My Only Son, Packy
An Odyssey and A Legacy
by
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Despite the cold wind, Colette was waiting for me on the sidewalk. I knew I was the last to arrive. We mounted the steep stairwell without speaking, Colette clutching my hand, willing me to feel her love and support. We entered the loft apartment and the first thing we saw was Packy laying on the couch in the living room as if he were sleeping, his black boots placed neatly beside him. His head was against the armrest; his body was covered by a dirty blanket. I looked around the loft, and then back at Colette, who, urged me to approach the intense circle gathered near the body. As usual, the rest of the loft apartment was pristine: bookshelves filled with books on art, literature, travel. The brick-covered walls a mosaic of Packy’s art: dark, electric images -- some of them brooding self-portraits. Packy painted on enormous canvases, some of them measuring 5’ x 5.’ I stared at the paintings in which I could now see emerge a mangled face, eyes twisted in pain. There was what seemed to be a series of giant balls. They exuded a disarming balance of the child-like and the macabre. Either way, the paintings were meant to disturb. These were images of my son. The loft was cut up into four rooms, but from each you could see the others. Packy’s small workroom in the back of the apartment looked like its usual disarray of unfinished canvases, open paints, and miscellaneous pieces of found art. I hadn’t seen my former wife Mary, Packy’s mother, in over 3 years. She was still trim and attractive, her black Irish good looks making her appear much younger than her 48 years. Since my remarriage, Mary and I had even less occasion to speak but we had remained cordial. Mary was obviously agitated, speaking with a tight face to two police officers. By her side, almost in her shadow, was Packy’s young wife, now a widow: Maja and Packy had been married less than a year. Mary’s new beau, a nondescript man in his forties, was lingering awkwardly by the front windows. I approached and nodded at the officer, who carefully removed the blanket: His body was rigid, his arms were flexed and legs outstretched. He was clothed in a casual shirt, undershirt and undershorts. No breath came from his open mouth; a purplish streak, not unlike a protruding vein, extended from the top of his forehead to his neck. It was clear that my son was dead. I knelt down, put my arms around him, and wept. My own body seemed to cave in on itself, my grief raging through me like an oil fire through a tanker. The explosion was yet to come. My son was gone. Gone before his first post-school exhibition that he had worked so hard to get ready for. Gone from the world, forever. I couldn’t believe it. Minutes passed before I could raise myself and approach Mary. I had metamorphosed from a man into a robot. "What happened?" I asked, my voice dull and flat. "Maja told me that she’d been visiting her parents in Connecticut and had Packy pick her up outside Grand Central last night around eight o’clock. Then they went to the Oyster Bar for dinner and drinks." I knew the Oyster Bar was one of Packy’s favorite spots. "But when did he die?" I repeated. "They’re not sure. Maja said that after dinner, Packy drove home. Then when they got here, he fell asleep on the sofa and Maja removed his boots and pants. She went to bed later. When Maja woke up around 8 a.m., she padded around the house for awhile and then when Packy wouldn’t stir, she went to him and screamed." I looked at Mary’s now tear-streaked face and shook my head. How could this have happened?
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About the Book
Above, on the book’s cover, you see a self-portrait that Packy, an aspiring artist, painted. The shaded blue area around his mouth was his way of muting the part of his being that was forever changed by the accident described below.
In 1966, at two years old, Packy, born David Patrick La Belle, nicknamed Packy by his father, crept under the kitchen sink and ingested the caustic lye, Drano, permanently disfiguring his face and damaging his throat, esophagus and stomach. After undergoing numerous surgeries and other rigorous medical procedures for most of his childhood, he gradually recovered his ability to breathe, eat, and talk. And for the first time in medical history, after four years of unnatural feeding and breathing, Packy’s respiratory and digestive systems were operated on and restored to functional condition. In addition, Packy’s family achieved, through litigation, groundbreaking consumer safety efforts by forcing the makers of Drano to furnish all of its hazardous products with safety tops.
Packy’s parents and sisters stood patiently by him, assisting as much as they could, as he struggled to overcome the obstacles placed in the way of his having a normal childhood: at eight years and all of 35 pounds, he joined Little League and played with a vengeance; at seventeen after his junior year of high school he earned admission to Cooper Union’s scholarship art program. At no time, did Packy quit trying. Packy not only survived but transformed his physical pain and mental anguish into life-affirming ambitions to become a promising New York painter, with an enormous zest for life, travelling to exotic locales, including Africa, where he was married.
Just when it appeared that providence was finally smiling upon Packy at the age of 23, a cruel twist of fate ended his life in mystery and conflict. Suddenly on November 3, 1988, he passed away, as if God had called him back from his odyssey. But six long years after Packy had passed on, his father began to question the circumstances of his death. Inconsistent accounts of what had happened that night provoked Dave, Packy’s father, to investigate. Finally able to summon his courage, Dave began the mind-boggling process of uncovering the truth behind his son’s death.
My Only Son, Packy is a father’s story of the turbulent odyssey of his son. Like the Odyssey, it is a story told out of love, regret, pride, admiration, anger, frustration and longing. And while it is a story about Dave’s son, Packy, it is also Dave’s story: a story about a father who twice is faced with the idea and then the reality of losing his son. It’s also a story about a father, who after his marriage fails, believes as a Catholic that he can never marry again. It’s the story about how he falls in love again and is forced to reconcile not only the inconsistencies in his Church’s dogma, but also the contradictions of his own faith. It’s the story of how, as a remarried father, he must wrestle with the built-in conflicts of his new family versus his old family. It’s the story about how a man, by force of circumstance, is challenged to transform his relationships with his grown children, from paternal disciplinarian, to friend, to some tricky balance of the two.
On the day after Packy was waked, Dave ran the New York Marathon, an event that he’d been in training for, for over a year. In deference to and in the spirit of his son’s sense of adventure and triumph over adversity, Dave ran and finished the New York Marathon in 7 hours 12 minutes. That run was for Packy, as much as this book is for Packy: both are testaments to Dave’s enduring love for his all too human son and his commitment to sharing his story with others -- parents, sons and daughters -- so that they too may be inspired as much by Packy’s determination to live, as the accidental excess in which he may have died.
My Only Son, Packy is destined to be a new classic, the story of a father and son, who bonded early in life, were each other’s hero and found in each other a best friend. It’s a story about the love of a father for his son, and about the love of a son for his father. It’s also the story of a transforming loss, which ultimately, helps all of us, to build hope for our lives and those we love.
In addition, a web-site has been created, which not only displays Packy and his art, including provocative portraits, but also uses "state of the art" technology to creatively and pictorially depict the merger of his work with his own being.
Visit our website at: http://www.myonlysonpacky.com
About the Author
C. David La Belle has been in the Information Technology field for 46 years. He has worked with major corporations such as, International Business Machines, Columbia Broadcasting Systems, Manufacturers Hanover Trust, and New York Life Insurance Company. He is the author of Finding, Selecting, Developing and Retaining Data Processing Professionals Through Effective Human Resource Management (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984). He is presently retired and living in Lakewood, NJ with his wife, Colette.