THE WIND PHONE

Nothing Will Stand in the Way of Love

In a crisis, you’ll know what to do, and you’ll know who loves you

“He loves me, He loves me not. He loves me, He loves me not.”

As a child, I sat with my sister on the grass, and we consulted daisies for answers. We knew, back then, who loved us. But when it comes right down to it, we don’t really know who cares about us — not until a crisis occurs.

A crisis is when friends stand up for you. A crisis is when people who love you send messages of hope, phone calls of kindness, and bring hot soup to nourish you. A crisis is when loved ones soothe you, as you hopefully soothe them. It’s a chance to prove your love. Prove up.

Such was the case when my father died.

My father and I were always close, and his last five months were spent in a hospice situation I ran for him, in his home. The home I’m in now. He became very ill after his girlfriend Josie — who cared more about their Mexico vacation than how sick he’d been — insisted he go to their time-share vacation home.

I told him, “Dad, if you go to Mexico with Josie, you’ll come back in a little urn.” I wasn’t exaggerating or trying to scare him. Because he had several health issues — including heart disease, chronic kidney disease, diabetes, hepatitis C, and disabilities from a car accident — he needed to get well.

He caught the flu from my sister in late October, when she came for Mom’s memorial service. I took a deep breath and shook my head, but was the dutiful daughter. I got my sister to the airport, then drove back home to my dad’s, to make him chicken noodle soup and monitor him closely. His health was not good. And when he was in this shape, going to Mexico was a bad idea.

I couldn’t stop him, as it turned out.

Just as I’d taken care of Mom miles away before she died (they were divorced), I’d tried to get him back on his feet before Mexico. He left the USA with sallow skin, sunken eyes, and dragging feet. All for his girlfriend. It makes me angry to remember, so I won’t dwell long. She didn’t care one whit about him. If she’d put him first, they wouldn’t have left the country.

When Dad came back to Oregon, he went straight into the hospital. He’d called me from Los Angeles.

“Deb,” he said, his voice desperate.

“Dad, talk to me — are you okay?” I heard the fear in his voice, and my heart pounded.

His girlfriend yanked the phone away from him, and I heard him retching in the background.

“Put Dad back on the phone,” I said.

“You can see him tomorrow,” she said, and hung up. I listened to the dial tone, sick with worry.

The next day, I fretted all day at school, where I taught. I called my niece to check on Dad at home, the minute he was delivered via taxi. He could barely get out of the car, and she supported him to the bed. When I raced there straight from work, he was doing shallow breathing. I called 911.

When they arrived, the Emergency Medical Tech took me aside and said, “I don’t think he’s going to make it to the hospital.”

We called my sister, and Dad told her he loved her. I rode in the ambulance with him. I was there. At admissions, I stayed with him by his side every minute. It was time to step up.

It was a crisis.

And over the course of ten days, he wavered between life and death. I can’t count the times the nurses called me in to hold his hand, telling me, “He is very ill.” I know what that means in the dark hours of night, at a hospital.

When he was well enough, he went into a rehabilitation facility. This was not an accurate name for the dark, sad little facility. The day he arrived there, I fought tooth and nail to get him into a larger bed. They wanted to put his disabled body into a cot barely wide enough for his torso. Not large enough for the fused knee, which wouldn’t bend. Not large enough for extra pillows for his battered body. Like a little prison cell bed for a tiny body. That wasn’t Dad, a large man who slept at home in a king-size bed and needed every inch of it.

“I’ll buy a bed,” I told the stubborn administrator on duty, sitting and filing her nails.

“You can’t,” she said, “You can’t bring beds in from the outside.”

I phoned his doctor-on-call, and put it on speaker, telling him the situation.

“What the hell is wrong with those people?” he asked.

“I don’t know, but they won’t help me,” I said.

“I never said that!” the administrator shouted, so the doctor could hear. We had a bed for Dad before he arrived at the facility. He was not comfortable, but the double bed was better than a single bed, and I brought in pillows. I stood up for Dad. I stood up. That’s what you do in a crisis, for people you love.

You are there. You create the most comfortable situation you can for your people, because you love them. Love is the answer, in a crisis. It is the only answer, and it is the right answer. You know the right thing to do.

While Dad was in the rehab facility — a fancy word for ‘nursing home’ — he hated it. He tried to make the best of things, but when I arrived one evening and found him uncomfortable and unhappy, I made the hard decision to bring him home. I knew he didn’t have long.

The week before he died, I knelt beside his big reclining chair in the living room.

“Do you want me to go back to the nursing home?” he said, “Because it might bother you if I die here. Since you’re going to live here.”

I held his hand with both of mine. I looked in his eyes, and I said, “I love you, and I don’t want you to be away from your home. Our family home. This is where you are comfortable. If it’s okay, I want you to stay home with all of us. This is where you belong.”

Dad smiled. And I smiled, and we stared at each other for a long time. We swam in each others’ eyes, my father and I.

That’s love, my friends. That’s real love for another human being. Even when it’s hard, you have to be there. That’s what you do.

You stand up. You speak up. You show up.

And I will never walk away from love. Especially in a crisis.