Dad – a Legacy of Love
Receiving the dreaded call from our friend – the one that confirms our worst fears. My husband Matt had been with them at the hospital just the night before and we had been hopeful that things would improve. They didn’t. Driving back to the hospital all too soon. Each bump in the road sends a jolt through the lump already forming in my throat, threatening to release the torrent of tears that I’m desperately holding back. Seeing the happy, smiling faces in the lobby – they must not know what I know. Waiting for the elevator, afraid to speak or even look at my husband lest my carefully composed façade comes crumbling down. Walking down the long, cold corridor. I’m sure that in reality it is well lit, and temperature controlled, but all I can see is darkness, all I can feel is a tight, cold sensation wrapping around my chest. All-too-familiar emotions creep back to my memory and into my heart. The feelings of loss, instability, a wealth of sadness…
***
I. Love. You.
Many years ago, when I was 17 years old, these 3 words changed my life forever. A junior in high school, I kept myself busy with choir, dance, and my full school schedule that included several AP classes. AP chemistry was the worst. My dad had his PhD in Chemical Engineering and I had figured I would be a natural in chemistry. I wasn’t. In fact, I struggled so much in AP Chemistry that my teacher made an agreement with me that he would raise my class grade to match whatever I got on the AP test at the end of the year (a score of 5 would give me an A, 4 would give me a B, and 3 would give me a C). I think he mostly made the agreement in jest, but as I continued to struggle with this 7:30am AP class, obtaining a high score on the test became my only hope for salvaging my GPA. Since I clearly wasn’t a natural at chemistry, going to my dad seemed like the next logical step. ‘He’s a chemist,’ I thought to myself, ‘surely he can help me understand what in the world is going on in this class.’ Again, wrong. Apparently, AP chemistry was far too boring for Dad, so he glossed over the concepts I was struggling with and instead tried to move onto higher, more complicated concepts. I could feel my eyes glazing over and my brain shutting off as he rambled on and on using words I wasn’t even sure were English. We tried several sessions this way as I hunched over the kitchen counter with my textbook, trying desperately to get my brain to turn back on. Truthfully, I liked these sessions. We didn’t spend much time together, so even though I had no idea what Dad was saying, I liked that he was with me.
My focus snapped back, my brain suddenly on high alert. Dad had just uttered the words, “I love you.” Out of nowhere. I think for any teenager studying chemistry with their dad, this would seem out of place. But even more than that, Dad was not the type that EVER expressed his feelings out loud. Sure, I had letters from him that he had written on special occasions where he expressed his love, and I knew he loved me. But hearing it out loud? That just didn’t happen.
Caught off guard and feeling a little awkward, I tried to make a joke. “Are you dying?” I teased him. I expected a lighthearted laugh, a smile, a shy apology to explain why he suddenly blurted out his feelings. Anything to signal that he understood my joke. When his face remained serious, I knew something was wrong. The rest of the evening is a blur. It was cancer, he told me, and he didn’t know what would happen to him, to us. My only remaining memory after hearing those words is that of his strong hands stroking my long hair down my back while he held me tight, both of us silently crying. If the verbal expression of love was unusual, this physical expression of love was unheard of from Dad, but I clung to him like a baby koala bear, utterly in shock and unable to comprehend what this all meant.
Dad’s Work Ethic
It was no secret in our family that relationships with Dad were fairly strained. He ruled with an iron fist and had exceedingly high expectations of us all. Discipline and order were first and foremost in everything required of us. All six of us kids would joke with each other whenever someone was playing a video game or watching tv, putting on our best Dad voice, inquiring, “Have you done your homework? Did you do your piano practicing? Violin practicing? Did you complete all of your chores? Is your room clean?” There was always a litany of productive, orderly tasks that was expected of us before any enjoyment could be had. We learned very early on that as soon as you heard the garage door opening, you turned the tv off and ran to find something to do that would make it appear as if you had been working on something useful the entire time Dad was out of the house in order to avoid the inevitable lecture. He was loving, in his own way, but he expected perfection of everyone around him, himself included, and as we are imperfect beings, it meant that we were constantly disappointing him in one way or another.
