Before another school year commences, teachers have well been scheduled into several training or review classes. An opportunity to chat between long days of training is a must to find balance for the heart, mind, body, and spirt.
I was fortunate to sit with a colleague of mine during one of our last training sessions. Somehow we got into the discussion about the things we should have said. My colleague recalled how her mom’s last question to her kids before she passed was, “Is there anything you would like to ask me?” She recalled how the only question she asked was if there were any medical conditions about herself she should be aware of. We both agreed how, although a valid question, why THAT response? We were given one priceless opportunity to ask or say so much more and the moment was simply taken for granted. I related her story with one that still cuts me every time it crosses my mind. It was with my own father, Papa.
I had been tending to some things in my kitchen when Papa asked me a question that has stayed in my heart like an open wound since, “Was I a good father?” he asked. Having been caught off guard, all I heard myself saying was, “You were a very good father, Papa. But, you yelled a lot.” I recall him looking down and admittedly responding, “I know.” He must have missed the “very good father” part, but I allowed the conversation to simply move on. It has been almost two decades since and still, if I could go back to that very moment I had uttered so foolishly those words, I would, if I could, just erase the last part. For goodness sake, I yell a lot, too.
In that same year, I lost my Papa. A hospice nurse had come to tell us one afternoon after Papa had been fighting rapid terminal colon cancer just a few months that the only reason he had not left us yet was because he knew we weren’t ready to let him go. I hurriedly snuck back into Papa’s room and with his arms neatly and calmly folded below his chest he said to me, “Don’t lie to your father. I’m going to die, I know.” I lost any control I had been holding onto. For the first time since I was a little child, I broke down in uncontrollable tears. I found myself quickly getting in his bed, curling up next to him, losing every grown up strength in me. I was going lose my Papa and it was as if I had turned into a helpless child, powerless in finding any way to stop him from leaving me.
In between my sobs I managed to tell him that I was crying because I wanted him to know how great of a father he had been and how much I was going to miss him; that he could go if he was ready. He lifted up my face to look at me, laid my head back on his chest and said nothing. I felt a silent anger from him. He did not want to go, but I saw the strength in him as well. He was a fighter only following his fate. My tears had not appeased the permission he needed to go, but I recalled my last request was that he remember to sign his name at heaven’s gate so I could find him. He remained silent. His silence silenced my tears as I continued to lay in his arms.
I know now that at that given moment I found myself crying alone in that room with Papa, I realized I had simply let time run out denying he was ever going to leave me. Papa passed away that night. Somehow, I am still denying that he has left. Subconsciously, I was Casey Terry screaming in my last book, Homecoming Queen, upon seeing her father lifeless. I never even approached my father’s open casket or came to his side at the time he left that night. His last warm hold as I laid there, his arms around me, is all that I want to hold onto as my last memory until I get to hug him again.
If I could rewind and preparedly respond to your question, “Was I a good father?” Papa, this is what I should have said…
“Papa, thank you for letting me bury you in the sand while you laid still on the sandy beach; I did not pick up your talent of flipping your eyelids, but thank you for always amazing kids around you whenever you took the time to entertain; you were tight with your money, but I witnessed you turn around with the car to bless someone with a few bills as they stood out on that cold, rainy day; I loved seeing tears in your eyes, you laughing the hardest at Mama’s jokes; I also saw you running into the bathroom to lock yourself in when Mama found that picture in your wallet- I was scared for you, not mad at you; you disagreed a lot with Mama, but you never hit her even when I heard her say some very hurtful things to you; thank you for being such a strong man; you took on odd jobs to support your family here in America, but like you said, at least your children are happy and the people back in your country never got to see you struggling; thank you for having helped raise other children than your own; thank you for having had a house built for your family back in your home country even though you received no guidance on how to buy one here, in America, and the $8,000 you had slowly dwindled away, one rental home after another; I admired you for your effort to keep Mama home; I witnessed you putting Mama’s feet up to rest when you couldn’t find a job and she took on one; thank you for sticking up for me when nobody in the family would; thank you for understanding why I would not be the lawyer you had always talked about I could be, but suggested if I was going to be a teacher, to create my own school- thank you for believing really big in me. I love you so much, Papa. I love you. I love you. I love you…”
