The Crying Tub

Wednesday afternoon I was sitting at the stoplight near Lorelei’s school when my phone rang.

My mother’s number came up on the caller ID. My family is, as a collective, not phone people. Once you get us on the phone we can get sucked into a conversation and spend an evening chatting. But in general, we will always choose text or email. It’s completely normal for me to go weeks, even months, without talking on the phone to my sister or parents.

I wasn’t exactly concerned when my mom called. Curious, is probably a more accurate description.

Hello?

“Something’s wrong with your dad. I just got home and something’s wrong with your dad,” the words rushed out with pressure, forced by sheer shock.

She had spent the weekend at a conference in Raleigh, and when she spoke with him at 5:00 Tuesday night she told my dad she would call him on her way home the next day. She called as she left but he didn’t answer.

She pulled into the garage and could get no further. The door to the laundry room was still locked from the inside by the sliding latch.

She says this was when she knew, somewhere deep inside.

She walked around to the screen porch and walked into the house that way, calling for my dad. No answer.

This is when she was sure.

She entered the computer room and found my 62-year-old father on the ground, still in his pajamas. He was still breathing, raggedly.

911 had her begin chest compressions. The ambulance soon arrived and took over. As she sat in her car, waiting for the ambulance to move, she called me first. She knew it would take me longer to get to New Bern than it would take my sister. I think she knew I needed that head start.

By the time she finished gasping this story to me over the phone, I was sitting in the parking lot at school, ready to take Lorelei to her last therapy appointment before her therapist went on maternity leave.

I couldn’t think.

I’m known for my level head in a crisis, but I could not think.

Chelsea had just messaged me about something. Or another. I don’t remember.

“I’m calling you,” I responded.

She said she immediately thought about how she had just taken all the tissues out her car. We’ve spoken on the phone a grand total of once in the more than year of our friendship. She knew something was very, very wrong.

I somehow managed to stay coherent enough to get the words out, or maybe, as a therapist, she’s adept at deciphering the words of acutely broken people.

“I’ll be at the school in ten minutes. I can take Lorelei to therapy.”

But then we weren’t sure if she was on the aftercare pick up list or not. I realized it wouldn’t take Zach much longer to get to the school. Luckily, he has plenty of experience understanding my words through sobs.

He said he would leave right away.

I sat in my car as a million teachers and parents tried to navigate the tiny parking lot. I could barely see through my tears. I was sure everyone was wondering what the hell this mother was crying about.

Chelsea called to say she was at the school. I told her to nonchalantly let Lorelei know her dad would be there soon to pick her up for therapy, and to make sure she was ready to go.

I added, “Then I am going to go home. Can you stop by my house and just tell your kids you need to run in for a minute. And come in and let me cry for like five minutes.”

I thought I might explode.

I finally made it out of the parking lot and to my house, followed closely by Chelsea. I sat with my face buried in her shoulder and shook with sobs.

I still couldn’t think straight.

“Can I drive you to New Bern?” She asked, “you don’t need to try to drive. That way you can get updates along the way.”

I heard the voice of everyone who cares about me telling me to accept the help, no matter how burdensome it seemed like it would be on her. She was offering.

We decided she would take her kids to get Pelican’s while I threw stuff in my bookbag. I called Zach and put him on standby for coming to New Bern.

While I packed, my sister called and said my dad was as stable as he could be, and that they were doing a CAT scan.

We stopped at McDonald’s for Chelsea’s kids, and she bought me an order of fries, the only thing I could think to eat. We dropped the kids off at home and started driving, me checking my phone, breaking into sobs, and staring blankly. Her rubbing my leg and saying how sorry she was.

“Oh Rhiannon.”

My sister called again to say he had bleeding on the brain and that they were transferring him to Novant in Greenville for neurosurgery.

We switched course. And I thought that the fact they wanted to operate was a good sign.

Charlotte texted to see what she could do to help. She took charge of disseminating news to our mutual friends, as needed.

Then my sister called again.

“Come to Craven.”

Craven… the county where I grew up. The hospital where he already was. Her voice told me it wasn’t because he had made a miraculous recovery.

“Ok. Is… is he… what…?”

“He’s brain dead. They are going to keep him alive until you get here.”

Chelsea drove me the rest of the way to New Bern, me alternating between silent choking sobs and wailing.

My Aunt Lynda met us in the parking lot, thanking Chelsea profusely. She took me into the hospital, where my dad was still in the ED.

I parted the curtains as my mom cleared everyone else from the room, so that it would be just my sister, her, and me.

Six feet tall and ~155 pounds, my dad has always been a deceptively strong man. Even seeing him asleep always seemed antithetical because he was always moving. He rarely had so much as a cold, and had no primary care provider.

But there he was, lying on a hospital bed. Everyone always says how weak their loved ones look in this state. But that’s not what I saw. Even though he was intubated, he had this certain familiar smirk on his face. It was the expression that he knew something you didn’t about what he was going to do next.

I suggested to him that what with his conversion to Catholicism, this would be a good time for one of those miracles they are so fond of.

The breaths from the respirator were noisy. I sat next to him, rubbing his mostly bald head. I reached for his wrist and felt his pulse. I sat like that for a long time, feeling the rhythmic beating, trying to absorb it, trying to meld with it.

Someone from the organ donation service took us aside to discuss the options. He was so nice. Everyone was so fucking nice. He gave us his business cards. He handed my sister some donation services keychains.

“He gave me some consolation prizes,” She deadpanned. We knew my dad would approve.

The plan was to do an apnea test, to see if he would breathe on his own. If he didn’t, he could be declared brain dead, and many of his organs could go to help others. If he did, we would check again in a few hours. At some point, because my dad had a living will with which we all agreed, we would pull life support. If he died within an hour of that, many organs could still be used. Even if that didn’t happen, some tissue could be used to help others.

