Dad’s Last Words To Me

    I’m glad I was able to make it to KC to spend my dad’s last few days at the hospital. I didn’t spend a lot of time in the room with him like others did. Mostly because I wanted to let others spend time with him that had traveled to see him and there were times I wanted my mom to have the quality time of just the two of them. I told him that if I was in there and he had all these other people in there too that it would keep him from getting the rest he needed and I wanted to him to go home sooner so I could spend more time with him out of the hospital.

    I’ve had his last words he said to me etched in my mind because they make me smile. The more I thought about it the more I realized they weren’t the last that he said to me but they were the best. I had walked past his room which was the first one in ICU past the doors. I was going to get some ice like I did a million times and the ice was across from the nurses station in a little kitchen there. On my way back I looked in the room and my niece Jessica was in there holding his hand and he saw me. I couldn’t keep going without stopping in the room. So while we were standing there I thought his mouth was dry and offered him some of the ice that was in my cup. He accepted and I put it in his mouth. Not before dropping one on his chest that must have jump started his heart more. A couple of moments later I asked if he wanted more ice and he said no. I said “well I do” and shook some from the cup into my mouth. He frowned and said, “I said yes”. I laughed and said “sorry I swear you said no” He turned his head a little bit and said, “Tightwad”. That was classic dad. He wasn’t feeling well at that moment but he wasn’t angry and though he didn’t smile about it he was being funny. He was being dad.

    I was thinking those were his last words directly said to me and I’m going to pretend they were. However, his actual final words directly to me were still just as typical of dad. He was being transferred from his ICU room to a regular room. I had not been outside for several days and my friend Kent Arwood had offered to take me out to eat since I didn’t have a car of my own there. As he was in a wheel chair and we were walking from ICU to his new room and I told him I was going to be gone for a while to go have dinner with Arwood. He said, “Oh does he live up here now?” I was so surprised that his mind went there. But I really shouldn’t have been. That was so “dad”. He always paid attention to not only was going on with his kids and grandkids but also to what they told him about their friends. When I would talk to my dad and mention things about friends and people I worked with he hung on to it as if he knew them himself. He would ask me about them and about any changes they had going on from something I had told him before.

    I think “tightwad” is funnier but I’ll remember everything about the last days that I spent with my dad. Little did I know how much I was like him and how he prepared me for this time. Thanks. Oh, my last words to Dad? After the services and my siblings and my mom were breaking up our huddle where we had been laughing about funny things we were saying to each other, the funeral director was starting to close the casket as my family walked away. I moved the other direction toward dad and the funeral director was startled and said, “I’m sorry did you need more time.” I said no I just need to do this and I stepped over and said, “Bye Dad” and smiled. I walked away and they closed the casket. Dad would have liked that.