One of the writing prompts for the February National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo) challenge that I am doing was “How old were you the first time you fell in love?”
For me, the first person I loved was my Daddy. I know that’s not exactly what the prompt had in mind, but for me it’s true. I am a Daddy’s girl, through and through. I have been since the day I was born.
I don’t have many pictures of me from when I was little, but almost every one that I do have contains the two of us. Usually snuggled up somewhere, watching television. He was my hero. And I was his little girl, all blonde and giggly.
Me and my Daddy, September 1972
I remember the day he left our house for good, the summer of my tenth year, and the uncontrollable tears that I shed for weeks. I was heartbroken and didn’t understand what divorce meant. Nor did I care. I just wanted my dad every day, and now I was left with two days, every other weekend. It wasn’t enough.
My high school years were a struggle for us. I lived with him my freshman year – a complete disaster. I can look back now and realize that I was a jackass. He set limits, boundaries, and harsh consequences. It was called good parenting. I rebelled, and it resulted in an awkward relationship until my late teens when I finally grew up a little and realized that he wasn’t as stupid as I thought he was.
I was twenty when I really started to have perspective on my Dad as a person, and not just my father. We had a decent relationship, but we still carried some scars with us from the “broken years”. It was a surface relationship – we spent time together and got along, we never really TALKED about our lives.
That all changed when he had his first heart attack, which results in quadruple bypass surgery. Sitting in the cardiac waiting room with my grandmother, waiting for him to come out of surgery that day made me grow up fast. I realized that he wouldn’t be here forever, and that I really needed to tell him everything that I had to say, WHEN I HAD TO SAY IT. He must have felt the same way, because the first thing he did immediately after surgery, intubated and unable to talk, was to look at me, point to his eye, his heart, and to me – telling me that he loved me. I cry even now at the memory. From that day forward, every single time I spoke to him I told him that I loved him. And he the same to me.
We shared a lot with each other. Definitely more than most fathers and daughters that I know. He was my best friend, and I was honored that he trusted me to share his life, as if I were a friend and not just his child. We celebrated the wonderful things in life – both of our weddings and the birth of two new granddaughters. And we shared the devastating – two more heart attacks for him, losing my grandmother (his mother) and my divorce. All the while, we were there for each other; at the other end of the phone, sitting in a chair in the corner of a hospital room, playing with my children, taking vacations and seeing the world. Dad and I had some great adventures together – things that only he and I got a laugh out of. We had our own short-hand, our own way of doing things. We were two peas in a pod.
With Princess M and Princess K
And we were that way until his very last day. I don’t remember the entire phone call we had that morning; although I know I was in the grocery store and we talked about what I was making for dinner. I don’t remember if gave him a hug and told him that I loved him when he arrived at my house after driving from his in Wisconsin, but I usually did. I do remember that we sat at the kitchen table and talked for two hours about the changes in my life, and the graduation party that was happening the next day for my oldest daughter. Laughing and joking like we always did. I do remember that my girls got to hug and kiss him when they woke up from their naps, before they went to play at the park next door. I don’t remember why he went outside or what he was doing in the horrible humidity of that June day. I don’t remember what he said to me as he walked back in the door – with me telling him that he should take it easy because it was hot outside. I know it was some sort of protest – that he was fine, blah blah blah. I wish I could remember because it would be the last thing he would ever say to me.
My daddy sat down on the couch in my living room and had his last heart attack. I didn’t realize what was happening. He always snored – and always fell asleep quickly. I assumed that’s what it was. It wasn’t until our nanny asked me if he was okay and I called his name that I knew something was wrong. I remember every single moment of the next 4 minutes and 37 seconds. They were the longest of my life. Dialing 911, listening to this strange breathing, feeling the side of his neck and his heart beating, thinking that it was going to be okay because his heart was still beating, and then suddenly feeling it stop. Getting him off the couch and lying him on the floor to struggle through CPR, waiting and praying that the paramedics would get there. That my children wouldn’t come back in the house. That he would just hang on.
The paramedics did their best. The 3 mile drive to the hospital with the ambulance behind me was frantic. As his wife and I walked in to the emergency room and told them the situation, they ushered us to a private room. The doctor came in and told us that he had been “down” for almost 45 minutes, they had just now gotten him intubated and were still performing life saving measures. When the decision about what to do next was left to me, I knew what needed to be done. I walked back to the room where they were working on him, bent over him and gave him a kiss on the forehead, told him that I loved him and that he was the best daddy a girl could ever have, and then told the staff that they could stop. He was gone. My strong and amazing and wonderful and fantastic dad was gone.
I miss him every single day. He wasn’t a perfect man, or a perfect father. But he was the perfect father for me. He taught me to be strong, to be proud of who I am, not to take any crap from anyone, to give your heart 125% even if it means getting trampled on, always do your best, and to be honest with yourself and those around you.
I am still a Daddy’s girl. He was the first person I ever loved, and that doesn’t change because I don’t see his face or hear his voice every day. I know he’s with me and I do my best to honor him by being the woman that he raised me to be.
Muir Woods
