The Other Day: Letter to Dad
By Julie McDonald
When my father died the afternoon of July 24, I tried to be strong—for my mom, for my four sisters, for my brother.
My dad suffered stomach problems earlier this year and an X-ray showed he had gallstones—and an aortic aneurysm. My dad, quite a worrier, opted for surgery to take care of the aneurysm rather than letting it grow until it burst.
After 13 hours under local anesthetic on July 7, my dad seemed on the mend.
However, infection took root in my dad’s incisions and doctors readmitted him to the hospital July 23rd and put him on antibiotics. It was too late.
The next morning, pneumonia had invaded his right lung. By 11 a.m., his heart failed, but doctors revived him. His heart continued to falter as he struggled desperately to hang onto his precious life.
I visited my dad that Thursday afternoon, and again that evening. I spent an hour feeding him ice chips and trying to cheer him up. I tried to go to my mom’s to sleep but worried too much, so I returned to the hospital and lay on the chairs, my head on my Bible. The next day I held his hand, singing to him, praying for him, crying.
He died at 3:02 p.m. He was 69.
We called a funeral home and the church, then left the hospital. On the walk to the parking lot, Mom told me she felt as though her insides had been ripped out. They had been married more than 42 years.
At my mom’s house, we comforted each other and cried. I started calling relatives and making to-do lists, becoming so intense in the activities that I irritated some of my sisters.
I kept telling myself that Dad knew I loved him. After his surgery, when he was recovering, I had given him a hug and, with a catch in my voice, said: “You know I love you, Dad.” Dad enjoyed making people smile. He looked at me and said: “Well, I’ve gotten kind of fond of you, too.”
The dreadful day of his death wore on and, in the wee hours of the morning, my sister Cathleen and I decided to encourage Mom to sleep. We found her busy emptying my dad’s night stand drawer. She pulled out papers: an Irish blessing, a poem from my brother, and a letter I had written to my father at least 10 years ago.
My sister began to read aloud, and any semblance of composure I had evaporated into a heart-rending wail and a flood of tears.
Dear Dad,
Hi. I don’t usually write to you, but I want to share with you some feelings I have. It’s important for you to know how much I love you. We sometimes clash and sometimes fight, but you are very special to me Dad. You are truly a very special person.
Sometimes, when your kids act up or sass back, you must wonder why you even bothered with us. I don’t know why you did, sometimes. We can all be real pains in the butt. But we’re also very good people, and we have you to thank for that.
Y’know, Dad, you’ve given each of us an appreciation of the lighter side of life. We’ve learned from you how to laugh, even when things seem to be all upside down. You taught us to look ahead when we’re down. I still remember the time I lost my dorm room and called home crying and you said “What were you worried about this time last year?”
Well, at the time I didn’t know or care. But the point was well taken, and I’ve often thought of it since.
We all know we can survive, thanks to you. We all know how to laugh. And we care about people – especially the underdog. I know that I sometimes felt like the underdog growing up (middle child syndrome, I guess) but you often stuck up for me, when it seemed the whole world was against me. I’ve never told you how much I appreciated that. You probably figured I didn’t notice.
But I did. And I love you for it.
And, Dad, you taught us to be honest with others. I never even go a penny over on gas without paying for it. I learned that from you. And I know it’s a good standard to live by. And I try.
So Dad, during those times when you get fed up with us, or just feel blue, please remember the good qualities you have. And know that those wonderful traits that make you the person you are are ingrained in each of your children to varying degrees.
That’s a legacy nobody can match. After all, you’ve got a half dozen of ’em running around!
So, Dad, I want you to know how much I really do love you. Please don’t forget it, even when it seems like I do (when we fight). Because I never do forget how much I love you.
Julie
I scarcely remember writing the letter. I think my dad had been despondent, or perhaps it was after one of our frequent clashes in my 20s. I’m so glad now that I wrote it. And it warms me to know he kept the letter in his drawer all these years. I hope he read it over and over.
So often we fail to tell the people most important in our lives how much we love them. Sometimes we never get the chance. When we do have time to say goodbye, there’s always so much to say and so little time to say it.
My dad knew I loved him. I told him in the hospital. But more than that, I told him years ago, before I thought of losing him. The best tribute I can think of to my dad would be to have you reach over and give your spouse an I-love-you hug, kiss or cradle your child, call your mom to tell her you care … or write a heartfelt letter to your dad.
