[ WP ] Your father admitted on his deathbed that he was the most successful serial killer of all time , just killing 100s of random people in random ways in random cities throughout his life , never leaving traces , and he gave you a list of his victims .

`` How do you handle something like this?'' 
 
 Even on his deathbed he was the same as I'd always known him... that same thoughtful calmness, that attentive understanding and patience. I always joked with him that he was n't so much fighting the cancer as waiting for it to stop throwing it's tantrum and be reasonable so we could all go have ice cream and talk about what happened. 
 
 But by the time they knew what was going on his pancreas was all eat up with it. 
 
 I remember that one Christmas he bought me a football in the color of Giants blue, and as we left for Grannie's house he told me to go deep and launched the ball off the front porch. As I tracked it over my shoulder I did n't trust him as he yelled at me to look out. I ran face first into a telephone pole and busted up my cheek. Paul Schaefer gave me hell in gym class and told everyone I had A.I.D.S. due to the scab. In the early 90's I did n't understand what A.I.D.S. was and that's how our first discussion about sex began. There were many Paul Schafers over the years. 
 
 But he always saw the opportunity in life. He was always reminding me of that day, how I was `` going after it'' with disregard to my own safety or the consequences. He'd always encourage me to `` go get it, but watch for the pole''. I did n't realize until I was grown how right he was. 
 
 We talked often about that Christmas, and all the times after that he encouraged me to be my best. We talked about all the good times as the effectiveness of the drugs wore down. We laughed about it behind teary eyes as I helped him push the pole holding his morphine drip back and forth in the oncology ward, `` go get it, but remember the pole''. I regret that I rarely took his advice to heart. I could have been much more that I was. 
 
 I mean, I ca n't complain. I worked my way through community college at his sheet-metal shop and after he retired I took his place as a shop foreman. It's good money. Nobody knows how to make anything anymore. 
 
 Nobody should have to watch a loved one die of terminal cancer. They call it `` palliative care''. For the uninitiated that means they try to deal with the pain so you can die in something less than constant agony. 
 
 Sometimes it does n't work. 
 
 What killed me the most is that he did n't change. He never lost that calm, even as memories of a birthday party took a nightmarish turn from that sweater from Aunt June that I hated into a description of bludgeoning a truck driver with a tire-iron in Wisconsin, as how proud he was that Friday night I scored my first touchdown devolved into how some people really clung to life as you choked it out of them and how some just let go. 
 
 It was madness. It was the morphine. The doctors all said so. I found the list of names shortly after his passing, numbered and dated. I almost threw it out. 
 
 Then I saw it, the lone entry with a note. 
 
 \ # 78, Paul Schaefer, 2004, *personal*. 
 
 Just how do you handle something like this? 
 
 They were all real. Drownings, car accidents, stabbings, no real pattern or consistency to it. Thirty-five years of killing. Paul Schaefer. If it was n't for Paul I would have tossed that list out as the drug fueled horrors of a dying man. Fuck you Paul. 
 
 It took months to piece it together, cross reference dates and old business trips with missing persons reports. It took a year to track down the nexts of kin. 
 
 We all deserve closure. 
 
 Today was a visit to the widow of that truck driver from Wisconsin. Their marriage had n't been a happy one. He was a drunk apparently and was n't too shy about beating her for no reason at all when he had that fire in his stomach and there were n't any lot lizards to take it out on. 
 
 She had remarried shortly after and had 3 kids. Her youngest just graduated from Georgetown this past fall. She told me that when he went missing she was sure he would come back, hopeful at first, then with dread, and then life just moved on. She met her second husband and and it was the best thing that ever happened to her. 
 
 Just how do you handle something like this? 
 
 My father was right. 
 
 I've been bending metal with my hands for 15 years. When I wrapped them around her neck she did n't have a prayer of ever seeing that daughter again. 
 
 But she fought.. fought until she could n't. As her struggles started to wane I told her how her first husband died, and then I left her there holding that picture of her daughter, them together, smiling, hopeful.... 
 
 I do n't know how to handle something like this.
