Before my father left this Earth last May, he spent the final months of his life the farthest away from home he’s ever been, and the closest to home he’s ever felt.
After visiting West Africa, where my youngest sister lives in 2021, Oliver Johnson eagerly accepted a Kenyan friend’s invitation to visit East Africa. Despite having been in the hospital weeks earlier for congestive heart failure, my 87-year-old dad left for Nairobi on Christmas Day 2022.
Unfortunately, his ambitious plans to go on safari, speak at churches, and mentor youth never gelled. Aside from the heart condition, he had kidney disease and diabetes, which could slow anyone down—especially as Dad gave his medication the side eye.
That is how he came to spend two months in bed in Africa, fantasizing about the New York of his youth.
We’re talking before he’d moved to California with a wife and 3-month-old me. And before he’d been divorced, remarried twice more, and gone from Yellow Pages salesman to law school. We’re talking Harlem in the ’40s and ’50s, when Dad reveled in catching acts at the Apollo like Sammy Davis Jr., or going to Yankee Stadium with his father to cheer as heavyweight champ Joe Louis wiped the floor with Tami Mauriello. And then there was the teen-age edition of my pops, who hustled unsuspecting simps at the pool hall.
More than anything, though, as my father lay in a Kenyan bed barely eating, I imagine he craved the buffet that is New York City.
Throughout his life, he spoke fondly of the pork chop, mound of fried rice, and eggs that he got on Lenox Avenue for 65 cents, “but you had to eat and go; no sitting around.” He and my mom often reminisced about their courtship over meals at the Automat in Times Square. And of course, there were the assorted hot dogs, pizzas, and egg creams that gave life its glow.
While my sister, Keren, thought Dad might stop in Ghana on his way back to California to see her, and I figured he’d come straight home to his apartment, not far from where my middle sister, April, and I live in the L.A. area, he decided to take one more bite of the Apple.
Sure, he put a veneer on it to assuage our feelings: A childhood friend in the Bronx had had a stroke and he needed a stopover in New York to check on her. Also, his cousin Ruth was turning 99 and he wanted to deliver his birthday greetings in person. But the quiet part that he did not say out loud was that he was going for the food.
Leave it to fate to pull a signature move: When he got to the nursing home the morning of Cousin Ruth’s birthday, March 2, he learned that she’d passed away the night before. I flew in for the funeral, planning to stay a week and then accompany him on his flight back. That’s how I ended up getting a bonus week with my dad.
Around Cousin Ruth’s services, we had a packed schedule of restaurants to hit. My father slowly, but determinedly, made his way down my cousin Larry’s three sets of steps in a south Bronx apartment building, so we could go to restaurant on Arthur Avenue, where Dad tossed back a black Russian—“I like the high”—and then dug into his spaghetti and meatballs, my eggplant parmesan, and Larry’s lasagna. The waiter knew to keep the garlic bread coming.
In the ensuing days, Daddy had to have pastrami from Katz’s Deli, hot dogs from Gray’s Papaya, vanilla malteds, bagels, and pizza. One night, our Antiguan cousin Tina had us over for codfish and fungi. My father brought the Pepsi and ice cream.
We’d planned to leave on a Saturday in mid-March, but he wasn’t ready, most likely because he had few more spots on his list. I had to get back and went without him.
Two days after he finally got home to California, at the end of March, Keren had come from Ghana, and she, April, and I went to his apartment. He had said he wanted us all to go to lunch, but when we got to his place, we could hear him moving around inside, but apparently he was unable to make it to the door.
Paramedics rushed him to the hospital on April 1, and a month later, he was moved to another facility, his condition having worsened. He was in intensive care.
About a week before he died, a blustery older doctor in a plaid shirt, apparently coming off vacation, breezed in and asked, “Who’s in bed 11?” The nurse on duty filled him in, and then he eased over to where I sat next to my father, who by then was semi-conscious and relying on a breathing tube.
Finally, I had someone I could blab to about Dad’s foolishness. How he had run off to Kenya and ate his way through New York.
“Good!” the doctor declared. “Glad to hear it!”
What? I was aghast. I studied his face to see if he could possibly be serious. I mean, what kind of nonsense was that? Where’d he get his medical license—a Cracker Jacks box?
But as he sailed on to the next patient, something in me shifted. I had been looking at my father through the gaze of hope that he could, somehow, be restored to the man I knew him to be. At the same time, the doctor saw Dad through the harsh glare of reality as a person who had run out of road while racing toward his joy.
I stroked my father’s arm and smoothed his hair, grappling with the truth that before he was mine, he was his own.
As the clock ticked down, it turned out that my dad had only had two remaining items on his bucket list: to see a part of the world where he had never been, and to savor his beloved New York one more time.
Now, a year out, I’m okay with that.
Pamela K. Johnson lives in California, but was born in Harlem. In May 2024, she completed an O’Brien Public Service Journalism Fellowship at Marquette University in Milwaukee and is working on a film about Black people and swimming.
Beautiful. Please accept my condolences.