This is probably the last post I'll make about my father for a while. I'm cried out and talked out and honestly ready to move on to something else for a while. But I wanted to share one last thing...
My father
almost died in the fall of 1983, when I was a sophomore in high school. He went into the hospital for a rather simple procedure--he was having a a stent put into an artery in one of his legs. It should have improved the circulation of the leg and taken away the agonizing pains he was having. But that didn't happen. Instead, soon after the surgery, he developed a staph infection at the point of surgery. It wasn't diagnosed quickly enough, and he very nearly died. He was rushed to a hospital in Louisville, and the doctors told him that--if he'd been sent there a DAY earlier--they could have healed him without any major issues, and--if he'd been sent there an HOUR later--he wouldn't have survived. As it was, he DID survive, but the doctors had to amputate much of the leg.
I was devastated. My father was my hero. The idea that he was anything less than superman, the idea that he might not always be there for me, had never really crossed my mind.
More than that, prior to that time, when I thought of my dad, I primarily thought of him playing with us kids outside, playing basketball in the back yard, running along the beaches and jumping waves with us in the ocean when we were on vacations. He was an active man. It seemed especially cruel that this needless, senseless accident had taken his leg. It hit me hard.
Harder than just about everyone but my mom, it seemed. I was in denial about the whole thing for a while. I was the absolute last of the siblings to visit my father in the hospital. It wasn't that I was too busy. I passed up lots of opportunities to go and visit. It was as if the problem didn't exist if I didn't see him. When I finally did go and see him in the hospital I poked my head in for a minute, said hello, and went back out of the room quickly. I didn't want to face the truth.
For years I just put the issue out of my mind. I didn't deal with it in any real sense, and it would bubble up in emotional outbursts that I didn't understand. During my senior year of high school, during halftime of the last home football game, my school honored the seniors who had participated in fall sports and activities. After a few words from our coach, the rest of the senior football players and I left the locker room and went to the sideline where all of the other seniors were waiting with their parents. The seniors and their parents walked one by one to the center of the field and were introduced over the loudspeaker. When it was our turn, my mother and father and I walked, like the others before us, up the 50 yard line. My father had a cane, and he walked with a limp which was slight but noticeable, and as we walked toward the center of the field I became aware that we were walking much slower than the families before us had. It was as fast as my father could go, though. And in that moment, I was so angry at my father for walking so slowly. I was shaking and almost in a rage by the time we got to the center of the field. There was so much anger directed toward my father--or, to be more accurate--MISdirected toward my father.
Four years after my father lost his leg, in 1987, Bruce Springsteen released the record
Tunnel of Love, and on the record was a single entitled "
Walk Like a Man." I didn't much care for the record the first time I listened to it (though it grew on me and I regard it as one of his better records now), but "Walk Like a Man" was a punch in the gut. The first time I heard the song I lay on the bed in my room with my headphones on and cried--I felt like Springsteen was singing a song about MY experience (Apparently I'm not alone in feeling that way about Springsteen, which is why Springsteen is a multi-million selling artist).
The speaker of the song is a son speaking to his father, and two lines at the end of the song were what struck me so soundly. Those two lines are "I was young and I didn't know what to do / When I saw your best steps stolen away from you." That was EXACTLY how I felt. My father's leg and the steps that leg would take had been STOLEN from him, and he'd never be able to do again so many of the active things he'd loved to do before. My heart broke for him, and for years and years I'd tear up EVERY TIME that line of the song was sung, even if I'd just heard the song four or five times before.
For such a long time I was resentful and angry about what had happened to my father. But eventually, I didn't feel that way anymore. Though I still wish it'd never happened, in some ways, it was a blessing. In real life and in movies, I've seen people die and others close to them bemoan their deaths and say, "I always thought there'd be more time...If only I'd known he was going to die...If only I had a second chance to tell him how I felt!" I had
TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS of second chances to tell my father how I felt about him, and once I finally pulled my head out of my butt and dealt with and understood how I felt about my father's near death, I was able to do so.
I'm not sure when it happened, but one day in 1994 I realized that I no longer had the anger anymore about my dad and his situation. Instead of being angry that my dad had lost his leg, I was SO GRATEFUL that he'd survived, and I resolved to let him know whenever I could how I felt about him. And I did. That year I wrote a poem, typed it in a fancy font, framed it and gave it to him for Christmas. It's still hanging on the wall at my parent's house. I read it earlier this week and...sheesh...well, at least I meant well (Mom, if you're reading this and you've been keeping it up just to keep from hurting my feelings, know that it's okay to take it down whenever you want). But the quality of the poem's not the point. I was trying to reach out to him, trying to let him know that I loved him and respected him and that in no small part he was a part of me and a part of who I am.
More than that, I also began treating EVERY time I said goodbye to him as if it might be the last time that I said goodbye to him. I would tell him I loved him and hug him and make sure there were no hard feelings of any kind between us. I'd almost lost him without getting to say goodbye the way I wanted to. I meant to never have that happen again.
And the poem wasn't the only "product" that I ever made for him. I made several others. The one I'm proudest of is the video that's below. It's a series of photos of my father's life and photos of my life that mirror his. I'm trying to make the point that he shaped me into who I am, and that I'm following in his footsteps. I put music to the video, and of course I chose "Walk Like a Man" to be the music. It's not just background music, either--it's integral to the video.
It's a personal message between me and my father, and maybe it's not appropriate to share it with the general public. I do so here for a couple of reasons. First, I just want to. I'm still mourning, and this helps me. Get off my back.
Second, I want to encourage anyone still reading this to remember that the people we love will not always be with us. I'm at peace with my father because I know that four years ago I gave him this video, and that I tried as often as possible in smaller ways to let him know what he meant to me, too. I'm not saying you should go out and make a video--it would become cliche if we all did so. But don't hold back from telling the people around you how much they mean to you.
You never know when the second chances stop.
(
I can't see the video)
I slept in this morning, setting my alarm for 7:55 AM because a contractor was coming to our house to finish putting in a floor in the upstairs bathroom. Just a few seconds after the alarm went off I heard this rumbling noise along with a vibration which made me assume the rumbling noise was coming from somewhere in the house.
Today school was cancelled in my school district due to the weather.