2007

My phone rang early in the afternoon and my sister was on the other end of the line.  The message was that Daddy's health was failing quickly, and if I wanted to see him before he died, I should probably make plans to fly to Texas. At the close of our conversation, my stomach went sick - to that place it had gone for years when I thought of seeing Daddy. Too much unsaid - too much unresolved with no closure.  Since my father's second arrest, I had only called him once - Christmas two years before.  That had proven to be, emotionally, a mistake for me.

My friend who joined us for Christmas dinner also has a difficult father.  Not a felon, but verbally abusive.  She had called her father and asked me if I had called Daddy, who was in the hospital following hip replacement surgery. I was encouraged by guilt to call him up.  It took all my mustered courage to punch the numbers into the phone.  Daddy's friend, Jesse, had made me aware of the hospital and room number where Daddy was convaslescing.

A feeble "hello" was my reward.

"Merry Christmas, Daddy!" I paused.  "It's Kay, Daddy."

"Oh, hello, Kay."

"How are you? I understand you fell at home."

"Yes," was the groggy reply.  "Phil found me -got me help."

I was trying to picture how that worked, as Daddy weighed close to three hundred pounds.

"I'm very glad he was there, Daddy." There was a long, awkward  pause.  "Well, I just called to wish you a Merry Christmas."

"Well, thanks.  I almost forgot it is Christmas. It has been a difficult day." He waited for me to ask why, but I did not.  He went on anyway.  "I got up to go to the restroom with the help of the orderlies.  The regular staff isn't here today, so I had to depend on temporary staffing.  The guys were trying to help me walk to the restroom when I fell on top of one of the orderlies."  Here his voice breaks and my heart goes out to him for a moment.  It must have been embarrassing and painful to fall again.

"The nurses had to come and help me off of the young man.  He couldn't move; they took him away on a gurney."  Pause. He's crying. "I can't believe God's love for me that the young man was there to cushion my fall."  Now he's crying hard.

I am stunned into silence. The young man cushioned his fall? My gut reaction was nausea.  Oh, my God!  It's all about him!  It's always all about him. All I could see was this poor young orderly lying motionless on the floor, my father atop him, and my father thanking God that it was the young man and not he who was hurt.

"Is...is the young man going to okay, Daddy?"  incredulity ringing in the question.

"Oh, I don't know," snuffling up his crying snot.  "They took him to x-ray, I suppose."  Hadn't thought about it.  Consumed with himself.  I could only hope he was talking through some vicodin-induced haze.  Suddenly, I did not want to talk any more.

"I have to go, Daddy.  Take care."

"Good-bye, Kay."

In order to see my dying father in August of 2007, I booked a flight to Texas for Monday afternoon to return on Tuesday night.  When I arrived at DFW airport late Monday evening, I was filled with consternation and I was achingly tired.  Since I only had a small carry-on bag, I went immediately to the shuttle that transports travelers to the rental car area. I wanted nothing more than fast food and a good long hot bath.  It was already after eight in the evening when I passed through the sliding glass doors and into the Enterprise rental queue.  Although the line was set up for many people to inch through the maze of temporary rows, I was the lone customer dragging my baggage to the counter.  After all the paper work was completed, the nervous young man facilitating me informed me that they were actually "all out of cars right now."  What?

"I'll take any kind of vehicle you have," I said, rubbing my face so hard I smeared my blush into my mascara.  I did not have time for this - or patience.

"We'll have one up for you in just a couple minutes, ma'am.  You can wait outside by that curb," pointing toward "that" curb.

It was still ninety degrees outside - this was Dallas summertime, for crying out loud!  The other lone passenger, from Chicago, I learned, was waiting for the other car that was not there.  He was interesting and all, but after about ten minutes with not one or two cars coming screeching to the curb, we quizzed the nervous, and now sweaty, young man concerning the whereabouts of the Cadillacs we both now felt we deserved.  Assured they would be there in a couple of minutes, we waited and perspired for another thirty.

It was after nine p.m. when I finally turned the ignition switch of a car that was definitely not a Cadillac, and with much relief, headed toward the Motel 6 in Arlington.  I don't really know how I ran out of fast food places at which I could have stopped; but, I wound up at a drive-up window for a Long John Silver's that was connected to a gas station.  I took my fish platter to the motel and sat on the bed, eating it cold. The bath was nice; I tried to read; I went to bed; I turned out the light; and, I stayed awake all night thinking about seeing my father.

At nine the next morning, I made my way to the hospital. What would I say?  What would I feel? What would he say and feel?  Would my stomach remind me of our unfinished business and writhe and churn and send me rushing to the bathroom? Could I do this meeting with the grace for which I had prayed, knowing that it was surely important to my father?  My sisters had been seeing him and caring for him on and off for weeks.  I knew I had to step up, but my mind could not create the scene before it happened; so, I could get no peace all night.  Life does not walk backwards from the end of a thing to the beginning.  So I stepped through the elevator doors and into my father's hospital room with trepidation.

By God's grace, I had a minute to take in the room and my father in his bed, for he was asleep.  There was a large breathing tube in his mouth that was generously pumping life into his lungs and some extraneous beeping that I know made sense to the doctors, but was more background noise for me.  As I came nearer to the bed, I felt an unexpected catch in my chest, a stifled sob.  In that moment I was wishing for the Daddy I had known before this man came along.  I could pretend this was my girlhood Daddy if I didn't wake him up.  His hands were blue and bruised from the intravenous tube carrying fluid to his body, and his false teeth were not in his mouth.  He did not know that I was coming, but he had expressed to my sisters that when he saw me he would be ready to go "home."

Standing over him then, I had a sense of peace.  I felt very sorry for him for all he had lost in the last twenty-five years, but, there was no anger or unforgiveness, only a detached, vague desire to see the "old" daddy for a few minutes.  Gingerly, I touched the crepe-like skin of his arm.  Slowly he opened his heavy eyelids and caught his breath.  His eyes filled with tears and a small whine escaped from him.  I leaned across his body and maneuvered around the breathing apparatus to hug Daddy.  He could not speak very clearly with the tube in his throat, but he managed to give me what I know was a speech he had been rehearsing in his mind and heart in the anticipation that he would see me before he died.  In an effort not to forget one single word, he made sure he said it all before I left his embrace.

"Oh, Kay. You came!"  He took a deep breath.  His voice was raspy.  "Can you ever forgive me? I am so sorry, Kay.  I love you. You are my precious daughter.  I have three precious daughters.  And I love Bill and Heather, Vanessa and Will."  Taking a breath.  "Please forgive me."

"I forgive you, Daddy.  I did that a long time ago.  It was not me you sinned against."

"I know.  But I have made my life right with God, and I know He has forgiven me, and I am just so thankful that He allowed you to come to me.  Everything will be all right now.  I have seen my three daughters."

I relaxed my embrace and he took a deep breath and lay back, calm now, on his pillow.  All anxiety now drained from my body. I moved a chair close to his bed and took his purple hand in mine.  He really wanted me to touch him the entire time I was there; he wanted physical contact.  My sisters had expressed that they had the same experience.  He was hungry for the love of his children, expressed.  He seemed to want to take that comfort actually into himself somehow; let it premeate his soul and accompany him into eternity.







In order to see my dying father