These last couple of days have been tough ones. There was shock and worry when we heard about my husband's father being in the hospital. There's been stress getting the kids taken care of - thank God for Nana! - and the frustration of not knowing what is wrong. Doctors have been scarce, and answers not forthcoming. Then there is the sadness of seeing this man confined to a bed, hearing the rasp and wheeze of his breath over the beeps of the myriad machines attached to his body by a forest of wires. I feel helpless, unsure what to do, so I offer support and comfort the best way I can - by being there.
In a way, it reminds me of my own Dad, the day before he died. Not that I believe Andy's father is about to die, but there are similarities. Luckily for me, the amount of time my Dad was robbed of speech and recognition was short. It sucked, knowing for a month that my father was going to die soon, but in another way it was a blessing. After the first shock of the cancer, I had the precious gift of time. I had 4 weekends to be with my Dad, to talk, to listen to music, to play cards the way we did for so many summers, and to drive around and visit places he grew up. The weekend before he died, Andy, Dad, and I got to drive to all of Dad's old haunts and listen to his stories of growing up, of his teenage years, of meeting my Mom. He sang "Travelin' Man" with the CD player, over and over. For a time, you could almost believe the cancer was a lie. He was so vibrant, so alive. That was the last time Andy saw him - the next weekend I got there and he was almost unable to speak. He managed to say "I love you" to me, and from that time on, he didn't talk again. The next night he died.
When Dad first died, I felt he was far away. I cried over the chances I'd lost to spend time with him, the fact that I'd never feel him hug me again, or tell me I was his "favorite little girl in the whole wide world." My comfort was the irreverent image of him at a bar in Heaven, singing, drinking and smoking with his heroes - Sinatra, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Rick Nelson. Instead, as the years have passed there have been times I felt he was close. I could almost smell him: that combination of cigarettes, cheap beer, aftershave, and Listerine. I see him looking out at me from Ian's eyes, and I am reminded of him when I see Ian walk. Ian swears there is a "ghost" that visits him sometimes at night, and rather than shrugging it off as the overactive imagination of a typical 6 yr. old, I choose to believe he feels the angel or spirit of the grandfather he never knew drawing near to him. We have always said that "Grandpa Bill" went to Heaven and pulled some strings for us, so that we could have Ian, because he was a struggle to conceive.
The holiday season has always been a tough one for me - when I was younger it meant time out of school, which I dreaded. I wanted the relative safety and dubious peace of school over the strain of being home. I have always escaped by spending time staring into the lights of the tree or out the window, dreaming of other places, of better lives. Even now, I tend to disappear into my own world. This year, I've been thinking of the words to Ryan's song "Not Far Apart", and they mean more than years past. It has been 7 years since Dad passed. As time goes on, I really have started to feel we are not far apart.
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