Father’s Day Without Dad : Mysterious Paper Airplane Lifts Grieving Daughter’s Spirit

March 19, Monday:

My father is dying.

It is my worst childhood dread, the terror in the night come true. I sit by his bed and hold his hand, trying to ward off my fears. I am failing in my duty. I cannot save him.

There is a scene in the film “Terms of Endearment” where the mother stands at the nurses’ station and screams for another shot of painkiller for her terminally ill daughter. Now I, too, stand at a nurses’ station. I say quietly, politely: “I think it is time for my dad’s shot.”

They look up at me, these kids, many of them young enough to be my daughters, and say, “OK, we’ll get it in a minute,” and then go back to talking about last night’s date, a friend’s birthday party.

I feel my face contort. I have become Frankenstein. I stand there and fidget, my hands balling into fists, my eyes welling with tears. My eyelids are already so swollen I can hardly bear to touch them. I say again, between clenched teeth: “I’m sorry to trouble you, but it is time NOW for my dad’s shot. NOW. NOW. NOW!”

My breath gets shorter. My voice rises to a screech. I turn into a monster in that antiseptic hallway. I hate myself for being this way, but I seem to have no control over my rude behavior. It seems my only way to fight back against a medical system that has my whole family in the strangling grip of its tubes, wires, needles, thumping noises, offending smells and a cadre of strangers who invade at their convenience our tiny cubicle of pain and grief.

Cancer has transformed me, molded me into a 42-year-old daughter whose only aim in life is to help her father die as comfortably, and with as much dignity, as I can provide.

Three months ago my father was on the golf links, a 68-year-old retired pilot with a wide circle of friends, a keen intellect, a comfortable life. We were so pleased because he had shed much of the extra weight he’d carried around on bad knees since he was in his forties. He was proud of himself as his pants size kept shrinking. Christmas brought him a new wardrobe. But my mother was having secret fears, which she revealed in the darkened room we often share with the quiet man in the bed: too much weight, too fast. But never mind. Worry about it tomorrow. The old saw is true. We see only what we want to see.

There was no cancer in our family, ever. As a journalist, I read the statistics, I kept up with the developments. Until Jan. 7, when the dreaded phone call came, I thought of cancer only with detached, clinical interest. Now the disease invades my heart, my mind, my very soul.

My father has become a statistic. Lung cancer. But where is the primary tumor?

“We may never find it,” said his oncologist, a father of five girls. He has just a few more answers than I, the layman. The killer cell, the rogue that launched the insidious assault on my father, will always elude the CAT scans, MRIs, X-rays, blood tests and all the other diagnostic invasions inflicted on the silent man in the bed.

We will never know how it began. But we know, with terrible finality, how it will end.

March 23-24, Friday and Saturday:

Like the forest of Hansel and Gretel, my father’s hospital room is littered with reminders of the long journey we have traveled together.

Books and magazines for when he could see; the television set for when he cared, as he passionately once did, about the revolution in Romania and the budget deficit and the verdict on the Exxon Valdez captain; lotions for when he still complained of aching muscles, juice for when he could still sip through a straw.

Finally, the last supper: 1 sugar packet, 1 salt substitute packet, strained cream of chicken soup, 2 milks, Coke, vanilla ice cream cup, cranberry juice, coffee. The tray was set aside, untouched.

It is nearly over. The nurses, every one a father’s daughter, increasingly care for us as well as him. They have become allies, friends, the only constant in a situation out of control. They never pass me now without a touch, a pat, a hug. They have done this before. They know how close we are to saying farewell--to each other, to him.

My father’s doctors call in from restaurants, from their own beds at 3 a.m. We are consulting hourly now. I am making decisions I never knew anyone had to make, making them with a cold detachment that stuns me. Yes, increase the Demerol. No, it isn’t working, so yes, I think we should switch to morphine. Increase the morphine. More. More.

I hear myself issuing opinions, but I keep looking at the still figure under the blue blanket, half waiting for him to sit up and contradict me.

He was always in charge. I never had a say in what we did, where we went as a family. He was the leader, the chief of the clan, the only voice of authority. When did the torch pass? I do not want it. But I cannot give it back.

There is no privacy in a hospital. I discover the linen closet down the hall and retreat there, behind the boxes of plastic-coated pillows. In that tiny sanctuary I hyperventilate, cry until I hiccup, pull myself together enough to go back into the darkened room.

It is the cusp of spring, but the last storm of winter has hurled itself out of the west and paralyzed Kansas City. Nothing moves on the streets. The lamps glow yellow in the reflected snow. The world is silent, suspended.

My father and I are alone in the middle of the night. I am half on the bed, cradling him, telling him all my secrets, all my hopes. I am racing the clock, my new enemy, trying to cram the story of my entire life into the last precious hours I will have with my daddy.

