Two missed calls on the day my Dad died
Minutes before the heart attack that ultimately took my Dad’s life, he called me twice on my cell phone.
I had a chance to talk to him one last time before he died – but I missed both calls.
I will forever consider myself fortunate that I missed that opportunity.
My Dad, by all accounts, was a funny guy. Few of my friends are without comical memories of the man. He sort of reveled in the ridiculous.
But what few probably realized, was just what he had overcome to even have a family. He didn’t have an easy childhood, never particularly cared for school and didn’t find fruitful employment until he landed at Honda in the 1980s.
To be completely truthful, I doubt my Dad ever imagined that he would be a family man at all. In his younger years he enjoyed sports and running around with his friends, both pursuits that can derail duties within a household.
I know this because I am very much like him. When I was younger, the routine of family life was never something I aspired to as I ran around playing softball, or darts, or any other pursuit that had my interest.
And while my Dad perhaps wasn’t the perfect father when I was young, he certainly grew into it. He was an infinitely more kind parent to my sister, who is 10 years younger than me, and by the time I made him a grandfather in 2001 he had found his stride. I can’t tell you how supportive and gentle he was to my daughter and my sister’s children.
In watching his growth, I found a confidence in my own ability to parent, despite feeling drawn to selfish pursuits at times. He showed me that being a good parent is not necessarily a part of your DNA. It can be learned.
He was also a man who believed, as I believe, that your actions, rather than your words, show what is truly in your heart.
I don’t remember the last time my Dad told me he loved me. It had to have been when I was a child. And, truthfully, prior to kissing his cold forehead and telling him I loved him shortly before he was taken off life support, I don’t remember the last time I had said it to him.
But words didn’t mean much to him and they don’t mean much to me. The efforts he took to make the lives of his family easier told the story of his heart.
He would mow yards, fire up his snowblower, trim hedges and collect leaves so that his loved ones didn’t have to. He would deliver lunches to my sister at work, often picking up orders for her coworkers as well. I would come home from work to find a package of furnace filters inside my front door, or would return from a weekend excursion to find my driveway with a fresh coat of blacktop. He picked my daughter up from school every day after he retired and spent more time teaching her to drive than I did.
My Mom had never pumped her own gas in 47 years of marriage. She is just now learning how frequently light bulbs burn out, because replacing them was never something she had to worry about.
And that’s how my Dad was. He changed the burned out light bulbs, or got leaves out of gutters, or stored away garden hoses ahead of the winter cold so that his family didn’t have to be inconvenienced.
Those acts were his “I love yous.”
He never called attention to the things he did and in a lot of ways that made his devotion easy to take for granted. And when we don’t actively appreciate a person’s sacrifices, we sometimes undervalue their worth.
I would sometimes snap at my Dad or be dismissive. Sometimes he would catch me in a moment poorly shouldering the weight of life and would be the undeserving target of vented frustration.
Which brings me back to the morning of Dec. 15.
On her way to school that morning, my daughter was involved in a minor car accident. I found this out through a phone call, not from my daughter, but from my mother. Because I was already at work, and my Dad was always ready to help, my daughter called her grandparents after the crash.
When my Mom relayed the news to me I was fuming because I had not been the first one called. Just another example of my parents nosing in on my parental duties, I reasoned.
I drove to where the accident should have been and found nothing. I drove around looking for a while and eventually saw my father walking on a sidewalk in the area talking on his phone. What I did not know at the time was that my Dad and I had both been given the wrong location for the crash. It was actually on an adjoining road about a quarter mile from where I was looking.
I drove back to work and had just entered the building when my phone rang, this time with my daughter on the other end. I could barely understand her, but what I did make out was that my father had just found the crash and had collapsed near her car. Marysville Police where there and performed CPR. The Memorial Hospital staff did all it could and he was MedFlighted to OSU, but he never regained consciousness and slowly worsened over the next day.
On Saturday, Dec. 16, we had to let him go. It was while sitting in the Ross Heart Hospital at Ohio State that I noticed two missed calls from my Dad the morning before, seven minutes before the call from my daughter telling me he had collapsed.
Walking on that sidewalk, he had been trying to call me but my phone was in my pocket and I missed both calls. And what most people probably would see as a heart-breaking missed opportunity, I see as a blessing.
At the time he had tried to call me, my blood was boiling. I was upset that my daughter had called him and not me. I know, with certainty, that if I had noticed my phone ringing and answered that call I would have blistered his ear with condescending directives. I would have scolded him for overstepping and told him to back off.
The last words I would have shared with my Dad would have been said – quite possibly yelled – in anger.
And as crushing as the guilt of that memory would have been on me, that’s not my main relief that it did not happen. My appreciation for that missed conversation comes because he simply didn’t deserve to hear that from his son – that day or any day. I was going to snap at him because he was trying to help his granddaughter. He was trying to be there for his family, as he always was, and he didn’t deserve to have my lack of appreciation drilled into his ear.
So as it stands, I don’t remember the last conversation I had with my Dad. I will never remember our last words – and for that I am truly thankful.
-Chad Williamson is the managing editor at the Journal-Tribune.