By way of example, one of my chores as a teenager was to clean the kitchen countertops every night before bed. As a busy teenager there were nights I was so tired from the day’s activities and it was so late that the thought of cleaning the counters felt insurmountable. But don’t even think of going to bed without your chore done, because Dad does inspections! Each night he would inspect the countertops, pointing out all of the places I hadn’t cleaned well enough (side note, I’m a fantastic cleaner now). Dad had one rule for passing his inspection. Like my chemistry teacher, I think the rule was made as a joke originally. But he commented that I could pass his inspection if I was willing to lick up any gross things that he pointed out when I thought the cleaning was done. His intent, of course, was to demonstrate to me that if I’m not willing to lick the countertop I just cleaned, then I obviously didn’t clean it very well. One night when I was completely exhausted and just wanted to be in bed, Dad came to inspect my “cleaning.” I was tired, it was a rush job, and I knew it. Dad pointed to a fruit fly smushed on the counter – not just a crumb I left behind, an actual little insect. I was in a cheeky mood, so I lashed my tongue out and licked up that nasty little fruit fly before even so much as thinking it through. Then, knowing that I had fulfilled his rule, I skipped upstairs to bed. I think he was too surprised to try to stop me.
Dad’s Frugality
In addition to being very disciplined and orderly, Dad was…frugal, to put it nicely. Spending money was generally frowned upon, especially if it was something considered frivolous or unnecessary. He was the type of man that stayed the same size his entire adult life and therefore only purchased new clothing when his old clothing was threadbare (and even then I think he rebelled against the idea of having to spend money on something so silly as clothing). Eating out was a rarity, and on those infrequent occasions that we did eat out, it usually meant all 8 of us loaded into our big blue van at the McDonald’s drive-thru while Dad frantically ordered the cheapest menu item – one small burger per child. And I say frantic because that’s how he behaved, as if it was the most stressful thing in the world to have a car full of hungry kids while a tinny voice from a little mechanical box was saying things like “Can I take your order, sir?” or “Is that everything, sir?” or “Can you repeat that, sir?” I’m sure the total bill at the end of those McDonald’s trips seemed outrageously expensive to him, and meanwhile I’m equally certain that each one of us was still completely hungry after eating our burgers.
When cell phones were still somewhat new and text messaging was BRAND new, my dad had the latest, greatest cell phone – a cute tiny little brick phone by Nokia. I had some friends that had cell phones given to them by their parents, so I was eager to try out this new text messaging thing. I nabbed Dad’s phone at dinner one night and sent 10 messages to my best friend. Who knows what we even said, probably something completely pointless like, “Hey it’s Katie on my dad’s new phone, isn’t this cool?!” (I’m sure a sentence that long would have taken me at least several minutes to type out). Well, I can’t remember what I sent in those messages. But I remember that it was EXACTLY 10 messages that I sent. See, when text messaging was a new technology, there were no text messaging packages, no unlimited texting, nothing like that. Each text message at the time cost $0.10 to send (some companies would charge you $0.05 to send and $0.05 to receive, which just seemed dumb to have to pay if someone else was sending you a message and you had no choice but to receive the message). So, I had my fun sending the 10 messages. Not long after that, Dad got his cell phone bill in the mail. Sitting in my room one night, I heard Dad’s footsteps come down the hall and his firm KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK landed on my closed bedroom door. I opened the door. Holding his phone bill up in the air with one hand, Dad stuck his other hand out towards me and logically stated, “You owe me $1.00.” I remembered sending the messages and knew they cost money, so I knew immediately what the $1.00 was for. But in my teenage mind, I had sent only 10 messages precisely because I was trying to be smart with our money and not charge up a big bill – a dollar’s worth of messages didn’t seem like a big deal to an immature teenage mind. I just stared at my dad standing in my doorway. Several seconds passed as I waited for him to realize how funny it was that he was acting like charging an additional $1.00 to his phone bill was an egregious sin. When I could tell he saw no humor in the situation, I just smiled and said, “Okay Dad, hold on.” Fetching a dollar bill for him, I kind of laughed as I handed it to him, not understanding how he could be making such a big deal over a single dollar.
