The day after we moved into our fifth wheel trailer to launch our full-time RVing adventure, my dad died, less than a month before his 80th birthday. It was July 18, 2020. It was another blow to our family, just about halfway through 2020, a year that will be remembered worldwide as being one heck of a tough year.
It had been obvious for the previous two weeks that the end of Dad’s boisterous journey on this earth was upon us, but his health had been declining for quite some time, a victim of decades of smoking (followed by decades of quitting), a lifetime of poor diet (but no alcohol) and a number of falls that hastened his decline over the years. No matter the resulting health consequence, Dad was unfazed. Diabetes? No need to cut back on M&M’s or test blood sugar! Heart attack? Don’t tell ME I can’t do the things I enjoy! Back injuries? Physical therapy and exercise are for sissies! Failing heart requiring a defibrillator? Why the $%@ can’t those !#%$ doctors fix this and get me back to puttering in my yard!?
We had always joked with Dad that he had as many lives as a cat, and each time he fell from a tree or roof that he should not have been climbing, or survived triple bypass surgery, or crashed his vehicle for unclear reasons, he was one step closer to his demise. It took decades, but it seems that 2020 was his year, and COPD was the final challenge he would face.
Thankfully, his final days, laying in bed, losing his independence to weakness, losing his spunky attitude to delusions, losing his consciousness to morphine, were short-lived. His final days were perhaps his biggest fear, always teasing us that we should just take him out to the field behind the house to shoot him rather than force him to suffer. Instead, we sat with him and Mom. Visitors helped us all pass the time. Hospice workers helped us understand how to help him. In the end, he was peaceful and as he took his final breaths, my sister, Mom and I said prayers over him (something that he would have cringed about while living, but was just perfect in the moment he passed.
It should be noted, before sounding too harsh or callous, that my dad was a CHARACTER! He cursed like a sailor and loved to argue all the tricky topics in life – politics, religion and the medical field! What he lacked in tender loving care, he made up for as a really great dad.
Dad showed his love differently – he was steadfast, reliable and good to his core. You ALWAYS knew what you were getting from him. I think WE understood him better than he understood himself. He showed his love in his actions and in his subtle presence. We knew Dad loved us, even if he very seldom uttered the words.
He quietly supported us in everything that interested us. Scouting projects for my brothers, directing Christmas traffic in our church parking lot, and taking unexpected trips to my college to rescue and repair my car following a flood. He could fix just about anything with whatever tools he might have on hand, a roll of duct tape and a little elbow grease.
Dad sat quietly in the room, the willing participant of any family gathering or social event, even if such activities were not the way he would ever choose to spend his day. Conversely, a healthy debate, albeit greatly skewed by his perceptions and undaunted by the facts at hand, was pure entertainment for him and often resulted in exasperation for us all. If you didn’t “get him”, you could very quickly be offended by him. But to “know him” was to understand and love him.
He would argue or lash out in anger seldom, but when he became that upset, you knew that he was struggling greatly with the issue at hand. He was passive by nature, a roll-with-it kind of guy above all else. Even when frustrated beyond words by something idiotic that we four kids might have done, the worst punishment would be the spewing of a few choice insults, interspersed with some colorful curse words, and the hurling of his wooden Swedish clogs in our direction. His bark was always worse than his bite, and we grew to toughen our skin to his rough edges and instead see all the goodness, fun and helpfulness that was within him.
His quest for helping was especially true with animals, I think perhaps, because he saw them as the most helpless in a difficult world. He rescued them, nursed them, built habitats for them, and always, always, stopped to help a box turtle across the road. Critters found in the wrong habitat (in our house or car), were gently placed outside to “be free” rather than squishing and tossing them. Over the years, he always took the time to feed the horses in the roadside pasture, visit with the ducks on the pond, or sit and watch the geese fly overhead just before sunset. Over the years his dogs were his best buddies and his favorite conversationalists, simply because “they listen and don’t give me no lip”.
Every day, Dad arrived home from work at 6:00 pm and we had dinner together as a family. He was a small business owner, and I grew up to greatly admire that simple daily act. He managed to walk away from the endless responsibilities of his business and simply go home. He would enter the back door, “drop trow” at the top of the basement steps, toss his dirty uniform down the basement so that Mom could add it to her endless laundry pile, and then scurry through the kitchen in his “skivvies” past the hustle and bustle of his family gathering for the evening meal. Every day, for my entire childhood, I could count on him and knew what to expect from him.
But I think the biggest impact Dad had on me was his willingness to see different places. EVERY summer, he would close his small auto-repair business for two weeks and take us camping. At a time when there was no paid time off, and little money to spare, he and Mom managed to show their children the world. By the time I was an adult, I had been to half the states in the US and several countries as well. We had experiences in those adventures that became a direction in my life – a desire to work hard and succeed in my goals so that I might travel and see even more of the world.
Mom and Dad encouraged us when we shared our plans to travel full-time for a while. “GO!”, they said. “Do it now (before we are retirement age), while you are able”. You see, their camping days after we kids grew up, amounted to RVing the country about six months out of the year. The balance of the year they spent at home with family in the Maryland/Pennsylvania area and worked part time jobs to save up money for their next trip. They were blessed to take some of their grandchildren camping for a week at a time, to tag along on their children’s camping vacations, to travel across the United States for an extended trip out west, and to take annual trips to Myrtle Beach and Florida, two of their favorite destinations. But their health declined before they were “finished”. They always wanted “next year” – to the point that up until his final weeks, Dad would still talk about getting their motorhome in shape for their next adventure. Dad and Mom weren’t quite wanting to be “finished” with traveling, but their health limitations brought their adventures to an end.
So it seems completely expected and greatly satisfying to “see” my dad in my full-time RVing travels since we lost him on Day 2 of our adventure. We have spent time in Virginia exploring some of the very places he and Mom took me to while camping as a child. We have sat in our camping chairs around a campfire, just like Dad did, in rural South Carolina and the swamps of Georgia and savored the special outdoor moments you only experience with camping.
We have also spent weeks in Florida, at a quiet campground, where I see an elderly gentleman ride his bike every day. He immediately reminds me of my dad and I wave. The shaky old-man wave I get in return is just like Dad used to do – a slightly uncomfortable social interaction, but with a pure intent to just say “hello”.
“Hi Dad. I miss you. We all miss you. Thanks for all the valuable gifts you have given us.”
Safe travels, and show your “people” you love them.
