she's a social worker. "Give Ireland back to the Irish," I'll tease them.
Ann also had three cats, left by my brother, the cat man, who she loved. She worried about them, though, as she was living for the day when a small mother-in-law cottage was finished on Josh and Ana's farm. Ann lived for that, as she knew she'd be around her grandsons.
She worried, though, that she'd have to find new homes for the cats. It bothered her. One more heartache in a life that was disintegrating into defeat, despite her own gumption and determination.
Unfortunately, she didn't live long enough to figure that out. The cats remain in her house, the one that her husband had spent his life fixing up and loving, that she knew she'd be leaving soon, either for the still-unfinished cottage or the funeral home.
She figured she'd be walking out. But she left by ambulance, and never returned.
Not only was the cancer spreading, she had contracted Covid somehow. That led to the pneumonia that sent her to the ICU. When you spend your life in doctor's offices, you are bound to get sick and die, I suppose.
I could not go down to the hospital and see her, as I'm relatively immobile from having my spine scrubbed and rebuilt three months ago.
But her daughters, Ana, the horse-riding farm girl from Rutherford County, and Maria, the social worker from Northern Ireland, stayed by her bedside. Sleeping and fretting and answering phone calls.
And crying. As life neared its end, the pneumonia and the Covid and the cancer made it impossible for Ann to speak.
But she could hear, and she could see. Suzanne could go see her, so could my son, Joe. My daughter, Emily, called from her Los Angeles home and they exchanged "I love yous."
I note that I could not visit the hospital. So I called, I guess at least six times in her last day alive, trying to offer support to the girls, who I love like my own, and also to talk with Ann.
Maria or Ana would put the phone by Ann's ear and I could, on FaceTime, see the determined sparkle in her eyes as I spoke.
"I love you, Ann. You are the sweetest person I've ever known. You're a great mother, wife, grandmother, sister-in-law. Just hang in there and do what the doctors tell you."
She would try to move her lips, but nothing but the sound of the oxygen tubes made it through the telephone.
Each call I made I knew could be my last.
Then Maria called at about 5:30 a.m. September 23 to say her Mommy had died.
I looked out my kitchen window to see if there was a new shooting star out there. I barked something completely unacceptable at the heavens.
d
