Brayton Point

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Walking out of a Barnes and Noble book store 19 years ago today, an artery in my father’s head failed and he collapsed.
He lived about 24 hours more, but very quickly passed out and never regained consciousness.

My mother met the ambulance at the hospital and the doctor told her to say something to get him to respond.
“There is a problem at Brayton Point!” my mother shouted at him.
He apparently did try and move after she said that, and she resented that.

Brayton Point is an electrical power plant that my father had helped to design in the late 1950’s that went on line just before I was born and only stopped running 2 years ago.
It was a coal burner and I remember my father taking us on a tour there when I was young. He pointed out the coal and was very happy we were burning “American coal” instead of “foreign oil”.
Even as a kid I was pretty quick to point up and say “that’s a lot of smoke…”

I was never sure why my mother shouted about that power plant as my father lay dying. Of the several my father helped design, it was the closest to where they lived. He did drive over and look at it from time to time. It was one of the things my father was working on while my mother was his secretary, before his first wife died and they got married.

She later expressed to me that his reaction indicated to her that he loved his job, and that particular power plant, more than her. So, maybe she had considered it a rival for her love for the 37 ½ years they had been married.

I pointed out that it could have just been her voice he responded to.
Or maybe what was left of his mind was confused at her shouting about a job he had retired from 10 years before as he was clearly lying there dying.

I can’t help but think of a line from the movie “Zorro the Gay Blade” where Zorro is about to be executed and the woman he loves is shouting things at him.
“Why doesn’t she say ‘I’ll love you forever?’” he asks.
My father had little in common with Zorro, but maybe he did have that.

No one knows when their time is up or how they’ll die. But, I’d say there is a very good chance that I will go a similar way.
My father, his mother, his sister and pretty much all their cousins died of very similar causes.

So, if anyone who reads this happens to be in the vicinity if it happens and you’re asked to say something to get me to respond, please don’t pick something from my work.
Say something about you being there, or something about my wife being on her way to be there, or something else like that.
Not something from my work.
And, certainly not that power station…