The Guilt of Departure and the Hypocrite's Prayer

My dad was transferred from Baptist Hospital to the rehabilitation floor at Lourdes Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky, a week and a few hours after his quadruple bypass. A quadruple bypass which unexpectedly led to a stroke. For all the progress he had made at Baptist, my mom and I were filled with questioning trepidation as we left him on the 8th floor at Lourdes, alone in his bed.

We were so excited that he had been accepted into the rehabilitation program at Lourdes Hospital. We waited, less than patiently, all that day for his discharge and transfer to happen. We knew that the focused therapies they offered—occupational, physical, and speech—were exactly what he needed in order to come home as close to 100% himself as possible. I had seen him trying so hard in the days leading up this moment. He was determined to improve. Although I sometimes wondered if he didn’t quite understand the questions being asked of him, pretending he did anyway, just so that he could move on to the next phase of recovery.

Side note: I wish I could make him understand that no one is going to think he is ignorant, dumb, or stupid for not knowing the answers. But I would need someone to teach me that also. Maybe if I can get him to understand it I can be my own teacher.

We left my dad in a small room with a roommate who had just arrived post leg amputation. The room was small. I’m pretty convinced it was actually smaller than his private room at Baptist Hospital. There was only one chair for a visitor to sit in, and no other place except his bed for my dad to sit. This was disappointing as part of his recovery from the heart surgery involved sitting in a chair for several hours every day. He still had to focus on that recovery even if the stroke had taken precedence. His only chair option turned out to be his wheelchair. 

The nurses seemed less than adequate and didn’t seem to care about the patients. My dad had such impressive care from most of his nurses at Baptist Hospital. But nothing about the care at Lourdes Hospital gave me hope. I felt this way the first day. So did my mom. We later learned he wasn’t being given the correct meds and that his information was entered into the system incorrectly on his first day. (Instead of heart surgery or stroke patient he was entered as a hip fracture patient.) His room often smelled. The floors were dirty. No one seemed to care. We missed Baptist so badly.

My mother couldn’t stop her tears as she leaned down and kissed my father goodbye on that first night. My heart ached for her. On our drive home I tried my best to be the emotional support that she needed all the while telling her she didn’t have to be strong for me. I couldn’t practice what I preached. I was scared and discouraged too. I told her so. Why do we find it necessary to be strong in times of stress and grief? Maybe we should all just show what we’re feeling and commiserate with one another in our tears and sadness, then get stronger together through that vulnerability. I’m not one who can speak with any confidence on vulnerability though as I find it so difficult to be vulnerable. 

A couple of days later I found myself alone in my parents’ house listening to the cast album of Dear Evan Hansen, and my vulnerability reared it ugly tears. It was as if the knot in my stomach had decided to loosen its grip, move up to my heart, and squeeze it until I nearly burst. I broke down. I felt broken. 

I felt guilty.

The day of my departure was quickly approaching. I knew that I shouldn’t feel guilty that I've built my life in New York City so far away from where my parents live. Yet the feeling of guilt persisted. I was getting ready to depart this place of corn fields and homemade ice cream and leave my mom and my sister there to carry the weight of my dad’s recovery…alone.

I looked around the living room in my parents’ house and read the sayings that decorate the walls: “Our family is filled with Love,” “Loved you yesterday, Love you still, Always have, Always will,” “Family is where life begins & Where love never ends.” These words seem to vibrate straight from my mother’s heart. I pondered the words as I focused on the pictures. I saw the framed photographs of my niece and nephew smiling back at me. I prayed to God that their papaw would be healed and returned home to them fully himself. They need him in their lives. I prayed that he would return home to my mom. She’s been his wife since she was 17-years old. They are each other’s world. I prayed for my sister who was in agony  over her fear that our dad might not return home our dad. I walked back to the bedroom my parents still share 47 years later and stood on his side of the bed. I looked up to the ceiling, tears streaming down my cheeks. I begged to be heard. I begged for God to help my dad recover. I begged for God to bring him home to take his place back in that bed again.

I felt like such a hypocrite for praying. But isn’t that what we do? We pray when we’re scared. We pray when we feel the desperation that comes with the shock of events like  heart attacks and strokes. We pray as we grasp for hope.

No matter the distance between our homes, no matter the distance between our hearts, I want to walk into my parents’ house the next time I’m visiting and feel my dad’s arms around me. I want to hear him laugh. I want to hear him say my name. I want to listen to him tell a story that may not really interest me but that I care about merely because he is still here to tell it…and that he can still remember it at all.

We won’t fish together. We won’t hunt…anything. We won’t really watch the Cardinals play baseball. But we can sit on the front porch and enjoy a cup of coffee while birds chirp and passersby honk. Hopefully my mom will join us with a cup of hot chocolate and take on the fly swatting duties.

When My Dad’s Heart Surgery Became The Lesser of Two Trauma’s

It was hard to imagine what my dad was going to look like hooked up to tubes. I’d seen it before with both of my maternal grandparents and my paternal grandfather. But there was no real way to prepare myself to see my dad in this way. He had gone into surgery just after my flight departed New York’s LaGuardia Airport headed for the landing strip that is Paducah, Kentucky. By the time I arrived at the hospital the surgery was over. 

Much like ripping off a bandaid, I walked into his room in ICU. I had to. As much as I wanted to hesitate, there could be no hesitation. There he lay—my normally active-to-the-point-that-I’m-exhausted dad—hooked to monitors, floating in and out of consciousness, and ultimately silenced by a breathing tube.

There were more drips than I’d ever seen hooked to one person. Two IV poles with 6-8 bags on each pole. It was alien. Bag after bag of clear liquid flowed into his body, necessary for healing and pain, but still disturbing and ominous.

