Today is a special day. Today is my birthday. Today is my 30th birthday. Today is also the one year anniversary of my dad’s passing. I still miss him, just as anyone would who has lost a loved one. My dad and I now share this day. Strangely enough, my dad’s father also passed away on my dad’s birthday many years ago. I never thought about this fact much when Dad was around. Since I now share this day with my dad, I thought I would post something I wrote for him in September 2008. I sent this out to those close to me around this past Thanksgiving, but I felt it would be appropriate for me to post this here today.
To Dad
I am writing this because it should have been written over a year and a half ago. In March 2007, I attended a funeral of a 26 year-old woman who had been killed in a helicopter crash. There was a very large showing of people. I listened as her brother, sister, husband, mother, and mother-in-law talked about how extraordinary this young woman was. The thing that I remember most was her older brother. He talked about the last time he saw her. He recalled his last hug that he gave her. Tearfully, he stated that if he had known that it would be the last time, he would have told her how much he loved her, how proud he was of her, and he would have hugged her longer. That funeral and that eulogy made me realize just how unfortunate it is that we always wait until it is too late to tell our loved ones how much they mean to us. I decided that I would write something to everyone that I was close to so that the opportunity wouldn’t pass me by.
I successfully completed the one for my mom. I printed it out on nice paper and found a nice card to mail with it. The timing of it was great. It came in a particularly rough week for my mom. She called me to thank me for the poem I wrote for her. My next intention was to write something for my dad. But when the time came, I hit a block. It wasn’t that my dad wasn’t a good father or a good person. It wasn’t that we were estranged. Truthfully, I was angry and hurt. My dad had rheumatoid arthritis and had recently been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I am a physical therapist. Each time I would have a conversation with my dad, his health would always come up. He would complain about something, and I would suggest something for treatment, which he would always blow off. This would also bring up the annoying fact that he didn’t have healthcare coverage, which he would always say was too expensive. I would always try to redirect the conversation from there because it would piss me off to no end that he was so unreceptive to my suggestions. Therefore, each time I would sit down to write an ode to dad, I had a hard time initiating it because I felt like he was letting me down and being disrespectful.
Christmas 2007 I went with my brothers to my dad’s house to exchange gifts. The conversation was more painful than usual to get through with him continually joking about his crappy health. I just zoned out of the conversation and let my older brother talk to him. When we left the house, I told my older brother that I was so angry. I felt that it was stupid for my dad to always say he was so proud of me for the hard work it took to get my degree and yet he always ignored my advice. I felt it was insulting.
On March 17, 2008, I had a phone conversation with my dad. Most of my discussions were becoming a work of art in avoiding talk of my dad’s health. However, this time my dad told me he was finally going to get an echocardiogram done because he had convinced his cruddy general medicine doctor to order it. This test was almost nine months overdue. The doctor didn’t think it was necessary and my dad had never pushed to get it done, even though the cardiologist had recommended he have it done three months after Dad’s initial hospitalization, when he was diagnosed with congestive heart failure. I hung up the phone that night feeling like I had finally achieved a small victory. The next day, I received a frantic phone call from my stepmom that my dad was in the emergency room and had suffered a heart attack. In a blur of events, I flew home by that evening, drove a car from St. Louis to my hometown two hours away, and arrived at the hospital by 5 a.m. on March 19. My dad was on life support and was not expected to regain consciousness. My younger brother arrived around 6pm that day. Around 11pm that day, my brothers, my mom, and my stepmom collectively decided to take my dad off life support, not knowing how long it would take before his body would give up. We all waited by his bedside as the support was removed. I don’t want to describe this moment because I think I prefer that my mind just phase it out. All I know is that movies are far from accurate in the depiction of removing life support, and I feel great empathy for anyone who ever has or ever will experience that. Around ten minutes to midnight, my younger brother stated, “Well, Tanya, it seems that Dad is hell bent on making it to your birthday”, which happened to be March 20. As the time passed and our lack of sleep caught up, one by one we each went to sleep in the waiting area or the conference room of the ICU. My older brother was the last one in the room. I told him and Dad that I was just going to catch about an hour of sleep, and then I’d come back. Around 3:15 a.m. on March 20, my birthday and pretty much my time of birth, my dad passed away with all of us asleep, including Jason who had fallen asleep at Dad’s bedside. In retrospect, it was very fitting that my dad would have waited for us all to look away before passing on. He would have wanted to spare us that moment, we agreed.
It has taken me more than six months to write about that. I would purposefully carve out a night alone for myself with the intention of writing about this incident, but couldn’t bring myself to even open the document or a journal. A week and a half ago, I took a new job and quickly realized that it is not where I belong. I have been bothered by this because I made a deal with myself when my dad died that I would never give time to a job that I didn’t want to be at. I feel that I am giving an employer my 40 hours a week out of the total time I am allotted on this earth. Life is too short to waste my time in a job that won’t appreciate me when I’m gone. I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately and about Dad. I also have been thinking about the fact that I never told him how much he meant to me and I never even wrote it to him. I had to talk to my Dad at his bedside in the ICU, with machines attached, hoping that he could hear me. I feel like I never really got to tell him everything I should have. So the following is for my dad.
Dear Dad,
You always made me feel like I was your little girl, even when I was old enough to move away.
You always wanted to protect me, even when I’d learned how to stand up and defend myself.
You always put my well-being first, even when it meant risking your own well-being.
You always supported my decisions, even when they weren’t the most sound.
You always taught me to be honest, even when it created personal difficulty.
You always showed me how to be kind to others, which influenced my career.
You always encouraged me to follow my dreams, even when the dreams were big.
You always answered the phone when I called, even past bedtime.
You always knew when I needed a hug, even if I was too far away to receive it.
You always told me how proud of me you were, even when the accomplishment was small.
Most of all, you loved me, unconditionally, wholly, and perpetually.
I love you, Dad
