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One Last Goodbye Lena Hunt Mabra
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Throughout the years, Dad's two bottles of straight Vodka each day
transformed him into someone we hardly recognized. Although normally
warm and caring, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde act of alcoholism slowly
drove us children away. Ours was a love-hate
relationship. We loved Dad so much, but hated what he was
when he was drunk.
We all kids
lived in different states during Dad's last years of life, except for
my baby brother who still lived at home. He spent most of his years
taking care of Dad, as each of us moved on to pursue a life of our own.
I lived ten hours away when I
saw Dad for the very last time. One day I made the trip and walked in
the house to discover the gas stove on high, all burners ablaze in
order to heat the house. Dad was asleep upright in a chair. After we
shook him for several minutes to awaken him, my brother told me that
Dad had been using this chair to sleep in for nearly six months. Since
his last drunken fall, he believed that he had broken his back and
couldn’t even get up to use the bathroom. This explained the large jar
on the floor next to him.
The
living conditions were so terrible that we forced Dad into seeing a
doctor. It took three male relatives to get him into the car. Dad
didn't believe in doctors, but I think he feared what they might find
after years of alcohol abuse, chain smoking, and near starvation.
I
sighed in heavy relief when my little brother told me, crying over the
phone, that Dad's test results had come back normal. However, I refused
to believe that Dad's living conditions and habit of sleeping in a
chair were normal.
Dad had been
sick for years, and spoke of dying for as long as I can remember. For
almost twenty years, we struggled to figure out if he was really dying,
or if he simply passed out regularly from excessive drinking.
A
couple of months later my brother found Dad passed out again. As
always, we thought he was in a drunken coma, but this time he had
passed out forever. Just like that, he was gone—no time for good-byes.
Two
years after his death, I was awakened by a dream, which seemed so real
it left me crying for several minutes. I had driven from Tennessee to
visit my mom who still lived in a trailer on Dad's land. Dad's house
was now vacant, so I didn't even bother knocking on the door of the
deteriorated home I had once lived in.
"She's
not home. She's gone shopping." It was Dad's voice, but how could it
be? Slowly I looked up, and there sat Dad on his front porch as if he'd
never left. As I walked toward him in disbelief, I could smell his
usual scent of cigarette smoke, alcohol, and Old Spice after-shave. He
was wearing the familiar plaid shirt we had once given him for
Christmas. His Paul Newman eyes sparkled brilliantly. I felt
myself drowning in their blue depth.
"Dad, what are you doing here?" I asked in amazement.
"I
never got a chance to say goodbye before I left, so I came back one
last time. Go gather your sisters and brother," he said as his dimples
peaked out at me.
"But Laura
lives in Georgia and John can never, ever take a day off of
work. Besides, who's going to believe me anyway?" I asked.
He
scolded me as if I was still the little girl growing up in his home.
"This is my one and only chance to say goodbye, so go call them. Go get
your sister Linda, too."
My
siblings thought I was crazy. "I just can't fly home on a
whim, especially not for such a ridiculous reason," my sister told me.
I didn't blame her. Even I felt I had gone over the edge.
Miraculously,
my brother took the day off just to humor me, and I went to get my
other sister who lived nearby. We gathered around Dad as he told us how
much he loved us and said his final goodbye.
When
I woke up, tears soaked my nightgown. It was all so real. With my heart
thumping, I quickly called my sister in Georgia. Before I
could get a word in, she said, "I had a dream about Dad last night and
it was so real! He was wearing his plaid shirt and told me that he came
to say he was sorry that he missed me during his visit with you guys.
He wanted to say goodbye since he didn't get a chance to." Goosebumps
simultaneously covered our bodies and although my sister and I were
thousands of miles apart, we sat in utmost closeness wrapped in the
warmth of knowing that this truly was real.
After
speaking to our other siblings, we received the confirmation we needed
to know that Dad had come to say one last goodbye. |
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Date Submitted:
2004-01-01 00:00:00 |
Copyright Information:
Copyright © Lena Hunt Mabra, 2004 |
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