ER Sit 10/18/19

9:15 a.m. phone call at work. (My last day with my employer before starting a new position elsewhere.)

Mom was being taken to the emergency room. After calling my manager to see if she would extend my last day with the company to October 21, I drove to the hospital.

She was awake and aware, and expressed guilt about interrupting my workday.

What could be more important than this?

A-fib and low blood pressure. A tricky medical situation that scored us a room in ICU. Not at all what I expected.

birthday boy

The photo is of the birthday boy, my dad, Chuck Zimmerman.

The occasion is his 80th birthday party, held yesterday evening. And to think that a year ago, his greatest gift was coming home after two weeks in the Meijer Heart Center. My mom decided then and there that this party was going to be BIG. We're talking BIG, because she knows how to throw a party!

We had about eighty people there. Fraternity brothers from Beloit College, tennis buddies old and young, doctors, lawyers, new friends from the retirement community. And of course, our core family.

How many people get honored by young and old alike at such a celebration? Of course we did hear about some escapades (Polly and her parrot, for Pete's sake). But there were a couple of stories that really struck me.

There's the time that our church was bitterly divided, with a pastor that was doing wrong. My dad wasn't on the session, but one night as they met, the story was told of my dad coming into the room and sitting down at the table. When asked why he had come, he said, "I wanted to be here to pray with you during this difficult time."

Another person said that my dad is truly a man who lives his faith. He doesn't talk about it, but he sure walks it out. Whether it is his commitment to my mom (who he referred to as "the love of my life" in his opening remarks last evening), his dedication to the Salvation Army, or his willingness to arrange an intervention for an alcoholic friend, he quietly does the right thing. That doesn't mean he's perfect by any means, but I think he has a healthy sense of God's grace and doesn't let his mistakes stop him.

So when I spoke, it began with the statement that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Because my dad has invested in people - because he thinks for himself and speaks his mind - because he lives his faith, so do I.

And in a strange way it comforts me to know that although I won't have him here forever, he will be here.

Because those lessons live on in me.

father/daughter

He was asleep by the time I got there yesterday, in the recliner with his fleece throw. My mom had packed a snack--a half-sandwich, a Hershey's almond treasure, and apple slices. The hiss of the dialysis machine masked my approach, though he is a sound sleeper and always has been. Not much danger of me waking him up.

Garbed in my Easter-yellow sterile gown, I pulled up a chair and watched him sleep. It took me back to the times I visited my grandma after the cancer had stripped the excess weight from her. The dialysis treatments have done the same thing for my dad, and as he slept, I noticed how much he looks like his mom, my grandma. The shape of his nose, the fine network of wrinkles, the age-spotted hands. He had a terrible, mottled bruise at the entry point for the tube that circulates his blood and cleanses it.

The nurse came by and said, "Look at that. Here you are to visit him, and he's sleeping." "That's okay," I said--"I'm in no hurry". I sat and read my Vogue Knitting magazine, and just as I finished, he opened his eyes. "You're here!" he said.

I've never made time to go sit with him during a four-hour dialysis treatment, but it was a spur-of-the-moment decision made the day before. It was motivated by wanting to spend some time alone with him (knowing that my mom doesn't go with him) and to spur him on with his memoirs. He'll be 80 in June, and told me once he didn't expect to live this long!

We did some work on his memoirs, but mostly we just hung out and talked. It reminded me of how it was with my teenage stepson--the conversations can't be scripted, they just happen when you spend time together. The questions in the memoir book are really poor--he had answered a number of them, but they're worded so that a person can get away with yes or no. It was the space, the pauses between the questions where the stories came out.

There are times when I let myself realize that my dad won't be around forever... Watching the recirculating blood yesterday reminds me that these treatments are keeping him alive, and that the moments we have together are precious.

Sometimes I miss him already.