Tales From Dad

Dad me about his back healing. He and Berg and Denny Elkins were building the new house. He and Denny were carrying the metal posts out of the yard — old drain pipes he’d gotten somewhereL do I remember the spiral ridge on them? Only weighted 100 or 150 pounds. He bent down to pick up his end and out went his back. He went down on the ground and couldn’t move. Denny put a brick under his head, said, “What do you want me to do, Bill?” Dad answers, “I can’t sleep here!” 

“I had that old ___ Falcon. Denny said, “Bill let me bring that over here with the tailgate down and see if I can get you up on that.” That’s what he did. He dragged me in the house and I had to crawl up those steps. I think it took me an hour to get up those steps to my bed.”

“What was mom doing?”

“Fretting. She probably helped me up. She helped me crawl up the steps, letting me lean on her.”

Dad lay on his bed for three days. Christian Science practitioners came and worked with him, including a couple from — where? Vermont? Jim Carroll went out and got Dad a urinal, but he never needed it the whole time. He was dreading needing it, cause he knew he couldn’t stand up to use it. On the third night, all at once he knew he was healed. “I’m healed!” He got out of bed, put his pants and shoes on, and walked down the stairs. He went outside, down the three steps, and walked around and around the driveway. Mom came out — she must have noticed that he wasn’t in the bed — and she said (and here Dad really evoked how Mom sounded at such times, almost angry with concern): “What are you doing?”

And Dad cried as he told this part. “I’m healed,” he told Mom.

Said Clifford Birdwell had gotten him into Christian Science. “Do you remember Clifford Birdwell? He built that little house up on the corner. Well, before that, he lived down in the house Charlie Goll’s living in. I used to go down and visit with him, and he’d tell me about Christian Science. He had a growth on his forehead as big as that orange, and he got healed. At that time he hadn’t had his own healing yet, though.”

Dad was disappointed I hadn’t had time to bring him audio tapes and so was I. He was looking forward to doing more memoirs.

He wasn’t hungry for what they’d given him, so I had some of his pork and noodles. He asked for ice cream instead of jello and liked that. I noticed that from behind he looked like a very old man — his neck thin from that angle, the back of his skull very round and bare.

He said, “You said you’re coming back in the spring? When?” I calculated and said May. “May? Good. You do that, now, Tom.”

The nurse wouldn’t take a picture of us — they’d put my camera away when i came in. “We can’t because of the confidentiality,” she said.

I was crying listening to Dad, thinking I won’t have many more times with him. Ever.

He told me again about the time he made that emergency landing. This time he added that as he turned the prop, he had to do it from the cabin side and had to push up. When he got back to the airport, the guy came out and saw the peach leaves in the landing gear. “Did you have any trouble?” he asked Dad? 

“No!” Dad said. “If you have trouble in the air you don’t come back and land, do you?” But the guy was wondering how those peach leaves got in the landing gear.

Dad was easily emotional. Interesting what got him choked up. When he told about his landing — his successful emergency landing in that field in Illinois, with the peach trees at the edge — he started to cry, though he was telling it as a funny story (”When I pulled up to that house there were people all lined up on that fence like crows.”). I thought what he was feeling was the pride and joy of himself as a young man again and was reminded of his loss and his getting very old again.

Wish I’d had the tape recorder.

Leaving that place alone, going out into the freezing night, the strangely bright statue of the beatific saint out front. Driving around that hospital, seeing the building where Mom died, remembering being outside there and trying to wave to her in the window, me and Deb? Laughing about it, a small pleasure. Mom liked the view she had. Suddenly remembered how it was leaving dePaul at night, heading home with Deb, after another late visit to our dying Mom.

Now Dad.

In that very place, Mom, dying, commanded us, requested of us us: “Take care of Deb. Take care of Dad.” ~ Jan. 1, 2001