A Toast to Coach

For 36 years, when they were living together and then when they were married, my brother Dan and his wife Esther have always had Esther’s mom, Juanita, living with them. Because Juanita enjoyed watching Cubs games, Dan began calling her “Coach.” The name stuck, and all of our friends and relatives who came to know her called her Coach. In fact, while writing this, I had to look up her real first name, because I couldn’t recall anyone calling her anything but Coach.

Coach Morantes died yesterday in her mid-nineties.

Dan called me yesterday evening with the sad news. Sad, but not unexpected. Coach has been in and out of assisted-living homes for the past few years and in declining health. Dan and Esther brought her home during the Covid year, but the 24-hour care she needed proved to be too much for them. She has been in another home for the past couple of years, and Esther and Dan visited her for several hours a day, at least six days a week. In June, Coach appeared to be near the end, and Esther ordered that she be taken off of all machines. She said she just wanted Coach to be comfortable and pain free as she passed, but did not want machines to keep her alive artificially. They brought in hospice. They prepared themselves for her death. Then she rebounded. Hospice was there for a full seven months. Dan called me one day and said, “When the world comes to an end, there’ll be nothing left alive except cockroaches and Coach.”

Coach had a tough time in her early life. I don’t know all of the details, and I never wanted to ask too much that might bring up painful memories for her or Esther. Coach has always been child-like. For as long as I had known her, she acted more like a twelve-year-old than an adult. She was left to care for her children alone (I think there were four siblings, but I never knew for sure if they all had the same father). When she was a young girl, Esther had stepped into the role of adult and took care of her mother. While Coach was a bit slow , she somehow managed to hold a job at a factory for many years. Esther always made sure Coach was clean, ate a healthy diet, and got regular exercise. And she dyed her hair black long after she turned grey. That meant Coach never changed for me. I knew her for 36 years and she always looked the same. When she was in her 80s, they were concerned about senility, but it was difficult to tell because she always had jet-black hair and acted like a child.

Dan met Esther when I was singing in a club in Chicago. She was in the audience with a date, but when the guy got up to go to the bathroom, Dan slid in next to her and said something like, “Why are you here with this boring guy? You should be with me!” Then he hounded me to get her contact-info from my mailing list so he could call her. When they started getting serious as a couple, she made it clear that Coach was part of a package deal, “If you take me, you take my mother, too.” Now, you should understand that Dan can be an obnoxious man. He is crude, hard-assed, loud, tough, demanding, and (fill in the negative adjective of your choice). But can also be sentimental and loving, and he adopted Coach as his own and never backed away from the challenges she undoubtedly posed. When I talked to him yesterday, I said, “It’s hard to categorize your relationship with her. She’s not like a mother or even a mother-in-law. She’s not even like a sister.” He interrupted my thoughts by saying, “No. She’s like my child.” Esther and Dan never had kids of their own, but they have served as Coach’s parents for decades. She loved going to bingo, and they would take her to play often. When she grew too feeble to go out, Dan bought a toy version of the game and played with her for several hours once a week, calling out numbers and helping her find them on her cards. They would give her candy or scratch-off lottery tickets as prizes.

It hurt Esther and Dan when they could no longer care for Coach and they had to put her in assisted living. Still, the care she was given was never enough for them. As I said, they spent hours with her nearly every day. They bathed her, fed her, and gave her care that the facility did not always provide in a reliable manner. Dan grew adept at changing her oxygen tanks and cleaning various hoses hooked up to her. Dan would throw fake punches at her and growl, “That’s it; I’m gonna have to punch the shit out of you!” and she would just giggle while the nurses looked in the door with alarm. They would sing songs that she knew and encourage her to sing along. On the good days, she would sing, but not always in recent months. Dan’s go-to song was This Land is Your Land, while Esther sang Let Me Call You Sweetheart with her. Before losing her sight, Coach would watch the same Elvis and John Wayne movies over and over. She called Dan, “The Big Guy,” and he always included Coach in the family Christmas card (see picture above from a few years ago by Al Capone’s grave; Coach is standing by Dan).

I have two memories of Coach that make me laugh every time. Once in the ‘90s, when living in Gainesville, not far from Kathleen and me, Dan and Esther had to go out of town near Easter time. They gave Coach our phone number and told her not to call us unless it was an emergency or she needed something important. Kathleen was home alone when Coach called and said it was important. Kathleen jumped in the car and raced to their house. When she got there, Coach told her that Esther had promised to get her some of those marshmallow Peeps that are sold at Easter but must have forgotten to buy them. Kathleen drove her to the store and the “emergency” was resolved.

The other incident I heard about second hand, from Dan. He and Coach were home alone and putting a large Christmas tree into the stand. Dan was sprawled on the floor, squeezed under the low-hanging branches, tightening the bolts. Coach was tasked with standing across the room and telling him when it was straight. They made a few adjustments and things were going well. Unfortunately, her favorite TV show, The Jerry Springer Show, came on in another room, and she kept leaning in that direction to see the fight that had broken out on the stage. By the time Dan asked for the final time if the tree looked straight, Coach was leaning at a 65-degree angle. It looked straight to her, so she told Dan it was “perfect.” Dan, a big man, extricated himself from the branches and crawled to his feet. When he stood up and saw the tree standing at that same 65-degree angle, with Coach leaning into the next room transfixed by the TV, he couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

Rest in Peace, Coach. You will be missed.