It's been four weeks.
Four weeks ago, I was so blindsided by the news, I was sure I was still asleep, screaming into my pillow, certain to awake any second and realize it wasn't real.
Because this could only be a nightmare. This could not be real. That phone call could not have happened.
My father could not be dying. Doctors could not have been working — still be working as Mom and I talked and gasped and cried on the phone — to bring him back, to get a heart rhythm, to stabilize him, to keep him here on earth.
* * *
What do you do? How would you react?
I'm a grown woman, living hundreds of miles, several mountain ranges and a time zone away from home.
I'm mature, balanced, self-assured.
So I sat in the middle of my living room, trembling like a leaf, barely able to dial numbers on my phone, starting to sob hysterically as I tried to explain to my boss what was going on, that I still wasn't sure what exactly was going on .... I wanted to dig a hole, crawl in it, cover my ears, squeeze my eyes shut and pretend that none of this had happened, was happening, could ever happen in my daydreamy world.
This could not be happening.
My dad is invincible. He was my horsey when I was little; he was a strong chest to cry on when I was an emotionally crazy adolescent; he was a steely shoulder to support me when I was trying my legs as an adult.
Supermen don't lie on operating tables with hearts that refuse to be shocked back to life.
* * *
Four weeks ago, I sat in the back row of a plane out of Portland bound for Salt Lake City, where I would meet up with my aunt for the final leg into Casper. The cabin door shut. The engines whirred, the plane taxied down the runway, lifted off ... and I gripped the armrest, thinking: "Oh, my God. This is happening. This is really happening. I have no resource for this."
* * *
Four weeks ago, in the middle of the night, I came to a complete stop outside a dimly lit ICU room in the middle of Wyoming, because I couldn't take another step toward the chalky gray-white person lying in that room, a hose forcing puffs of air into his lungs at regular intervals, a dozen IV bags hanging above his head, a dozen monitors making strange and terrifying noises. A brick wall of grief and disbelief smacked me in the face, took my breath and my ability to move.
The toll to move forward was a sob, a realization — once again — that this was real. This was happening. That was my hero.
That was my Daddy.
I thought my chest would cave in.
* * *
I'd been in this ward before — six and a half years ago, when Dad had a heart attack in the middle of January. I waited until the next morning to drive to Casper at 90 miles an hour. And Dad was awake and chatting with someone when I walked into his ICU room.
That didn't happen this time.
Dad wasn't awake to tell me not to worry, everything would be all right, go get Mom some tea. There were no smiles. No laughs. There were three shocked, crying women wondering if it was OK to touch him, to kiss him, to hold his freezing-cold hand, to talk to him. Eventually, Gary and Carol joined us, and we prayed.
* * *
Four weeks ago, in the greenish glow of heart monitors and amid the tangle of IV tubes, I was convinced that I was saying goodbye to my dad, that the last conversation I'd had with him had been joking around while he waited for an EMT to come and try to do his right-handed IV, because everyone else was having such a hard time. His cold right arm and hand were bruised in several places from the attempts, and I kissed the bruises.
I feared this was it. I mourned over the memory of all the curt responses I'd ever given him; all the times I'd cut phone calls short to .... to do what? Laundry? Go grocery shopping? Talk to a boy? All the times I'd sassed back at him.
I had never felt so wretched and regretful in my life as I did in those terrifying hours in that hospital room.
* * *
Four weeks later, Dad is alive. He is walking. He is climbing stairs in physical therapy. He started, on his own initiation, buttoning his shirt the other day while he was talking to Mom.
He forgets a lot of things. Small things and big things. Today, he told me he'd bought a car and that he'd finished a big project at work.
He's at a rehab hospital, where they finally let him start using a computer to cruise the Internet. They made him look up "anoxic brain injury." He knows he's been through something terrible, but his grasp of the concept, of the enormity, the time, the impact — on everyone — is fractured. He sees and understands bits and pieces of it, but not the whole thing.
I don't know if he ever will.
But four weeks from what we thought was his deathbed, Dad is anything but dying.
In the midst of my frustration over having the same conversation over and over with him; in the tedium of asking him to write down everything we've talked about and to read it back to me, I remember that. I remember that he's alive.
In four weeks, he's come so far. Who am I to doubt what can happen in the months and years to come?
Mom constantly referenced the New Testament passage when the boy's father said to Jesus: "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!"
Rich Mullins said it a little different: "Sometimes my life just don't make sense at all; When the mountains look so big and my faith just seems so small."
I don't have resource for this. Not within myself, not from my experience. There are no quick, catchy phrases cross-stitched into pillows that can get a person through something like this.
But I have faith; however small my faith is, my God is infinitely, powerfully, comfortingly huge. He's the only resource I have; He's the only resource I need.
