I’ve started and restarted this column at least 10 times over the course of the last week. It’s usually not this difficult for me to write – the words usually roll off the ends of my fingers.
But this time, not so much. You see, this column carries a message I hope everyone hears: Do the people you care about KNOW you care about them? Do you make time for the people in your life who matter? If you don’t, start today.
My father died when I was 22. He had cancer and back in those days (1986), if you had cancer, they operated and that was that.
Daddy had surgery the week of Thanksgiving 1986. The surgery lasted less than an hour – long enough for the surgeon to open him up and then close him up. It was inoperable.
We had a good Christmas that year, even though we knew it would be Daddy’s last. I still have photos we took that day of Daddy opening his presents, the smile he managed to give when he held up the gifts we gave him, the pan he kept at his side for when the effects of the radiation made him sick.
Fourteen days later, on Jan. 8, 1987, he was gone.
He was admitted to the hospital on Jan. 6, 1987, because he was having trouble breathing and was in pain. I went to see him that night and in typical Daddy fashion, he was going over things with my mother that he knew would need to be done: the car traded in the spring, a new roof the following year, taxes in April, where their safe deposit box key was. The suit he wanted to be buried in.
I didn’t go see him the next day but I called him. He was weak and heavily medicated. Our conversation lasted less than five minutes. The last words I said to him were “I love you, Daddy.”
I went to work the next morning, intending to go see him when I got off that afternoon. I never got that chance.
A little after 8 a.m., I felt a wave of warmth run through me. I looked down at my watch. It was 8:11 a.m.
About three hours later, my oldest brother, Doug, showed up at my job. He didn’t have to say anything. I knew. I had known at 8:11. It was Jan. 8, 1987.
Fast forward seven years and it’s 1994. I was working at my hometown newspaper (The Index-Journal in Greenwood) and was, to some degree, sowing some wild oats. I hadn’t been spending time with my mother and my youngest brother Walter like I had in the past.
I knew I hadn’t. But I would have time later, right?
Walter was diagnosed in 1984 with Goodpasture Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease in which antibodies attack the basement membrane in the lungs and kidneys, leading to bleeding from the lungs and kidney failure.
He went into kidney failure literally overnight. They removed one kidney due to tissue damage. He spent the next several years undergoing regular hemodialysis. He had two kidney transplants but rejected both.
Despite his body being ravaged by the steroids he had to take and the hemodialysis, he developed a love of shooting trap and would travel on the weekends with friends to different competitions. He even won some. He couldn’t keep peas from falling off his fork because his hands shook so bad but put a trap gun in his hands? Steady as a rock.
Walter was eventually healthy enough for peritoneal dialysis, which is where a port in the stomach is used to flow cleansing fluid into the peritoneal cavity around the stomach. It then does the job kidneys normally do – it gets all the bad stuff out of the blood, you drain it and replace it with fresh solution three to four times a day.
Then he was given the chance to use an Automated Peritoneal Dialysis Machine. It would filter his blood while he slept, flowing fluid in and out several times during the night, as he had been doing manually for years.
The first night he used it was Dec. 5, 1994. It was also the last time he used it.
At some point during the night, his stomach ruptured. He slipped into a coma not long after they arrived at the hospital. He never woke up.
I spent the next two days sitting outside his room in ICU, going in every now and again to see him, and talk to him. I don’t know if he heard me, but I have to believe he did.
You see, the Friday before, he had called me at work to ask if I could use a briefcase. He was thinking about getting me one for Christmas. I mumbled something like “Yeah, sure.” Honestly, I wasn’t really paying attention.
Then he did something he never did: He raised his voice and asked me when I was going to have time for him and Mama. He missed me. I told him I didn’t know and then he did something else he had never done: He hung up on me.
That was the last time I ever spoke to him.
The morning he died, I had gone outside after midnight to smoke a cigarette. Walter had always told me he would take care of me and for some reason, I felt the need to say this out loud: “It’s OK, Bubba, you can go. I’ll be OK.”
Then, just like seven years and 11 months earlier, a wave of warmth came over me. Less than an hour later, his heart stopped. It stopped four more times after that until the doctor told us there was nothing more they could do.
Once they took him off the ventilator, he breathed on his own for about five minutes and then, he was gone.
We buried him that Saturday in the only suit he owned and wearing the tie I had bought for him for Christmas. I tucked a photo of the two of us in his left shirt pocket — you know, to be close to his heart so he wouldn’t forget about me. I was inconsolable. He was 37 years old.
On Christmas morning, Mama, my brother and his wife and I exchanged presents like we did every year. His absence was palpable.
Little did I know but he was there all along. After we had exchanged our presents, Mama placed several wrapped presents next to me. They were from Walter: a calendar, some candy, a card with some money in it, a gag gift and a fun gift — what he always got me.
But that year, he had one more present for me: a leather satchel. Yes, the briefcase he had called me about.
That satchel has been with me for the last 22 years, moving with me from South Carolina to Florida, Florida to Georgia, Georgia to North Carolina and finally, home to South Carolina. After each move, I unpack it, hold it tight to my chest, bury my nose in the leather and breathe in deeply.
Why? Simple, really. It was one of the last things his hands ever touched. Despite being mad at me, he never stopped loving me. The magnitude of that can — and does — reduce me to tears, especially this time of year.
My message to all of you? Do what you need to do today. Tell someone you love them just because. Go see your mother, your father or sibling. Call your best friend and make amends. Don’t wait.
Opportunities are lost in the blink of an eye, but regret? It can last a lifetime.