This article appeared in The Daily News, This Day section, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 1998
The Other Day: A Trip with Mom
By Julie McDonald
Mom lay curled up on the folded-out seats of the darkened train compartment, one arm propping up her head so she could keep an eye on the door.
I sat upright, legs stretched in front of the door and both hands tucked in my pockets, one index finger on the trigger of my pepper mace and the other on the switch of my pocket alarm.
For several hours, two young Italian men had hovered outside, peering through the dingy off-white curtain that didn’t quite close and occasionally squatting to peek through the metal vent in the door.
Suddenly, Mom stood up, switched on the light and pulled down her navy pack.
“I’ve had enough. We’re getting off this train at the next stop,” she said.
“But, Mom,” I said, “we’re in the middle of Italy. It’s 2 in the morning and we have no idea where we are. We can’t just get off the train.”
She slid open the door, pushed her hand toward one man’s face, then gestured to the compartment.
“You want a place to sit? Have this room!” Then she marched down the aisle as the fellow stepped back, droopy lids widening over glassy eyes.
As I tagged behind her, I had to admit my 58-year-old mother had spunk. Lots of it.
When I told people I was traveling to Europe for a month with my mom, some responded: “Are you nuts?”
Who better to travel with than someone who knows you inside out, raised you in her image, accepts you with all your flaws, and loves you even when you irritate the heck out of her?
Besides, there’s security in venturing through foreign soils with Mom in tow, even when you’re a grown woman.
Although on the train, I wasn’t so sure.
We had hardly gone 25 feet when we saw our path blocked by a hulk with a huge jagged scar on his face—and in the train car behind him, 30 sinister-looking men on pull-out seats in the aisle.
We went back to the compartment we had just left and sat down, light on, packs still on our backs. The train rattled to a stop at Genoa, where a dozen people boarded. Several asked if they could share our compartment. We nodded mutely. As the remaining four seats filled, the two men outside the door drifted away.
Our whirlwind trip through Europe, Ireland, and London five years ago lasted nearly a month; the memories will last a lifetime.
Nearly 20 years earlier, Mom and I had pipe-dreamed about traipsing through Europe.
Then, at 32, married with no children, I decided the time had come. My husband had already gone, so I asked Mom.
“Do you want to go to Europe with me?”
“You bet I want to go!” she said.
As one of six kids, I looked forward to having a month of undivided attention from my mother.
On the trip, I saw events that I had experienced as a child through adult eyes. Fear and confusion disappeared as I imagined myself in my mom’s place at my age: married with a husband who traveled five days a week, struggling to feed six kids on a paycheck that wasn’t always there, trying to reconcile dreams of a happy family with the reality of fights, squabbling and the ever-present lack of money.
Mostly, we welded a bond as we muddled our way through subway, train and plane connections, laughing at our ignorance.
Before we left, we pored over books, attended seminars, wrote to tourist agencies, and watched The Diary of Anne Frank and other movies about Europe. We nearly memorized Rick Steves’ Europe Through the Back Door book, which told us how to eat cheap, sleep cheap, travel cheap and have a great time doing it.
I planned everything, down to train times, museum tours, hotel check-ins, church hours.
I handed Mom our nine-page itinerary: London, Paris, Nice, Monaco, Rome, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Salzburg, Fussen, Rothenburg, Bacharach (on the Rhine River), Cologne, Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, back to London—and a week and a half in Ireland.
“You’re going to kill her,” my dad said.
Despite my detailed plans, we spent much of the trip … lost.
We lugged our heavy backpacks from the Paris subway, recalling with each step the admonition in Steves’ book: “Pack light. Pack light.” Mom turned to me, sweat dripping in rivulets down the sides of her cheeks. “My head is pounding,” she said.
We sat on a bench near Napolean’s tomb. As we resumed our trek, I turned to find Mom leaning in the window of a taxi pleading with the driver. “Rue Cler. Take me to Rue Cler.”
He motioned with his fingers. “Walk,” he said.
Somehow we’d wandered to within a few blocks of the Grand Hotel Leveque, on a pedestrian-only cobblestone street.
In Paris we took in Saint-Chapelle, the Louvre and Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa behind bullet-proof glass and the Versailles Palace. We went to Mass at the 700-year-old cathedral of Notre Dame.
And then there was Nice. I’ll always remember Nice as the place where Mom was anything but … nice, that is.
As I reorganized my backpack that morning, she walked down the hall for a cup of coffee. The woman told her she had missed breakfast.
