30 Nov If I Had Known

Five years ago, I drove out to Ohio on Thanksgiving day, hit a deer just shy of the PA/OH line, and then spent the next few days visiting with my parents in between replacing my car’s windshield, finding out whether it was safe to drive back to Vermont, and talking with my insurance agent. It was a pretty crappy trip, and certainly not what I had planned.

My sister Jen went out to Ohio for a visit right after Christmas that year. She took Mom and Dad to a deli for lunch, had a holiday dinner together at my Shaker Heights sister’s, and tried to help Dad get his Christmas letter out. On New Year’s Eve, Jen stopped by Mom and Dad’s to say goodbye on the way to the airport. Before her plane even took off, she got a call that Dad had fallen and hit his head and was on his way to the emergency room. He would die two weeks later.

If I had known . . . There’s a lot of that after someone dies, especially when it’s unexpected, and as you realize you had your last birthday, or anniversary, or New Year’s with that person . . . . If I had known it would be my last few days with Dad, his, our last Thanksgiving, I would have, what? Tried to be less stressed out and cranky, that’s for sure. Focused on the positive: that I hadn’t crashed into a tree or another car, that my car could be fixed. Realized what I had right in front of me.

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I was getting ready for a chorus concert in early January when I got the call – Come now. Dad was actively dying.

There were no flights available that day; my car hadn’t been fixed, so driving was out. I booked the earliest flight I could find for Monday morning, threw on my concert clothes and went down the hill to sing Mozart’s Requiem. What else was I going to do with myself until I could leave for Ohio. And, besides, I thought my dad would like that I was singing. Once I got there, late, and started to warm up, reality hit: I tried to take a deep breath, and my lungs – my voice – just stopped. I thought about going home, but I was at the end of the back row so I figured I could just quietly step off behind the curtains until the concert was over if I needed to. I happened to be standing next to Deb Barry, a Hospice Care volunteer and fellow soprano. I didn’t tell her about my dad, not wanting to cry, but we started to chat and somehow, I felt myself relax. By the time we started the Kyrie, I could sing. I remember thinking (hoping), “Dad is still in this world,” and that kept me going.

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After the concert, I walked back up South Main and finished taking down my decorations. I didn’t want to see them when I got back from Ohio. I packed away my ornaments and lights, my wee trees and candles. Last to be put away, as always, were the wooden Christmas tree and the Santa my Dad had made for me decades before. 

The following December, I unwrapped Dad’s tree and noticed, for the first time in a long time, what was under it: a copy of Little Women. Well, that did make me cry. On Christmas mornings, I read the first two chapters of Little Women and revisit Marmee and her girls, the Hummels, and old Mr. Laurence. I know each gift before it is unwrapped, Beth’s fate, who Meg and Jo and Amy will marry. But for a few pages, I’m just there in that old house in Concord with the March girls, reveling with them in the not-knowing. 

And when I look at Dad’s silly Santa and my tree, his handwriting on the bottom, I’m back in our living room in Montague, our tree lit up in the bay window. Mrs. Tiggywinkle is there, a tiny kitten racing around the presents and attacking their ribbons. The plate of cookies with milk is out for Santa.

The following years’ sorrows and joys and everything in between are there, too, waiting to be unpacked one more time, the still-unknown waiting to be added in time. ~ Hilary Farquhar