I sob. I laugh. I talk about the dog of my youth who was blown to us in a tornado and learned to play second base. I remind him of the time the cat ate the Christmas goose. I thank him for the blue bicycle, for teaching me to drive, for sending me to college, for waving goodby with a smile on his face when I boarded the plane for Vietnam, for all the money spent on phone calls to find me halfway ‘round the world. I thank him for all that extra champagne at my wedding, and for all the steaks he barbecued for my journalist friends who dropped in from Beirut and Bombay over the years.

I feel closer to my dad that night than ever before. Occasionally his eyes open, and I look deep into them and whisper in his ear, “I love you,” because everybody says no one knows what he hears, what he thinks. Those three words become my mantra, chanted over and over and over till dawn.

I also tell him how proud of him I was, and am, how his exploits as a fighter pilot reflected on us, made us feel special. I reassure him of my happiness in my marriage. I promise to look out for mother, to love his grandsons forever, to treasure every snapshot, every scrap of advice. I pledge to be good. I promise to remember.

And then I give him permission to let go. I say goodby. I feel as if I am dying too.

“You can go now, Daddy. It’s OK. Honest. I love you. You can go now, Daddy.”

I carry on the one-sided conversation for more than 12 hours. There is no sound in the room except my hoarse voice. The only tube left is the morphine drip. The nurses glide in and out. There is pain in their eyes. The young doctor who has become my lifeline, my greatest source of strength, stands at the foot of the bed.

“When?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he replies. There are tears in his eyes.

My father picks his own time, as he has his whole life. He waits for my mother and my brother. At high noon, the storm over, the blinding spring sunshine flooding the window, he opens his eyes. He speaks. “Love!” he says, as they hold him in their arms.

And then he is gone.

March 27, Tuesday:

The photograph in front of the altar shows a smiling young man in a 50-mission hat and a dashing Army Air Corps trench coat. A white silk scarf is draped over the edge of the frame. On a velvet board are the medals awarded for bravery, daring and endurance. Hyacinth freshly cut from a neighbor’s yard complete the memorial tableau.

I take a deep breath and pray for the strength and composure to deliver a eulogy.

“The newspaper obituary,” I began, “gives you the frame surrounding the portrait of the man. This is the true picture.

“He loved the song of a single bird in the morning, the sight of a chevron of wild geese at dusk. He was sentimental and loved cards that rhymed. . . .

“He could untangle any fishing line and fix any toy. . . .

“He taught his children that only people mattered, not things. . . .

“He was a fisherman, farmer, civil servant, lifelong Democrat, loyal American.

“But at the core he was a pilot. A true hero. Dad’s pilot buddies said no man ever flew an airplane with such grace and skill and that God-given gift that only angels have for flight. . . .

“A friend, trying to comfort me, said she knew why Dad took his own time in leaving us. He did not go in the dark of night when the blizzard raged. Instead, he left with the sun high overhead. He waited, she said, for clear skies to take off. . . .”

At the end, I borrowed the words of a friend who had walked this path before:

“Daddy,” she wrote, “just follow the heading Peter Pan gave Wendy Darling. As they surveyed the stars spread across the night sky, he showed her the way like you have shown me:

“Second to the right, then straight on till morning. Have a wonderful flight. We’ll all meet you there.”

Then the pianist broke into a resounding rendition of “Wild Blue Yonder” and my duty was done. I had used the only true gift I had, the ability to string words together, to say farewell. I believe he heard me.

March 29, Thursday:

I was in the dream house my parents built when they retired. Stumbling around in the dark, I reached into my open suitcase for a bathrobe. My hand touched something that hadn’t been there an hour before. Turning on the light, I found an intricate paper airplane folded out of a hospital dietitian’s form.

Even though it was late I called my husband, who’d flown back home that day. I thanked him for leaving me the wonderful airplane. After a long pause at the other end of the line, he told me, as one would speak to a slow-witted child, that he hadn’t made me a paper airplane.

The next morning I showed it to my mother. She had no idea where it came from. I am sure there is a logical explanation. I just haven’t found it. Until I do, I’ve put the delicate little plane away in a box in my hope chest, along with my most precious treasures. When I feel inconsolable, I get out the box and sail the beautifully proportioned craft through the air. It makes me feel better.

“Take my hand,” wrote the friend who is a year ahead of me. “We’ll walk together on the twisting road back.” She exhorted me to “look for the signs.” And so I took the little paper airplane to be the first one.

Father’s Day, June 17, Sunday:

Father’s Day was the weekend we always used to pick cherries from the back-yard tree and bake Daddy a pie. Or clean out the garage for him. Or endure a hot afternoon at the old fishin’ hole. There were shirts to buy and ties to wrap and cards to sign.

But not this year. Or next. Or ever again.

I look out my kitchen window in Colorado, eastward toward my roots and my past in Missouri. There is an old, majestic Ponderosa pine across the way. In recent days an owl has perched on the highest tip of the highest branch. Occasionally he leaves his aerie to soar over my house in a graceful arc, his wings barely moving, catching the thermals and letting the breeze take him high, higher, highest.

I watch him in wonder and delight. I believe, as Wendy Darling believed in Peter Pan. As long as there are larks to sing and eagles to fly and owls to look down from the highest tree, my father will live on.