Wednesday, January 18, 1984
Daddy’s large dark eyes, fringed by ever-gorgeous long lashes, followed me around the small apartment as I prepared to depart for home. The rest of him unrecognizable. Emaciated. Bones articulated through his dry leathery skin. Heartbeat thumping loudly in a chest cage full of lung cancer. I could hardly function knowing I was leaving and would never see him again. I don’t know and, with Yankee Puritan reserve, I did not ask what he was thinking – probably so tired; so tired of talking, of thinking, of pain, of living.
“Daddy, may I take this little tool from your toolkit for Philip?” Blink. Nod. “Thanks. He’s clever with his hands like you.”
I promised him I would call when baby and I reached home in Nashville. I bent to the bed to kiss him. Neither of us wanted to say it was . . . the last.
Steve took us to the San Diego airport. He was still driving but his ALS was moving up his limbs fast – claiming nerves and wasting muscles in its ruthless path. I leaned in the driver’s window to tell him that Daddy was bad today . . . maybe he would die today. Steve said they would check in on him and mom as he and his wife had been doing faithfully and daily, more than daily, for weeks. I was so broken-hearted about Daddy . . . and maybe in denial about Steve’s disease . . . that I did not really say goodbye to him well. Like you would want to if you knew it was . . . the last.
Friday night, Steve called to say Daddy died at dusk – dreading another long night of pain and not looking forward to a weekend of listless waiting. The workweek was done; his work on earth was done.
I believe Daddy waited to die until he knew baby Andrew and I were safely back in Nashville. When we were teenagers, he used to put the porch light on and not go to sleep until each of us was in for the night. How hard for our parents once we got older and our absences from home grew into weeks for college, then months and years for Steve’s military deployments and my time abroad in Taiwan with no short interim trips home.
Steve died a year later – and I had not had another chance to visit. Mom, disabled by a massive cerebral aneurysm, came to live with us and died 7 months after arriving. Both grandmothers died in that time and I had hardly an ounce of emotion left to grieve those two dear ladies. It was months before I looked back on the calendar and noticed that I said such “inadequate goodbyes” to Daddy and Steve on the same sad day.
It’s been 35 years since that day – amazing that the hurt still stings so badly. I have been without my Daddy longer than I had him. And it is just about the same amount of time as Steve’s whole life of 36 years; his two boys hardly had time to know him at all.
We, the family, are left with a few stories and photos – never enough, never able to fill the ragged wound in our lives. Most days we brighten at our faith in God’s promises: Jesus has prepared a place for us, God’s love is everlasting, God will take care of the fatherless. Some days we just work the good lessons they gave us and we walk the walk with hope.
Susan Olmstead Wang 