Thriftiness at the Fiddle Contest
My husband’s favorite story to illustrate Dad and his thriftiness is the morning Dad woke me up at 4am. It was a Saturday and I was a young teenager. Who in their right mind wakes up their teenager at 4am on a Saturday?! Without offering me the option to back out he said, “Get ready, we’re leaving right now to go to a Fiddle Contest in St. George.” St. George is about a 3.5-4-hour drive for us, so apparently the contest he wanted us to go to was starting that very morning and we had to leave NOW to get there. My older brother Matt was also dragged out of bed at that ungodly hour to get into the car. That made sense – Matt was an exceptional violinist and far better at fiddling than I ever would be, so I understood why Matt had to go, but I almost never did well in competitions so I didn’t understand why I had to go. Again, I wasn’t given a choice, I was given a command, so I got dressed and got into the car. I slept the whole way there and felt much better when we arrived around 8am, ready to register, get our numbers for the competition and then practice with Dad. He would accompany us on his guitar while we played fiddle, and he seemed to really enjoy it. As the youngest kid in the family I think I felt it was my duty to do things that I knew my parents enjoyed without too much fuss, so I decided this whole trip/contest was going to be fine. And I was right – this competition was special because both my brother and I placed. He won first place, as usual. In my memory I won second place. I don’t actually know if that’s true, but I do know I won some money – I think it was around $25. All in all, I was feeling great about having been dragged out of bed unexpectedly to drive to a competition 4 hours away. My confidence was boosted because I had done so well, and who doesn’t appreciate an extra $25? As soon as Matt and I received our winnings, Dad took us aside. “Okay, you guys need to pay me back for the registration fees required to enter the contest, and then I need you each to pay half of the gas that it took to drive down here, so you each owe me…[calculating in his head]…$10.” Okay, I don’t remember how much we ended up having to pay Dad out of our winnings to recoup his costs, but I remember instantly feeling deflated from that happy bubbly feeling I had after a successful morning. All these years later it’s a story that just makes me smile and it always gets a good laugh from anyone that hears it, but in the moment, I was furious that Dad had to always be so stingy with money.
My Irish Competition Dress and Sweatshirt
Understanding these facets of Dad is why one of my favorite memories of Dad happened in Idaho at a dance competition (yes, another competition!). Both my parents were musicians and wanted all of their kids to be musical as well, so in addition to taking a gazillion music lessons, my parents formed a family band and I spent my childhood touring around the United States playing music. Because we played Bluegrass and Irish music, my dad enrolled me Irish Step Dance lessons at a young age (along with a few American Clogging lessons), and he was my biggest supporter with dance. When I was 14, Utah hosted its first ever Irish Step Dance competition, and I was finally able to start competing, though opportunity was still somewhat limited around us. In the fall around my 16th or 17th birthday, Idaho hosted a competition and Dad agreed to drive me and mom so I could compete. Now, if you’re going to be in competitions, you need to have a real competition dress. And Irish Dance dresses do not come cheap – for a good dress you can usually expect to spend around $2000. Not only was Dad routinely frugal, but he had also lost his job when I was 11 years old and had only recently gotten a new job, so I knew that money for us was very tight. Up until that point I had used old and out of fashion dresses borrowed from my teachers, but I wanted one of my very own. My mom, along with Dad’s approval, worked very hard to bring that to fruition. We found a local seamstress, but it was her first time making an Irish Dance dress, and she didn’t quite understand how to accomplish its unique look with the short, stiff skirt and its stiff pleats. We didn’t end up having to pay what a seasoned Irish Dance dress maker charges, but it was still an expensive dress – around $1000. However, since she didn’t know how to make the skirt stiff and straight like it was supposed to be, my dress kept folding and rolling up and just not looking the way Irish Dance dresses were supposed to look. The night before my competition, Dad spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to get my dress to lie flat. We were staying at a stranger’s home in Idaho and he asked them for all sorts of heavy things that he could use around their house to lay on my dress to train it to stay flat. Even with that extra work, my dress never did lie flat or look right, but it touched me that Dad was so concerned about helping me.