He knew we were there. He periodically open his eyes, revealing brown irises so large that they seemed to have overtaken all the white space. He wanted to speak. He tried to speak. The breathing tube, of course, prevented that. He nodded instead—communication restored in a primitive way that brought more relief than one could imagine it bringing.

When my sister called me three days prior to the events that led to this ICU layover I was alarmed yet not completely dismayed. She told me that my father was going to the ER complaining of shortness of breath, chest discomfort, and a bit of numbness in the arm. I wouldn’t really let myself believe that my father might be having a heart attack. That just wasn’t on the agenda. Again, not prepared. Is anyone ever? 

My dad is not the healthiest eater in the world. Never has been. And there have been many occasions of trying to persuade him to take better care of himself. But he is strong-willed and stubborn. He wants to do what he wants to do. Arguing eventually gets old and inevitably one gives up the fight.

Recovery was moving along at a rapid pace. His doctors and nurses were astonished at how well he was doing. Thirty-six hours post surgery he was moved from ICU to his own room on the fourth floor of Baptist Hospital. My family and me, we were thrilled with his progress. So what if he was a little confused? So what if he seemed a bit vacant? He had just been through quadruple bypass with all the anesthesia that goes with it. We didn’t know how long it would take his body to rid itself of the anesthesia. Nor did we know how the pain meds, which my dad rarely takes, might be affecting him. What we did know was that he had a hard time turning to the right and seemed to take longer than necessary to register what was said…or who we were. 

My sister, a nurse herself (and struggling to be daughter instead of nurse), knew something was wrong. She told other nurses. She told respiratory therapists. She was met with reactions of unconcern followed with explanations like, “the anesthesia needs to wear off” and “there’s been so much trauma to the body.” But my sister sees my dad almost daily. She knew something was off. It was actually she who came up with the word “vacant” to describe the look on his face. 

Finally, a physical therapist saw for himself what my sister had been seeing and questioning. And the unthinkable began to run riot in our minds. My dad, the strong, independent, hard-headed man I've known all my life, had had a stroke.

I was angry. I was angry at God. I was angry at the doctor. Human being, party of one. I called my best friend, Neal, and spewed my anger to his listening ear as I paced from corner to corner in a makeshift waiting area.  And much like Jesus did in John 11:35, I wept.

I have never been one to deny my Baptist upbringing. Nor have I denied how it has negatively affected me. But I felt the power of all the prayer that surrounded us. I felt the power in his room. I felt the power in the hallway outside his room. Hands were laid upon my dad. Tears were shed. His name was lifted up to heaven. It took me back to the days of my youth when this act was a part of my everyday life. I felt the power that I struggle so hard to have faith in… to believe in. But it was my family’s faith that gave them comfort even as they dealt with fear and anger of their own. And it was their faith, and the faith of their friends, that comforted me by proximity.

We’re all human beings filled with emotions. It’s natural to be angry, to be scared, to be frustrated, to doubt, to question, to feel bad about laughing in moments of sadness, to feel hope when the situation is dire.

My dad and I have never been particularly close. I’ve struggled with that for most of my life. We have our ups and downs…and silences. But I love him, and I know he loves me. I never anticipated a moment when my dad would struggle to find my name in his memory. My heart ached. I stood before him, staring into his brown eyes, mentally sending the name Michael straight into them. I watched as his mouth tried to form the word. I heard the Um’s as he searched. I saw the frustration on his face. I felt the panic in my heart even as I tried to keep my face blank. Then he said it. My attempt at a blank face still had tension that relaxed. Who knew hearing my name said aloud could be so important? But the double clutch of anxiety and sadness barely released its grip on my heart.

As the days progressed, his quadruple bypass became more and more the secondary trauma. It was almost as if he hadn’t had the heart surgery at all. He wasn’t complaining about pain and rarely took a pain pill. He was getting up from his chair more easily. And walking became less and less difficult. 

The stroke became the focus. 

I could see him fighting to find the words for the pictures he was being asked to identify: glove, keys, feather. I saw him miss the word hammock three days in a row. 

Eventually he began to more easily find his words for speaking, but writing them was a new challenge. I watched as the Speech Pathologist patiently taught him the sound of letters like “f” and “s” much like I remember learning them in elementary school. Every day he was better than the day before. Every day the recognition improved. Every day the conversations were more engaged. Every day he was more like my dad. 

We all know that the heart is our emotional center, and I’ve been told that with heart surgery emotions can run high and spill over without reason. That is true. Dad would often get emotional, cry without warning, stop crying within seconds. Sometimes I couldn't find the reason. Other times it was clear that he was extremely effected as he began to realize he was making progress. He was also very moved by the love he felt from visitors, most of whom had been positively affected by the way he lives his life.

On the morning of the day he was to be moved to the rehabilitation center I walked into room 437 at Baptist Hospital and saw my dad…not just the shell of the man. He was sitting in the reclining chair watching my nephew Dylan play baseball on my sister’s computer. He smiled. He was more himself than he’d been even the day before. I recognized that man. 

“There are bridges you cross you didn't know you crossed until you've crossed.” Stephen Schwartz, Wicked.

As we sat in his room waiting for the doctor to make his final round then sign the discharge/transfer papers, our holding-pattern-of-a-day was broken when dad passed gas. It will probably embarrass him that I even wrote this, but it was the most natural thing in the world. However, what followed was even more so. My brother-in-law said, “Her-ca-lees,” a la Mama Klump in The Nutty Professor. The entire room cracked up, including the best sound I’d heard all week…full-throated laughter from my dad. Natural. Easy.

I think the grip of anxiety finally began to release its hold on my heart. All of dad’s progress in such a short time was nothing short of miraculous. We all knew there was a long road ahead. But I’ll take a long road over a grave any day.