Days I Won’t Forget

I was having breakfast Monday morning when thoughts of my dad popped into my head. They came from out of nowhere. I was reviewing the day’s agenda and my thoughts drifted to him. I started thinking about his last day, the last time I spoke to him, the words we shared, the people who stopped in the hospital to visit that day, and I realized it was twenty-three years to the day that he passed. It might have been his way of letting me know he was thinking about me too.

He became ill the previous September, landed in the hospital, and he never lived at home again.  Nine months later he was gone.  He spent his remaining days in nursing homes and hospitals.  At first, I was upset with my mom.  I thought she had given up on him.  As the days grew into weeks, I realized he needed more care than she could give.  I visited him most weekends and our visits turned out to be a gift for me.

When he was in the nursing home, I took him on little “field trips”.  We went out for Chinese several times, took rides to visit my aunts and uncles, and visited the cemetery where Ma and Pa Tebo are buried. We visited Uncle Harry Mac in his rehab center, and the two best friends conducted a mini-Olympics on the exercise equipment.  My cousin, Ruth Ann, rooted for her dad and I rooted for mine.

When I “just visited”, we played cards.  At first, he held his own, but as he failed, I sometimes just let him win like he did for me when I was young.  We talked about family, his growing up, and how much he loved my mom.  He thought she hung the moon.  I’m not sure he ever told her, but he told me.

I had spent most of the afternoon with him the day he passed.  He was failing and had been hospitalized for two weeks.  He had several visitors that day, my cousin Gene, Uncle Harry Barner, two different couple friends, Mom, and me.  He told one friend, “Things will be better soon.”  At the time I thought he was talking about getting better. Later I realized he knew the end was near.

He and I didn’t speak much that day.  He tended to his other visitors.  They were in his space, and he wanted them to feel welcome.  That’s how he lived his life and he remained that way until the end.

Our family has changed since his passing.  I think the thing he would have loved most is the four great-grandchildren he never knew.  He loved children, especially when they were young.  He would have loved Brady, Eva, my sister’s grandson, Marco, and the latest, young Jackson James.  He would have sat them on his lap, tickled them, perhaps resurrected his finger puppets, and been proud to show them off to his friends.

He would have told them stories and asked them to share theirs with him.  He’d want to know if Brady and Eva had girlfriends and boyfriends, how Marco’s camping trips went, and he would have squeezed Jackson’s cheeks like the hundreds of cheeks he squeezed before.

Things don’t always turn out the way we plan.  Sometimes we don’t realize what we have until it’s slipping away.  I’m happy we had some one-on-one time.  We both learned a bit more about each other because of it, and for that I’ll always be grateful.  They were days I won’t forget.