The call came at 2:30 in the morning.   I had a phone right next to my bed, so I was the one that answered the phone.  I was sixteen.  It was the hospital, asking me if this was the family of Mr. Ausburn.   Even through the fog of sleep, I knew something was wrong.  My heart was pounding, it felt like it had jumped into my throat.  I yelled into the phone. I kept asking what is wrong.  I got no answers other than we needed to get to the hospital immediately. By then my mother was awake and I had to tell her something was wrong. I didn’t know what, but I knew it had to be bad.    Within minutes we were speeding toward the hospital, terrified of what we would find.

Hospital visits were frequent for my father.  He was often hospitalized several times a year, often for weeks at a time.  This visit was no different than any other.  It was completely different than any other. He was due to be released that Friday, January 12.  Instead, it was the day he died.

It was January, 1990.  My father had been hospitalized for the umpteenth time.  He had a lung disease that he was diagnosed with when I was 3 years old.  I never knew my dad as a healthy person.  He was always ill.  Throughout my childhood, he grew progressively worse each year.  At the end of his life, he was pretty much housebound and required oxygen twenty four hours a day.

His disability was hard for all of us.  It was hard on my mother, who, for 14 years  had to take care of him, me and our home, which included an acre and a half of land.  It was hard on my father, whose mind was still sharp and wanted to plant gardens, tend to flowers, cook meals, take his daughter fishing.  His mind wanted to do so much more than his failing body would let him.  He had to be content with watching the gardening shows on PBS on Saturday and Sunday.  Watching someone else dig in the dirt, get excited over a new tomato hybrid.  He loved food and cooking.  But he could no longer get in the kitchen and cook the meals he once did.  Instead he and I would pour over each new copy of Southern Living, him picking out the recipes he wanted to save and me clipping them out and organizing in his notebooks.  I would paste them in, he would go back later and make notes in his own handwriting.  I still have those notebooks.  If there ever was a fire, they would be one of the few material things I would make a point to grab.

We bought fishing poles when I was about 10.  We had moved to the country the year before, and my cousin, who lived up the road, had a small pond on his property.  Dad promised to take me fishing.  For years those poles sat, gathering dust.  He never felt up to going.  I would pass by them almost daily, glancing at them as I went by, a tangible reminder of his disability.

He loved to tell stories.  On warm summer nights we sat on the front porch, Dad in his rocking chair, enthralling and terrifying me and my cousin who lived next door.  He would tell us stories about how the lightening bugs we saw were really wolves eyes. Other times he would try to convince us that the tadpoles we caught would really turn into large snakes.    My little cousin often had to be walked home.   He also regaled us with funny stories from his childhood.  He and friends of his were apparently quite the cutups in their day.  Fun that seems innocent now, sneaking into watermelon patches, swiping one or two to eat.  Freaking out teachers by showing up dressed in their mother’s clothing.  By all accounts, especially his friends,  he was a very cheerful, happy soul.  He loved nothing more than a good joke, a good time.  He still loved those things, but the good humor was tempered by pain.  Mental and physical.  I cannot imagine how it must have been for him.  To be trapped in a body that would not do what your mind wanted.

One of the highlights of his life in later years was grocery shopping.  It was a hassle for my mom to take him, as it required the wheel chair, oxygen and someone to push said wheel chair.  Plus, my mom was the type who gets in, gets what she needs, and gets out.  Not so for my father.  He wanted to go through each isle, looking for new products, new ingredients to try.  A trip with him to the grocery store could last hours.  Once in a great while we were able to go to a larger city, 30 miles away, which had an even larger selection.  Needless to say, you could plainly read the joy in his face as he went through each isle.  It was his adventure.

He loved visitors.  Being pretty much housebound, he couldn’t visit his friends and relatives.  So when they came to see him it was very special.  He would holler at mom to put on a pot of coffee, and bring out whatever cake, pie, jar of pickles, etc. that was the latest creation from our kitchen.  Often visitors came loaded down with fresh fruit or vegetables from their gardens.  He looked at that and saw a challenge, and was grateful for the food that would help feed his family.  I looked at it and groaned, only seeing work ahead for me.  How stupid I was.  He often took homemade goodies to his doctor when he went in for check ups.  The two of them would sit and talk about peppers and tomatoes far longer than the actual “exam” took.

Dad almost never disciplined me.  He spanked me once.  He cried harder than I did.  I remember hearing him tell my mother that he would never ever do that again.  And he didn’t.  He yelled at me only one time that I can remember.  He was disappointed in what I had picked out for a Mother’s Day present.  I think he was yelling as much out of frustration that he couldn’t do the shopping himself as much as the present itself.

He was my companion, my friend, my cuddle partner on the sofa.  I was his little girl.  A definite Daddy’s girl.  That phone call was the beginning of the end of our journey together.  I was a frightened sixteen year old, driving into an unknown, unsettled, discomforting future.

Tomorrow, Part Two

6 Responses to “Twenty Years On, Part One.”