My father lived a hard-working middle class life. He served his country during World War II and held tight to the conservative values learned during the struggles of that era. In all the years of my youth, I can only remember my father missing two days of work. His old-German heritage lay at the heart of his honorable work ethic and his quiet, solid manner.
The same old-school upbringing also lay at the heart of one of his flaws. My father was unable to express his feelings or to speak of the love he felt for his family. Though there may have been other occasions when I was very young, I only remember one exception to this rule.
We gathered at my parents house for a Sunday dinner. My sister and one of my brothers, along with my wife and myself, converged to feast upon my mother's wonderful cooking. During the normal dinner chatter, I noticed my father slurring occasionally when he spoke. No one mentioned this during dinner, but I felt compelled to discuss it with my mother afterwards as we sipped coffee together in the kitchen.
"He says that his dentures don't fit anymore," Mom explained. "I've been bugging him for weeks to make an appointment with the dentist, but he keeps putting it off."
"Mom, the problem isn't his teeth. I don't know what it is, but he needs to make an appointment with his doctor, not his dentist. I know he hates to see doctors, but I'll help you drag him in if we have to. I'm really worried."
Drawing on the lessons learned from many years of marriage to a stubborn man, my mother devised a plan to deliver her husband to the doctor's office without a struggle. She made an appointment with the dentist, then called the doctor to explain the situation. The doctor, well aware of the difficulty in getting my father to keep an appointment, went along with the plan. Waving the normal rules for a specific appointment time, he agreed to see my father immediately after his dentist appointment. The dentist, also aware of this conspiracy, pretended to adjust my father's dentures and then sent him on his way. Mom took the "scenic route" home -- by way of the doctor's office -- and Dad found himself in the medical complex parking lot before he suspected a thing. After the standard protest, he followed my mother into the doctor's office.
She phoned two days later.
"Ed, I need you to come over this evening; we need to talk," she said, her normally strong voice breaking with the stress of bad news too painful to hide.
I rushed over after work. My father lounged in his favorite chair as he watched the news and sipped on a glass of beer. Smiling and appearing in good spirits, he asked how I was doing. My mother motioned me into the kitchen. She spoke softly so he could not hear. The bomb fell.
"Ed, they found a brain tumor. It's too large at this point to operate. They are going to try to shrink it with radiation and chemotherapy treatments, and maybe they can do something then," she stopped to wipe tears from her eyes, "but the odds are long, and it doesn't look good."
"Dad's a fighter," I told her. "He's beaten a stroke, a heart attack and lung cancer. Maybe he can beat this too." Even as I spoke of hope, my stomach knotted in fear. It must have shown because my mother hugged me fiercely.
My father underwent a barrage of treatments and lost almost all of his thick black hair. Meanwhile, my wife Michele gave birth to our first child, and we discovered what had happened to my father's hair when my daughter Chelsey arrived in this world wearing it. An avalanche of coal-black hair fell around my daughter's ivory-white cherub's face -- a china doll wearing a Paul McCartney wig. Chelsey received her first haircut when she was five weeks old because her bangs were hanging in her eyes. I have never seen a child enjoy more attention than that hairy five-week-old as she sat in the salon chair on a booster seat and several phone books, held upright and stable by her loving mother and surrounded by a horde of cosmetologists and several of their customers, all adult women, all shrieking with joy like children at a circus.
As my father's disease attacked and regressed, he was moved in and out of the hospital. During one prolonged stay, we visited in the hospital room. My father's condition had worsened, as had his speech, and the doctors finally informed us his condition was terminal. He lay in bed with his head propped up on pillows and tried to communicate with me through grunts and hand gestures. His speech had deteriorated to the point where even guessing the words he was trying to form had become almost impossible. I finally figured out that he wanted me to sit Chelsey on his stomach so he could make faces at her.
With my father's hands wrapped around her tiny waist, Chelsey sat on her grandpa and they jabbered back and forth talking nonsense. Chelsey's vocabulary was restricted by her youth, my father's by the horrible disease that even now worked behind the scenes stealing a larger part of his brain each day.
My father remained in control of his laughter if not his speech, and how he laughed that day. He mumbled and cooed to Chelsey; she returned the volley with a stream of gurgles and slobbery consonants. Then they both erupted in deep belly laughs. The bond that grew between grandfather and granddaughter never required a formal language. My father had found an ally who fell in love with him completely and unconditionally, and my daughter, like any competent infant, possessed that child's knack of knowing a grandfather's loving touch when she felt it. English was optional, bushels of love mandatory.
This new game became a regular part of our visits with my father after he escaped the hospital for the familiar and comfortable surroundings of his own home. Both participants found it hilarious. They laughed every time they played the game, each trying to out "silly" the other, the love shining bright in their eyes. A bittersweet blend of joy and sorrow never failed to overwhelm me every time I watched the two of them together. Forced to observe this game as both a father and a son, I realized that I was living an experience that would forever remain a part of me. Though grateful for the times they could share, I couldn't shake the feeling of a clock ticking in the background. I always knew their special relationship was destined to be far too brief. God granted them a wonderful gift; cancer turned their years together into short, precious weeks.
I stopped to visit my father during what everyone knew must be his last days. My mother took Chelsey from my arms and announced, "Your father would like to see you alone for a minute."
I entered the bedroom where my father lay on a rented hospital bed. He appeared weaker than the last time I saw him, just a day earlier.
"How are you feeling, Dad?" I asked. "Mom said you wanted to see me. Can I do anything for you?"
He tried to speak, but I couldn't understand a word.
"I'm sorry, but I can't understand you," I said, a lump of cold steel forming in my throat. "You want your pad and pen?"
Ignoring both my suggestion for the pad and pen, which he detested, and the mechanical controls for raising the head of his bed, slowly and with great effort my father pulled himself higher in the bed. The strain of concentration played out on his face.
Staggered by the intensity of his struggle, I reached down to hold his hand as once again he tried and failed to speak. Our eyes met and locked on each other, both of us suddenly forced to face the painful reality that all the baseball games, all the huddled winters and long summer days, all the years together as I grew from a child to an adult with a child of my own had now come down to this -- one last father and son moment to be wrested away from the wrath of cancer by my father's sheer determination. Tears glistened in his eyes like tinsel. He shook his head and smiled at me as if to say, "Ain't this just the damnedest thing?" Then my father took a deep breath and won one final battle with the disease that would soon win the war. He softly spoke three little words with crystal clarity.
"I love you."
We don't learn courage from heroes on the evening news. We learn true courage from watching ordinary people rise above a hopeless situation as they overcome obstacles they never knew they could. I saw the courage my mother possessed when she chose to fight the battle that would allow her husband to remain at home where he belonged. I learned about courage from our friends, neighbors and relatives as they drew closer, circling wagons of love in the last days of my father's life. But most of all, I learned about courage from my father who simply refused to leave this life until he overcame his greatest obstacle -- sharing his heart with his son.
