Love, Linda

I hadn't planned to be in Atlanta this week, but here I am, having gotten a phone call on Monday that my dad, already in the hospital after his second leg amputation, was having trouble breathing. Now he is on a ventilator in ICU and my mom and two sisters and I are going in two-by-two every few minutes to squeeze his hand. It's like Noah's Ark, but we are not going to save our species--or anyone, for that matter.  

The prognosis is that he will likely be on a feeding tube when he comes home, which the doctor and his ICU nurse are very high on because it will eliminate the pesky step of trying to stuff him with nutrients, which he needs badly in order to heal, via food. 

This is hard stuff, which I have generally avoided blogging about, but now it has filled so much space in my mind that I find I can no longer side-step it. One promise I made to myself when I started Friends Talking in the Night is that I wouldn't necessarily have to say everything, but that everything I do say must be 100 percent honest.

So back to my dad. I am trying to come to terms with his diminishing state. We are not talking here about the abstract problems of diabetes or a Parkinson's-like tremor or our aging population. This is my once 6' 1" father, who, until just a few years ago when his illness got markedly worse, was my very best pal. Before I got married the first time, we sat together in a restaurant and cried. And when that marriage was coming apart, he's the one who came to me and said that he knew something wasn't right and that he would love me no matter what.

We share a sense of humor and a love of history, not to mention a great appreciation for Southern biscuits. Our bond formed when I was in high school--we went to breakfast together every Saturday at a diner called Melvin's. And when I lived in New York, he made sure that I always had at least a dozen Melvin's (by then called Maria's) biscuits in my freezer. Thomas Wolfe was wrong: you can go home again when your favorite childhood foods are involved.

Now I see that what I am really writing is a love letter to my father. Because squeezing his hand and saying I love you covers a lot of territory but not all that is in my breaking heart.