Father's Day (for my Dad)

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 9:47 pm

My father was the son of Russian immigrants that made their way across the ocean in the early 1900s. They finally settled in Philadelphia where his father worked and, after a time, started a small business as a tobacconist. There my dad was born and raised in the middle of a big, crazy city that his ancestors, scarcely a generation previous, could hardly imagine.

As a young man living in a time of war my father joined the Navy to serve his country. He found himself on the heavy cruiser the USS Alaska doing convoy and carrier escort work as well as shore bombardment and anti aircraft cover for landing craft. He never really talked about his service but I remember him telling me that he enjoyed it when a big storm hit or when the big guns were firing. After the war he had a number of jobs and lived his life. Then he met my mother and everything changed. He moved to St Louis and started his own business and lived some more. I was adopted in January of 1966 and my mother had my brother Peter in June of that same year. My sister, Hillary, came 3 years later and that completed his family.

I spent most of my young life disappointing my father. Even at an early age I was constantly in trouble, a terrible student and an uppity kid with poor self control and that rightfully strained our father and son relationship. I went to Kemper, met a girl, married her and went to work for my father for several years. I was being groomed to inherit the business he had built but it was not my thing. I know it hurt my father very much but it was not a source of joy for me so I quit and moved on to other things. The relationship we had was cordial but beneath the surface it was a shredded mess.

Through a strange twist of fate in 1990 I was encouraged to attend and miraculously graduated from EMT school and started working on an Ambulance. Completely addicted to the science and excitement I immersed myself in the job. In 1994 I graduated from Paramedic school and was full throttle in my career.

In 1992 my father was diagnosed with prostate cancer. It was caught on a PSA test and all things pointed to an early detection and, following surgery and radiation, a clean getaway. My father was recovering in the ICU when I talked to the surgeon and found out it would not be that simple. 1994 the cancer had aggressively spread to his bones and we were told to prepare for the end. He became a patient of an in home hospice program and after a few issues developed I realized I had to step in and be directly involved in his care. I spent the last 6 months of my father’s life as his primary caregiver.

On a hot early June day in 1995 I decided to take a risk and took my father out of the house for a few hours. The room we spent most of our time in began to feel like a prison and we both wanted to see green things and hear birds and feel the sun. I lifted the old man into the front seat and threw the wheel chair that he hated so much into the trunk and off we went. I took him to the Missouri Botanical Garden (Shaw’s Garden), a place that my siblings and I went to take summer classes as children a couple of weeks a year.

It was his last good day. We spent a couple of hours cruising the grounds of one of the most beautiful gardens on the planet. We didn’t talk much. Since we spent so much time together we had already said so much of what we wanted and needed to say. We just enjoyed the moment. He told me to stop at the Japanese Garden so he could walk for a bit. I walked a short distance behind and was suddenly struck by how frail he was. After a bit we sat under a huge Oak tree and enjoyed the shade and the rose scented summer breeze. We were alone, just the wind and birds, Dad and me. He looked up at the tree and I followed his gaze. The bright summer sun flickered and danced through the leaves over a hundred feet above us, the great branches of the tree looked like the arches of a cathedral. There we sat, together, father and son. He reached out and touched my arm and when I looked at him I saw a small tear in his eyes. He said, “I am so tired”. I said, “I know dad”.

On July 13th 1995 at around 2am my father died. I was alone at his bedside when he left. I combed his hair, kissed him goodbye and called in my family. Months of pain and fear of the unknown, the morphine nightmares and sleeping at his bedside ready to fight off the evil monsters haunting his dreams….it was over. I miss that old man, I really do. We spent so much time not talking and avoiding each other but the last 6 months were something special and so very precious to both of us.

In 2004 my sister Hillary got married. When I sat down for the ceremony next to my family and all of our friends my brother Peter knew something was on my mind. “What is bugging you?” he asked. “It’s cool,” I said “everything is fine. I will tell you later”. I was looking beyond my sister and her future husband, past the Cello player and the singer, over the dizzying and intensely kaleidoscopic colors of rose bushes and lilies to a secluded shady corner of the garden a few hundred feet away. There, in the shade of a familiar giant Oak tree sat an empty bench.

Happy Father’s Day,

I miss you Old Man.

Andy Davidson RN