My Father died Friday evening. He leaned back in the easy chair which has lately become the extent of his domain, gurgled, convulsed, then went limp. His heart, according to the defibrillator installed in one of his numerous heart surgeries, recorded the "incident," later printing a straight line of more than an inch on a medical graph.
My dad was defined by his heart. A heart condition forced him from his Kansas dairy farm to the supposedly therapeutic desert clime of Phoenix, Arizona. His heart changed the course of his life, and the lives of his family. More than once in the five decades since he sold his Jerseys and headed west, he was told he had but a short time left to live. More than a few times he had been loaded into an ambulance and sped to the hospital. More than a few times his family had said good-bye. And more than a few times he rallied, defying medical experts to return home.
He read "Seabiscuit" last year and then went to see the movie. Red Pollard, the jockey who overcame one calamity after another to ride The Biscuit in his final, victorious race, was my dad's favorite character. "He sure went through a lot, didn't he," he said after watching the film. "And he just kept coming back."
The same could be said of my father. Despite a heart that failed him, he never failed his family. When I was young he was there to catch the baseball on the side of the house, pretending my fast ball stung his hand through the catcher's mitt. He was there to take us camping, to drive us to church, to read us bedtime stories, to show us how to live a life. There was nothing fancy about him, no pretense. He was comfortable being himself.
For one with a heart so weak, my dad had more heart than anyone I know. Honestly kind, caring, considerate, he was absolutely the nicest man I ever met. As I think about it, I can only recall him being mad twice-once because a lawnmower wouldn't start on a blistering summer day, and once because I failed to put oil in my car. Mad as he was, "Jupiter!" was as profane as I ever heard him.
With youthful arrogance I listened cynically to his holiday prayers. In his simple way, he would express appreciation for family at Thanksgiving, give thanks for the gift of love ones at Christmas, offer praise for being together around the Easter table, bless "this food for the nourishment of our bodies" every Sunday. As time past the cynicism faded. As time past, I came to recognize the depth of his character. As time past, I came to realize not all fathers were always there.
His devotion to family carried to the next generation. If he wasn't on the way to or from the hospital, he was on the way to or from a basketball game, or football game or soccer match or track meet. Regardless of the contest's outcome, regardless whether his grandchildren played well or not, he always hugged them when it was over and said, "Good game."
Friday evening my dad died. But the monitor attached to his heart detected the lack of a beat and sent a shock to the still muscle. Emergency medical technicians administered aid. He who had been dead, was revived. A few hours later he was once again thanking nurses for being so kind to him, apologizing for being such a nuisance, encouraging his adult children to go home from the hospital because they needed to get up and work the next morning.
Driving to the emergency room, uncertain what awaited us, I considered the world without him. It wasn't the first time, but this "incident" had a finality to it, pressing thoughts to go places they try to avoid. When I squeezed his hand in the emergency room, he said "Your hands are warm."
"Cold heart, " I thought, "Not like yours." ~T. Stucky
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