The next day at my competition, Dad surprised me even more by doing something he NEVER did. He surprised me with a sweatshirt that had my name screen-printed on it. I was blown away. This is the guy that rarely took us to the movies, wouldn’t let us buy any concessions ever. The dad that insisted on coolers full of food so we wouldn’t have to spend money on fast food. The dad that bragged about the pants he’d been wearing for the last 25 years. The dad who made each of us kids track our car usage in a mileage book so he could charge us $0.10 per mile driven either by us or on our behalf (“Oh you need a ride to a friend’s house half a mile away? That’s a mile round trip, so that will cost you $0.10 to drop you off and another $0.10 if we have to pick up when you’re ready to come home.”). I couldn’t believe he had bought something so unnecessary, so frivolous, so obviously marked-up and over-priced just for me. Without me even asking for it. And the sad part was that his beautiful and spontaneous gift to me was ruined right from the start. Just as my expensive dance dress would never look right, this sweatshirt was marred. Whoever had done the silkscreen had left a piece of tape on the front, so there was a big tape-shaped mark on the front of the sweatshirt. We were so busy with the competition that it was too late to return it when we realized the error, and I could tell that it devastated Dad that his gift to me was not perfect. That weekend has become a sort of poetic beauty to me as the years have passed. Dad’s special gifts to me were imperfect – you could even say they were ruined. These gifts have come to symbolize that in the end, we had to accept each other as imperfect beings and focus on love instead. Love that we hadn’t been able to officially express before that night in the kitchen, studying chemistry together. Love bravely and unabashedly expressed, and my shameful response, “Are you dying?” – those words forever haunting me and living in the recesses of my mind.
***
Where Did My Dad Go?
I’m walking down the hospital corridor, clinging to my husband’s hand. In my mind I’m actually back in high school, on the stage practicing for tomorrow’s Prom Assembly. I’m in a daze throughout the practice, the events immediately beforehand on replay in my mind rather than focusing on the current rehearsal. My mom implores me to talk to Dad, to tell him that I need him to live and see me crowned as Prom Queen at this year’s Junior Prom. It’s Thursday evening and the dance is only 2 days away – surely he’s not doing so poorly that he will be gone before then. She says I need to give him something to live for. I walk over to his hospital bed, set up in our living room so he could be at home and comfortable while he continued his cancer treatments. I didn’t know at the time, but this is what it means to have someone in hospice care. Someone who is actively in the stages of dying but wishes to be in the comfort of their own home with their family. I didn’t know that’s what it meant to have that hospital bed taking over the living room. It’s only been about 4 or 5 months and already he doesn’t even look like Dad. His skin is sallow and sagging. Always a lean, trim man at 5’11’’ and 150 pounds, he’s now lost an incredible amount of weight and his skin appears to be barely hanging on his bones. His breath is labored and rattles when he breathes, and he’s barely conscious most of the time now. I’m ashamed to admit it, but it scares me to be around him. It scares me, because I should have seen the signs and should have done something, anything. Instead, I have ignored it, I’ve tried to shut it away and pretend that life is going to go back to normal. I still can remember the time I thought there was a ghost in my bedroom. It was the middle of the night, but Dad swopped in to save the day and showed me it was just the light coming through my small bathroom window and reflecting on the wall. I remember the baseball practices in our backyard where Dad would throw the ball as high as he could in the air to teach me how to catch a fly ball. I remember his brilliant intellect – all the times my siblings and I would be studying or practicing for exams and he always beat us to the punch with the answers on any subject. I remember the man who would spend hours teaching himself music and sitting with me to show me exactly how he wanted me to play the numbers we would perform with our family band. Who is this stranger lying on this bed? Where did my dad go? I reach out for his hand, thinking that if only he feels my touch he might perk up and respond to me. I almost recoil because I’m shocked by how icy his hand feels. He’s completely incoherent and it feels like he’s already gone, but I still talk to him. “Dad, please don’t die. Please get better. I need you to come see me in Promenade on Saturday… I love you Dad, please don’t leave me, I don’t want to be alone.” I cry, letting my tears fall on his frozen hand as I continue pleading with him to live, then I get up and leave to my assembly practice.
