That silver-haired daddy of mine

It’s been 62 years since my dad and I spent our first Father’s Day together. I was tiny, red-headed, and precocious (I started walking at 7 months, yes, that’s the truth, several witnesses who weren’t even related to me swear it’s so!) and Daddy was tall and handsome and strong, with jet black hair and high cheekbones proclaiming his Choctaw heritage.

Now I am big and my knees have gotten a bit wobbly again, and my red hair has turned to dark brown with a few artful silver streaks. My dad’s hair is now a beautiful silver, but at 88, after years of hard work as a farm boy and a sailor who went to war, he’s no longer tall and strong, and he has finally admitted he can’t do what he used to. He walks with a cane, and uses his handicapped hang tag even when Mother’s not in the car. He forgets things, but never people, never us, especially not Mother.

We spent this Father’s Day at the hospital in Dallas, watching over Mother as she struggled to breath, lungs filled with fluid, trying to tell us between gasps for air that she was fine now and wanted to go home. When I got the call Friday morning, I left Houston not knowing if she would still be with us when I got there, but somehow she made it through yet another crisis. Each time I left the hospital, she’d tell me “Don’t let your daddy come back with you, he’s too weak and shaky, make him stay home and rest.” Well, my silver-haired daddy is weak in body, but not in spirit, and I wasn’t able to sneak away without him one single time. I told her “he’s going to keep trying to take care of you as long as he can stand up and walk, and maybe even after that.”

“I know, but I worry.” She worries, because he does forget things, and he stumbles, and his trips to the grocery store 4 blocks away sometimes take 3 hours. After spending all these years taking care of others, he is finding it hard to let go.

They have not had a perfect marriage – there were some rough times among the almost 65 years they’ve spent together – but in these last “Golden” years they have become an inseparable unit. I do know my dad has been in love with Mother since he first saw her eighty years ago, and he’s never stopped. I suspect Mother never stopped grieving for her first love, lost in the war, but she made a good home for all of us, and now she can’t imagine being without Dad.

We made our final visit to Mother at the hospital and I dropped Daddy off at home. As I drove away, he stood in the yard waving goodbye, his silver hair shining in the hot Texas sun. I knew in a few hours he’d hobble out to his car, drive back to the hospital, and sit, mostly dozing, by Mother’s side until the sun began to set. Tomorrow he’d go back again, and the next day, and the next, as long as his legs will carry him, he will be there at her side. He’s a good man, that silver-haired daddy of mine.

Dad & me Oct. 2009 - 65th wedding anniversary

My father