Dad

Traveling for work, I had my phone turned on airplane mode, preserving battery for music. After closing my last meeting of the day, I flick on my data to check my messages before setting off for the drive home.

“K. Do you have 10 min” flashes on the top of my screen. Mom.

I glance at the time - 4:00pm. It’s July, so there’s a six-hour time difference; in Idaho, it’s 10:00pm. She’ll just be settling in from the beach. If I call when I get home, she’ll be asleep. I press the telephone button and put the call on speaker.

“Hi mom, is everything alright?”

“I’m just going to state the facts.”

She continued to comment on our dysfunctional family, the time difference, how we’re all so busy, before finally getting to the point.

There was a complication in my dad’s surgery. He had collapsed on his way to check out. He developed blood clots and was life-flighted to the city hospital.

Dad.

My dad had surgery yesterday to replace his second knee.

My sister had been there to pick my father up from the hospital before she boarded a flight to Alaska for a medical school conference. She was there when my dad collapsed.

I imagine him crumbling to the floor, helpless, vulnerable, potentially gone. He was alert again in moments, but had an irregular heart beat. She canceled her flight and boarded the helicopter to help transport my dad.

He had stabilized but the hospital would monitor him for the next couple nights. He was still pretty high from the pain medication and had been bragging about beating the nurse in cribbage.

He was fine.

That phone call stopped my heart. Everything, everyone, is temporary. Quite easily my father could have not been fine. Quite easily, I would never be able to see him again.

I wanted to be there, to sit with him in the hospital and keep him company. I wanted to see he was okay. I wanted to hold my sister.

She has supported my dad a lot the past couple years while I have run off on the other side of the world.

My dad, and his particular fishing patterns, made New Zealand part of my home as he made us come back here every year so he could surf cast into the ocean.

I wouldn’t have gotten backpacking if he didn’t force me into it when I was twelve.

Quality time my dad was always outside, hiking to fish in mountain lakes, ice fishing, rafting rivers to fish, and hunting. Most activities did included killing things - but hey, we got a good meal.

As I drove home in the last light of the day, I daydreamed my dad and I were driving to to hunt early in the morning. Mist slowly rose from the ground and the cold seemed slow, as if it was deciding to wake up. He drank green tea with two tea bags seeping in a metal thermos, pulled over at least twice to take a piss. He burnt CDs of opera, country and Diana Krall. Every few minutes, my dad would interrupt the song, point out a valley where an elk was shot seven years ago, or highlight a tree he would come back for firewood.

Those mornings are few and far between now. I hope to get as many as I can.