Terrified
I’m in the prom rehearsal, but my mind is having a difficult time reconciling what I see. My older sister and sister-in-law are suddenly there, at my school, walking down the auditorium aisle towards me as I stand frozen on the stage. I’m in such a haze that I can barely process what this inevitably means, but as I look back, I understand that there’s no good reason in the world why they would take the time to drive to the high school to pick me up right in the middle of a practice. Even if it should have been obvious to me, I can’t fathom the worst possibility because I had already determined the worst wouldn’t happen, couldn’t happen. And then, between seeing my sisters come down the aisle and walking up to my own front door, I don’t remember a single thing. They must have said something to me, they must have told me outright or at least given an indication. But when I look, there’s nothing there. No memories of walking to the car, no memories of climbing inside, buckling up, driving home – nothing. Nothing, that is, until I’m walking to the front door, terrified for the first time in my life of taking one small step into my own home. Terrified, because I know that once my eyes have confirmed what my mind and heart already know, there will be no turning back. Terrified, because a part of me thinks that if I don’t walk through that door, then it won’t be real, so how can I be expected to take that step?
“This Sucks.”
Back in the hospital, still walking down the corridor, I’m overcome by the memories that this walk is bringing, compounded by the sadness I feel for the family and loved ones we are about to see. We run into our friend, her eyes red and puffy from crying. All she can say as she hugs Matt is, “this sucks,” and I know exactly what she means. There’s no more concise way to put it. With all the knowledge, faith, and hope we have of the future and eternal families, it still doesn’t mean we’re not susceptible to the feelings that accompany such a massive loss; and yes, it sucks. As we continue walking down the corridor together, I see the door coming, and I know we must take that step to go in, as terrified as we may be.
She’s beautiful. Even in death, she is soft, peaceful, beautiful. As my mind races back through time, I can’t but help compare. Though it is clear her spirit has departed her mortal body, she still looks like herself, she’s still beautiful. But walking through my own door and seeing my own father lying there…thinking he looked beautiful and peaceful was far from my mind. Seeing him is the proof I didn’t want, the proof that everything has changed forever. Again, my memory has failed me. I remember walking through the door, remember seeing him there, remember thinking that it wasn’t him, couldn’t be him, because the father I grew up with had been vibrant, young, energetic, and full of life. Aside from that, however, there is nothing. No memories of who was present, no memories of what was said; I don’t even know if I touched him or not, it’s all gone.
I Long to take Away Their Pain.
Looking at the others in the hospital room, my heart hurts for them, longs to take their pain away. I have been there; I have walked down that path. But I don’t want anyone else to hurt the way I know they are hurting, especially because I don’t know how to help them. I can hardly look at them, knowing that I know exactly how they feel. Knowing that their lives have changed forever.
I’ve heard some people comment that time heals all wounds. I’ve heard others say that phrase is a bunch of baloney. My own feelings are that time is not a healer – time is merely a tool, and each of us handles the tool differently. Some seem to be able to use time to seek methods of healing and comfort while others somehow manage to freeze time such that they are forever stuck in the moment of time when their heart shattered, unable to move past or find healing and forgiveness. This is just my opinion, but I have observed it in others as well as experienced it myself. No matter how much time passes, I still fluctuate with moments where I feel confident and hopeful and energetic, while at other times I curl into the fetal position crying desperately for a dad that I no longer can see, touch, hear or feel. And it feels selfish, but each time a new tragedy is introduced in my life, such as this death of our friend’s mother, I feel forced to confront my own personal loss all over again. I keep hoping that one day I’ll have the magic bullet – the right words to say to someone experiencing loss, the right things to do to help them. But each time, I’m almost paralyzed by my empathy for them and the pain of my own loss all over again; often all I can say to them is, “This sucks.” For now, that will have to be adequate.
In the End, I WILL See Him Again.
This all happened many years ago, and even after all that time and having a husband and my own small family to take care of, the pain never fully goes away. I am human. I feel those human emotions of heartache, pain, hurt, anger. I felt like so much had been taken from me, waking every morning with a sudden jolt of realization that I was never going to see my dad again in this lifetime. But I think it’s okay to embrace the pain as it makes the sweet memories all the sweeter. And as dark as it gets some days, in the end it reminds me of the beautiful day that I will get to see him once more and will be able to feel those strong hands embrace me again. My mom has always believed that Dad made a choice to heal his spirit and move on to the next life. Well, I can make a choice as well, and I choose to look forward to the future with faith, hope and love. In doing so, I think Dad’s legacy can be spread to those around me – at least in some small way. And in the end, the legacy of love is all I’ve really ever needed.