I remember my response to the loud, jarring ringing of that midnight call. Half asleep after spending most of the day at the hospital I was awake by the time the phone reached my ear. An official sounding woman identified herself as Isabella, the ICU nurse on night duty at the Medical University. No chatter only instructions followed. I was to gather my family and meet my father’s doctor at the coronary care unit.
My feet touched the cold hardwood floor. I ran to my closet. I threw on mismatched clothes, squeezed tooth paste in my mouth and grabbed keys and cell phone. I ran to my car. Once on the road I called my brothers and asked them to pick up Mom and meet me at the hospital. The thing I remember about my drive to Charleston was the adrenaline rush and crystal clear perceptions as I hyperventilated from my pounding heart. An hour later I couldn’t remember where I parked the car.
I remember running down vacant midnight hallways and pounding on elevator buttons trying to get to the ICU while praying all the time, “Don’t let him die until I get there.” After what seemed like hours I reached the 4th floor ICU only to be confronted by large steel doors and a warning that only medical personnel could proceed. All the years of following instructions were gone as I pushed a large circular red button on the wall. The steel doors opened onto a surreal world as I saw my father’s doctor walking toward me. Everyone and everything moved in slow motion. Muffled voices and sounds intensified the high pitched steady beeps from monitors in distant rooms, too distant to be my father’s room. The air on the unit took on a hazy grey-green color as the doctor took my arm making it difficult for me to breathe or speak. I wanted to run to my father’s room but my cold body was zombie-like as the doctor led me to a conference room off the ICU unit. The room was a kaleidoscope of blues, browns, mahogany and overstuffed chairs, chairs that caught people as they heard the news that their loved ones had died.
This is the room where my brothers found me with the doctor. This was the room where the doctor paused for me to put my arms around my mother, and tell her that her husband of 51 years was gone.
Once again I pushed the forbidden red button opening the large steel doors that now separated the living from the dead. The family proceeded to Room 8. The beeper had stopped. Doctors, nurses and technicians departed. Dad’s body was in the bed but I could tell he was gone too. His body looked deserted somewhat like a shell washed up on the shore, empty of its owner. His body was still warm but his vibrant Norwegian skin was starting to pale. His eyes were closed and his mouth open, almost in a perfect O like death had caught him by surprise. This surprised me. I had always pictured my Dad would die with a smile on his face. In old age, he had talked about how great the day would be when he went to meet his Lord. Maybe I missed the smile as I jogged down vacant hospital hallways.
Prayers and perfunctory paper work followed. I can’t remember any of it.
What I do remember is standing in my driveway a few hours later dazed and sleep deprived in my navy blue and green checkered L.L.Bean pajamas. The night’s full moon still lighted the dark November morning. I could see my breath, a white hazy cloud that punctuated my words as I instructed Magic, my Labrador to drop the morning paper. I wasn’t ready to bring death into the house. I took a deep breath and exhaled, fascinated by the clouds my breath created in the cold morning air. That morning I did not take breath for granted. I stood there like a frozen flannelled statue trying to decide whether to pick up the newspaper and bring it into the house. Every cell in my fifty year old body knew my father had died the night before last but reading his obituary in the Post and Courier would make his death public. My hours of grieving alone would be gone. I stood there looked at the moon and remembered the rafts and underground forts he built for my brothers and me. I remembered the winters he flooded our backyard so the neighborhood kids would have a place to ice skate. I wanted to remember the summer trips to Coney Island. I could almost smell and taste the pancake breakfasts he’d prepared for me and my friends when I had a sleep-over. I wanted to remember the tennis racket he bought me with his poker money and the little 10K gold ring with a cultured pearl that appeared on my 10th birthday. There were many things I wanted to know about him. I wanted him to know many things about me. Those were thing we could no longer share.
Minutes pasted as I stood in the driveway lost in memories. My tear stained swollen face went numb in the cold. I was thankful that we were having an unusually cold November in Charleston. “It would give me a reason to wrap my body in coats, slacks and boots, less of my grieving self to expose to the world.” I said to Magic puffing icy clouds her way.
Magic sat at my feet waiting for our next move, her vigilance a result of my sobs from the night before. She knew our morning routine was different. How would I tell her that her favorite visitor, my Dad, was gone? No longer would a grey 1985 Buick pull into the driveway, honk the horn, pop the trunk, and have Dad jump out of the car, and present her with a large Milkbone. When would she notice he was gone? What would she think? How do dogs mourn I wondered?
How would I mourn I wondered?
A next door neighbor’s hello retrieved me from my mental wanderings. I quickly raised the heavy news paper to my heart, nodded to my neighbor and shuffled up my driveway, a fatherless daughter, a new identity.