He passed the apnea test. I was secretly so happy. More hours with my dad. More time to postpone decisions.

They moved him into a more private room in the ICU. My grandmother was finally convinced to go home and get some rest. My mom ran to McDonald’s to get some French fries — the only thing she could think to eat.

I played videos of my kids next to my dad’s ear. Rowan playing the ukulele and singing a Bob Dylan impersonates Cyndi Lauper version of True Colors. A song Lorelei made up about mermaids. Lorelei singing a beautiful song to Rowan when he was in the NICU.

Then we sat. We held his hand. We noticed the nurse come in and look at the monitors a few times. Then, right as my mom got back, they came in and said they were going to draw blood.

They tried to hide the busy concern in their voice. The three of us are not easily fooled by medical professionals. We’ve seen it all before. We knew something was going on.

More nurses came in. They laid his bed flat. Someone said something had plummeted. Never a good thing. Someone asked for some dopamine. If this was television, they would most certainly have added, “STAT!”

We watched as they hooked up more things. As my dad’s color slowly changed.

The doctor came in as the nurse stood holding my dad’s wrist. He handed her the stethoscope.

“I don’t hear anything.”

It’s weird, life support. Because his chest kept rising and falling.

His color was all wrong.

The doctor called for a Doppler to check his femoral artery.

He called it.

They removed the tubes and wires.

I crawled all the way into the bed with my dad. Something I had been wanting to do all along, but couldn’t with all the equipment. Someone wiped his face off.

I put my cheek to his. I put my arm under his neck. I put my other hand against his other cheek. I moved my lips to his cheek. Then my forehead to his temple. I rubbed my cheek gently against the beard that had just scratched my cheek the week before.

My dad, who rarely left New Bern, had come to Durham to have lunch with Lorelei for grandparents’ day, much to my shock.

Afterward, he took me to lunch. He talked some about his writing and asked me how mine was going.

“I read your last blog post,” he said. “You cuss too much,” he lovingly scolded me, complete with wagging finger.

He dropped me back off at work and gave me a scratchy kiss on my cheek.

Lying in that bed against him I felt like both a child and an adult.

Fuck.

Just. Fuck.

Fuck all of this.

This is bullshit.

He was 62 years old and rarely got sick.

Yet I had always known. I don’t know how, but I had always known he would die suddenly and far too young. It ached in the back of my mind.

He was just too strong. Too alive. I think he sucked up life faster than it could be given.

I don’t know how long I lay against him in the bed. I watched his features begin to look older and more frail in death. I cried. I didn’t fall asleep, but the combination of caffeine and Ativan and exhaustion let me just be in that moment. Aware that life was moving around us, but in a bubble that contained just me and my dad, forehead to cheek.

My mom and sister went to his other side at times and held his hand or leaned against him.

Eventually, it was time to go. To walk out of that hospital. I didn’t cling. I was too broken and too foggy. I followed. None of us cared what we looked like. Where our mascara was, or wasn’t. I hiccuped, I let out audible sobs. Probably, we all did. I couldn’t concentrate on more than keeping my feet tethered to the floor and making it to the car without crashing to the ground.

It was 5:30 in the morning before we got home. I took three more Ativan and fell asleep for a few hours.

I’ve spent a lot of time in my parents’ jacuzzi tub. It’s loud and covers even the heaviest sobs. I discovered this after my grandfather died. Not that I feel the need to hide the broken parts, but sometimes a little space is all I need, without consolations and head tilts.

I hear my dad’s voice telling me to stop wasting so much hot water and electricity.

All day yesterday and today, I’ve had that sudden and repeated shock of remembrance. Realizing why there are so many people and so much food.

Walking into the computer room and still expecting him to be at the computer. Hearing the creak of the chair as he swiveled around and stood up, ready to tell us a fact that we may or may not find interesting.

I hear the garage door open and expect to hear his voice, loudly proclaiming his superiority, or singing obnoxious songs.

My dad, who I suspect was actually sometimes remarkably insecure, masked that with ego and volume.

And oh could he make up stories.

Sometimes he didn’t know when to find his way back to earth and reality.

“Granddaddy is silly, but sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop,” was a phrase I taught Lorelei early on, to explain why sometimes he kept a joke going long after it was funny.

And yet, there is an entire Girl Scout troop in Durham who keeps an eye out for the houses of the mythical Red Eye Pig, just like we always did. The criteria of their habitat was only fully known to him, because he was the knower. There was no use arguing with anything he said. He was, actually, brilliant. He was not afraid to use that genius to tell you why that was not a red eye pig barn. Even if you were 8 years old.

And there is something about that, that made it more real.

My mom said he still pointed them out. Even when no kids were in the car. He was thrilled that Lorelei had told her friends about this fantasy world.

After the arrangements were decided, I felt compelled to be the one to write his obituary. It needed some sarcasm. Little dashes of tempered truth. Of course, there are parts I left out. My dad was not perfect. But this isn’t the time for that. Because despite his occasional callous moments, he loves us with furious depth.

It took a while to write because we have so many people jumping to support us that there has rarely been a quiet moment.

When my Granny died, and I needed a dress for the funeral, my dad handed me a $100 bill. I looked at it and said, “I don’t need this much!”

My aunts looked at me like they wondered if I was actually related to them. “He gave you money and you’re trying to give some back?!!?”

Because I packed in a hurry on Tuesday, I had no dress clothes here in New Bern. I needed the retail therapy of looking for a new dress.

There was only one thing to do. He would have found it fitting. He would have made a snide remark about loving the dogs more because they never ask for money.

I stole the last $5 out of my father’s wallet and went shopping.

Thanks, Dad.

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