A “Koehler Goodbye:” Tribute to Ray Koehler

We have always loved extended goodbyes in my family – the more over the top, the better.   

We used to do what we eventually began to call the “Koehler goodbye” in front of our house on Hills Road in Amherst.  It was best if you were still barefoot and in your night clothes, preferably in snow or rain, everyone out on the street waving until the car disappeared from view at the curve by the Skillings’ house. 

Goodbyes from Cape Cod had an added benefit.  You could wave goodbye as the car pulled out from the Craigville Inn.  You could then sprint across the green to get a second chance to say goodbye as the car rounded the curve and drove back toward the exit. 

My brother Ray, always the wag, used to have some fun with this.  One time, on Hills Road, he pretended to be so distracted by the waving that he veered off the road.  Another time he drove to the bend in the road in front of the Skillings’ house and simply stopped driving.  While he continued to wave.  And wave.

*****

Ray’s daughters, Rachel and Isabel, text me and my sisters from the hospital in Florida to let us know it is time for us to come.

You could wait, they say.  But then you might miss the opportunity to communicate with him. 

Without intervention, the doctor gives him a prognosis of three days for the Stage 4 colon cancer that has spread to his bladder and kidney and lungs.

I have two trials and a number of hearings scheduled for this week, all of which will need to be postponed.  But I cannot seem to do anything after taking care of that.  My wife, sensing this, books my flight and hotel room for me.

It is true:  I am a mess.  Sitting in the waiting room the next morning at the airport, I miss the boarding calls and almost miss my flight.  The man sitting next to me on the airplane has to help me figure out how to release the tray table.

*****

Ray is in good spirits when I arrive at the hospital. 

His wife Monica, loving and supportive and always capable of making things happen, has secured a private room for him.  This is fortunate:  When my sisters and nephews and nieces begin arriving shortly thereafter, the room is overflowing with people. 

Monica puts each new arrival in the chair of honor to the left of Ray’s hospital bed for some extra attention. 

Ray has retained his sense of humor.  “Now that so many of you are here,” he says.  “I hope this doesn’t mean I need to die.”

My nephew Peter was alone with my father at the hospital when my father died. Ray jokes that under no circumstances is he to be left alone in the room with Peter.   

Ray also asks one of the orderlies, arriving to take him to a procedure, her opinion as to whether he or his brother is better looking. “I am not touching that,” the orderly laughs.

We joke.  We tell stories.   We reminisce. 

*****

Three weeks ago, Ray joined all of us for our extended family vacation at Craigville Beach in Cape Cod. 

My parents started the tradition almost 40 years ago.  We stopped going for a number of years after our mother died in 2015.  Then the next generation – my kids and their cousins – resurrected the tradition three summers ago.

We were 37 people this past summer.  We played lots of sports and games.  We also played cards, including a pitch tournament that my son Jack organized. 

Having finished a course of chemotherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering, Ray was on a new diet.  Apart from being a bit thin, he looked great.  He also had boundless energy. 

Ray organized two talent shows, one for the children and the other for the adults.  He participated in every activity, playing three sports in one day.  And when I say participate, I mean really participate:  Unlike other members of my generation who sat on the sidelines to quietly appreciate the athleticism of our offspring, Ray was directing traffic on the basketball court and diagramming plays in the sand for the game of touch football on the beach.   

On my last evening there, my daughter Laura organized a game of hearts.  She wanted to compare her skills against what are widely acknowledged to be the three best Hearts players in our family:  Ray, our sister Mary Anne, and myself.

I was winning the game until, true to form, Ray pulled it away at the last minute by shooting the moon. 

Toward the end of the week, Ray worked with me in organizing the traditional awards show.

When my family left a day early, Ray waved goodbye in front of the Inn.  He then joined the others in sprinting across the commons to wave again on our way back. 

*****

After a couple of emotional and exhausting days at the hospital, it is time for us to say the Koehler goodbye once again. 

The staff at the hospital has been wonderfully patient with all of us crowding into Ray’s room, with people spilling out into the hallway. 

“This is a good thing,” one of the orderlies reassures me when I apologize.  “We had a patient recently who was here for two weeks without a single visitor.”

The staff also accommodates us as we do the Koehler goodbye in front of the nurses’ station, with the hospital hallway substituting for Hills Road. 

I hug and kiss my brother on his right cheek, his body warm, thin, and familiar under his hospital gown.  After all, I shared a room – and sometimes a bed – with him for many years before he left for college. 

I leave with my sister Mary Anne and brother-in-law George as Ray, supported by Peter on one side and Monica on the other, waves goodbye from the nurses’ station. 

We don’t veer off course as we walk down the hallway, as my brother might have done.  We don’t stop or make a joke.  In fact, when we reach the end of the hall to turn right toward the exit, I can’t remember if I turned around at all.