Throwing Poo

**UPDATE**

Sincere thanks to all for your thoughts and kind words.  After resolving some lingering concerns, my dad is now doing well and rehabing nicely.  Thanks again.

This morning I’m sitting in the Lake West Hospital waiting room as my father is getting prepped for emergency triple by-pass heart surgery.   There was no accident, no incident.  He simply showed up for his annual check-up a few days ago and mentioned some fatigue. One thing lead to another, and two days later here we are.

My father is not an esteemed or accomplished man.  After dropping out of high school in the 1940’s to find work, he spent the better part of his life working swing-shift in a grueling factory job (for eight hours a day, his job was to lift 50lb. bags of chemicals off a conveyor belt and onto a scale).  Due to his ever-changing work schedule, he probably spent 2/3 of my childhood waking hours just trying to get a little sleep. 

Later, after a community-devastating lay-off by the factory, he went back to school and got licensed as a boiler-operator. 

Despite what one might call meager accomplishments, my father is honest, strong, hard-working, supportive, and as fair-minded a person as I have ever met.  Once during high school, when I was working at a dive fried chicken shack, I bragged in passing about giving some extra tater tots to one of my friends at the drive-thru window.  Hell, most of my co-workers were taking home boxes of frozen tater tots if not cash from the register.  Dad got very serious, sat me down and once again explained to me that you don’t take what isn’t yours, and you take care of what is.

Simply put, he is a good man.  Better than most.  Better than me.

Now I sit here in a hospital waiting room for the nurses to call my name.  Every time the recovery room doors open into the waiting area, the bile rises in my throat.  If they call too soon, it is bad.  If they call too late, it’s worse. 

In the mean time, I try to pass the time and keep my thoughts from getting carried away.  Some are bad.  Infection.  Stroke.  Death.  A few are even worse, because of what they say about me.  Will this interfere with my upcoming vacation?  Will I have to spend the next years of my life helping to care for him? If he dies, what is his estate worth? 

Still, everything I try to read blurs into nothing, and every attempt at small talk quickly dissipates into distant stares.  Writing this is all I can do to pass the time.

Another thing I will tell you about my father is that since he went from annual check-up to emergency open-heart surgery with the course of the last forty-eight hours, he has not complained.  No “why me?”  No “what if?”  No anger.  No regret.  He has continued to be in high spirits, joking with us, the nurses, and anyone who passes his way. 

Words simply can’t convey the anguish of watching my father in his hospital bed this morning, smiling and joking with his family, and wondering if this might be the last time I will see him.   I know that sounds dramatic, but it is nevertheless still true.

Just a few minutes before the anesthesiologist wheeled him away early this morning, he dad told us one last joke:

A man died.  After his funeral service, as the pall bearers were carrying his body from the church, they gently lost their balance and bumped into the doorway of the main entrance.  They heard a noise inside the casket, opened it up, and the man jumped out alive and started dancing a jig.

A year later, the man died again.   As the pall bearers were walking the casket out the door of the church, the man’s wife jumped up and yelled out, “Be careful of that doorway!”

Everyone dies.  Death is not a bad thing. Without it, life would be boring and ridiculous, not to mention a little crowded.  The trick is to know you’re going to die and then using that knowledge as motivation to live like you want.  It is a delicate balancing act, one that I have yet to master. 

Anyway, if it suits you, next time you walk through a doorway give it a bump and spend the day as if you just got a second chance at life, if for no other reason than that there are some out here who deserve one but might not get it.