Daddy

Hi Everyone! This is my story for Wednesday. Please read it, and I would appreciate your feedback after you read it. Thanks. Angel

Feb. 4, 2009

Daddy, I Never Knew You

The police came knocking on my door, early one morning. I thought, “Uh oh, what I have done? I wonder, “Why are they here? Oh no, maybe they’ve brought me an eviction notice?” I open the door, and two cops with serious expressions on their faces stand there. One of them says, “Mrs. Perry? May we come in, I’m sorry to say we have some rather bad news for you?” I say “of course” and invite them in. Once they have entered we sit down on the couch, and the older one who seems to do most of the talking tells me, my family has been trying to reach me, but since I don’t have a phone, they asked that the police come to tell me instead. He says sadly, “Mrs. Perry, your father has been hurt. He was in the boarding house where he lives, and he fell down two flights of stairs. He’s in the city hospital in critical condition. He has a blood clot on his brain due to the fall. If you want us to, we can take you there.”

I think “Oh no! Daddy, I hope you’re all right.” Then I tell them thanks, but my husband whom I’m separated from will take me there, for he will want to see him too. I call him form next door in tears and ask him to come get me and take me to see my father. Sympathetically, he says he’ll be right there. We go to the hospital and take an elevator up to the Intensive Care floor. I enter the room where my dad is. My husband follows. I’m five moths pregnant with our child, my first child.

I notice the overwhelming odor of medicine, Betadine, and disinfectant in the room. It’s so strong; it makes my nose tingle at the pungent odors. I run over to the bed where my dad lays, he’s still about 6’4’’ and barely fits in the bed. I see his head and the nasty blood crusted bruise over the right side of his head. Then, I see the oxygen tubes coming out of his nose and hear his labored breathing, like every breath is an effort. This terrifies me, for I remember seeing those tubes on my grandfather a few years ago, who died of Emphysema. I touch his arm and then hold his hand, carefully avoiding the hand with the IV in it. With my other hand, I touch his cheek and say, “Hi Daddy? How are you?” It’s as if he does not hear me at all, he looks bleary eyed around the room; then sees my husband standing at the foot of his head.

His eyes light up and he smiles weakly, saying in a slightly garbled, slurred, “Don, I’m glad you came. I took a really bad fall, and I’m in such pain. But where is Bobbie? Why didn’t she come with you? I want to see her?’ Don answers in his deep baritone voice, telling him that he’ll be all right, and I did come with him. I’m right here beside him. Daddy hears everything he says and seems to understand what he’s saying except for the part about me being here. He keeps asking for me and asking Don where I am. He sounds so sad. This just tears me up, I cry easily anyway now due to the pregnancy. But I can’t understand how he can hear Don and yet when I talk to him, he can’t hear me. He doesn’t even know I’m here!

I talk softly to my Daddy fluffing his pillow under his head as a bit, as I ask him how he is. I’m reminded of an earlier time in the past when I was little and he’d tuck me in bed, fluffing my pillow, and telling me a story, then kissing me good night. Memories of the past flood my mind. I see my Dad holding me as a toddler about eighteen months old, in his hand way up in the air as I stand like a circus performer and then leap from his hand. Swiftly, he scoops me up before I fall into his big, strong hands. I have no fear, for my Daddy is there to protect me.

I’m a little older now, about four or five years old. Momma is there all day with us (my siblings and I), but Daddy is the one who puts me to bed at night. I still believe in Santa Claus and the Ester Bunny who brings us big baskets filled with chocolate decorated eggs and toys. But the Easter Bunny is not the only one who brings us candy. You see, we have a “Blue Bird” who brings us candy occasionally and slips a bag of M&Ms under our pillow for us to find the next morning, shouting with delight. My Daddy was the Blue Bird, and this mythical creature was his creation.

Later when I’m about seven, I watch as my Dad due to his drinking crashes to the kitchen floor shaking all over. To me, he’s like a big oak tree that just tumbled to the ground. For he is a tower of strength and love and protection to me. The medics take him away in ambulance to a hospital where he’ll stay for about a month. Momma tells us later that he had a nervous breakdown. I have no idea what those words mean. I just know my tall giant of strength toppled over on the kitchen floor in a shivering ball of tears.

Years passed, now I’m about 11, it’s my mom’s birthday. Dad has gone all out, to buy her favorite foods for a sumptuous birthday feast, followed by a luscious cake. Then he gives her a present. It’s a beautiful smoky topaz sometimes called “Apache Tears” necklace and earring set. Excitedly she has him put the necklace on for her. She puts the earrings on. Suddenly, I don’t even remember why, they get into an argument. My dad reaches for her necklace and rips it off her throat! Mom cries and screams, and the party is over. The rest of the night they are fighting. They go to their bedroom, but I can still hear them from the front of the house.

I remember most recently, he was there at my wedding only two years ago, my mom wasn’t. He wrote a song and sang it for my wedding. It had the tune of “Exodus” by Ferrante and Tescher, but he had written his own beautiful words for it. For he was a poet and an artist. He wrote volumes of poetry; I don’t have nay of them. But I do remember the last lines of one of his poems titled “Soliloquy”: “The last two men on Earth, they met and fought and died. – And God sat down and cried.”He sang the rendition of his song emotionally in his rich bass voice, and then he gave me away to my husband in the ceremony. He was so happy and his eyes were filled with love.

Now as I see him in the hospital bed lying there groaning in pain, yet trying to be brave, it’s just too much for me, especially since he does not even know that I’m there, no matter what I say or do. In sobs I softly ask Don to take me home. This is the last time I saw my father though he did die till several months later. The doctors would tell me later that he had two operations to alleviate the pain of the clot on his brain. The first one had a strange effect. He went to an earlier time in his mind, when he was living with my Mom and us as a family. The second operation on his brain gradually killed him. He developed complications of pneumonia and within about a week died.

During those months before his death, my brother went to see him several times, he told me later he still asked for me, every time he came. My sister never went to see him at the hospital not even once. My brother told me each time he saw him after that last operation, it was as if he had just given trying to live. Like he wanted die, or was ready to die.

I didn’t go to his funeral, well really memorial service, for he did not have a funeral. So this was the last time I saw my father. As I think back on this final visit, I too remember happier times when we were together. I am so glad for the brief time I knew the two years before his death when we were both adults now. Yet, if he were today, I’d hold his hand and say to him due to the fog of the addiction of alcohol that took him away from me, “Oh Daddy, I love you so much, but I never knew you.”