“That’s OK,” Mom said. “I just want coffee.”
Too late for coffee, the concierge repeated.
Mom came storming back to the room, furious at me for “fiddly-farting around.” I straggled after her as she marched down the street in search of her brew. After a few sips of coffee, her civilized side surfaced.
Although we both like castles and cathedrals, and we both hauled backpacks on and off trains, Mom and I saw different parts of Europe.
In Monaco, I climbed stairs to tour the palace while she drank coffee at a restaurant. While I took a tour of Mad King Ludwig’s castle—300 steps up, 300 down—Mom opted to take a nap.
And in Ireland, where my younger sister joined us, Mom shopped at Blarney Woolen Mills outside Cork while Susie and I climbed to the top of the Blarney Castle to kiss the famous stone. (Mom had climbed the 170-plus steps to kiss it in 1986, and once was enough.)
In Killarney, we visited with relatives, took a horse-drawn jaunting car through the Gap of Dunloe, saw the place where my great-grandmother was born. We attended Mass with them and toured a cemetery looking at old headstones.
Twice Mom and I belatedly took Rick Steves’ advice by emptying our packs and mailing a heavy box home, first in Monaco and later in Amsterdam. In Rome, with our paranoia about thieves at its highest point, we checked our packs at the train station, then found a city bus and took it to Turati street. Bearing in mind that you always have to look like you know where you’re going, we stepped off the bus simultaneously and started walking purposefully—in opposite directions.
At times, our roles reversed. In Nice, I pulled her by the elbow back onto the sidewalk as drivers zipped around corners. In Amsterdam, I admonished her to quit eating so much junk and munch a solid meal.
In Venice, Mom read about a highly rated restaurant, Vin à Vin or something. I groused–exhausted, hungry and on what I thought was a wild goose chase—as we searched for it.
Afterward, we wandered narrow brick streets trying to find our way back to the hotel, always winding up at another bridge or canal. The sky grew darker, the alleys narrower. I kept my trigger finger cocked as we walked, even when we entered the well-lighted section—and shot myself in the leg with mace when someone stepped on my foot.
When our hotel room outside Amsterdam smelled like a cesspool, Mom decided we needed to pamper ourselves.
Hey, if Mom says so, who am I to argue? We found a luxury hotel with room service, overnight laundry, all the comforts we could never afford back home.
Special times stick out in my memory, not for the sights but for the insights. As we chatted on the trip from Paris to Nice, Mom told me about tough times and fun times as the mother of six children, all under the age of 9. She talked of the time she was so mad at Dad she told her sister-in-law she wanted to shoot him. Her relative’s reply: “Don’t shoot him. Hit him with the fry pan!” She laughed, nearly 40 years later.
Mom was five years younger than I when she sat cradling my 2-year-old sister, the baby’s body shaking with convulsions, during the frantic 60-mile drive to a hospital after she had fallen off a bed. “I thought she’d die,” Mom said softly. “I didn’t know if I could go on if one of my kids died.”
When we had a compartment to ourselves between Brussels and Paris, she shared her pain and disappointment when, later, the kids she’d sunk her entire life into repaid her by acting out, or striking back with blame for things past.
We talked about trust, fears, anger. About how lucky we are to have such a wonderful family—and how good God has been to us. I told her I remember all of us kids peeking through a narrow hospital window while she lay there, nearly dying after her sixth abdominal surgery within five years. I was 9.
“I remember crying on the Minnesota Woolens bag on the end of your bed,” I told her.
Dad took us to his uncle’s in Wyoming, who then drove five of us to our grandmother’s in Minnesota for the summer. A cousin told me: “We know a secret. Your mom’s going to die.”
Mom remembered lying there as a priest gave her the last sacrament and thinking, “I can’t go. I’ve got six kids to raise.”
I swallowed it up entirely. I felt so much love for her and my family. “I was always terrified of losing a member of my family,” I told her.
Then she quoted a cousin: “We come into the world alone, and we go out alone.” So all the time we spend stewing and brewing over work, relationships and problems really is for naught, she told me. What really matters is our relationship with ourselves and with God.
I’ll always treasure my travels with Mom, as her daughter and her friend. This summer, I was watching a movie filmed in Amsterdam with my 3-year-old son.
“Grandma and I were there,” I told him.
“Me too?” he asked.
“Someday,” I said. “Someday you can take Mommy there.”