The exact moment

When my sister-in-law K lost her friend B, she was sitting vigil at his hospital bed when he slipped away. All day friends had arrived or messaged to say their goodbyes. Later she wrote about how she was sleeping and felt something touch her foot, awakening her to the news of B’s last breath. How envious I felt, that little sign, that fleeting sense. I felt nothing when you passed, though I was awake and thinking of you. I had spent the last days of your life anxiously monitoring the phone. I had sent you that last message, 19 days before you succumbed. I knew when you did not respond that it was almost time, and thought about you constantly.

One day I took Jake on a long walk to his favorite dog park - a 12,000 step walk according to the app on my phone that measures such things. I was thinking of you and crying, as usual. The unfairness of it all. As Jake aad I entered the park, I saw a man standing beneath a tree about forty feet away - he looked so much like you I caught my breath. The height, the broad shoulders, the baseball hat, the shape of his head - he looked so much like you I just stood stock still, staring. Then I turned around with my back to him and used my phone to take a picture over my shoulder. My eyes were too blurred with tears to see the pictures clearly; later, when I perused them, they were as blurred as my eyes had been, so only the silhouette of the man could be discerned, and not very well. I deleted them.

On the night you died I walked the house, watched the moon from the front living room window thinking how much you’d appreciate the view of the bridge, and how approving you’d be of my home that contained many things that once populated different homes we shared - the chairs from the Houston house, the rug from the Austin house, even a little Amish table from the St. Louis house. I went back to bed and lay there not really sleeping so that when D’s Signal message came through with a ding! I knew immediately what the message was about, though I didn’t yet know who it was from.

I am not drawn back to your last words to me; what I’m drawn to, find myself looking at again and again, is a a picture of you. Not that last one your mom sent - that one is just too sad. The one I’m talking about is a picture I took a picture of. Back then it was taken with a camera that was not on aa phone; I found it in a pile at mom’s. In it you look much like how I remember you; your smile is easy, mostly in the eyes as has always been the way with your smiles. The ubiquitous hat tipped slightly back. Your shirt a total afterthought. You are tan, your eyes more blue than gray.

With dad, it’s not a picture but the text from Karen I’m drawn back to again and again. I even took a screenshot of it so that it’s in my pictures where I stumble over it like a spiked brick. So shocking, when I read it all the air rushed out of my lungs and I could not inhale, I could not.

Sandy, Daddy passed away.

The funny thing is she could have left off the last two words. I knew immediately from the way she named us, I knew immediately he was gone. Just like that.

He was declining but since I had a visit planned for July 9th I didn’t leave room for never seeing him again. I had it in my mind he would live at least another year, maybe two and possibly longer. But I wasn’t there; I was getting reports, but it’s not the same as seeing for yourself. Later I learned that Aunt Annie had visited a week before dad passed and went home and told Uncle Mike her fear/certainty dad wouldn’t make it to the end of the year.

When Father’s Day arrived, I sent dad a card and called him. By then we had left Portugal to give us two weeks in Alaska before a in California on the 5th. From there we’d cross the country, passing through to see my family on the way.

We were headed to a place out at 19 Mile in Valdez Alaska, the terrain rugged but the place plumbed, electrified and with wifi service - that’s the only reason I agreed to go, knowing we would be reachable. But when we got there the wifi had been shut down, and the bureaucracy to get it up again dragged on and on.

As luck would have it, we had just switched cellular carriers - the old one had a strong signal at 19 Mile; the new one only had a strong signal in Valdez proper, a 25 minute drive. Usually we went once a day and the husband and I would head to a cafe to check messages and get any work done that needed doing online. The day dad died we went into the wilderness of the Copper River to fish for salmon all day and driving back late late night to arrive at 19 Mile - putting me off the grid the whole day and night, while the urgent messages piled up with the news.

So the morning after the night we get back, which was also the day after mom’s birthday, we were driving into Valdez for a Wi-Fi signal. The weather is somber: overcast and rainy, a curtain of ragged gray-white clouds hovering inches above the ground. Our windshield is wet with splattering rain. As soon as we are in range of a cell tower my phone blows up. I start systematically going through my apps - work has 41 missed messages so I quickly scan. Then I see Karen’s text, I am trying to reach you. I check our Signal thread, disparate words jump out from a long string of unread messages from yesterday - dad fell, hit his head. I open my mouth to tell my husband, already cursing myself for being so out of touch and not doing something about it when my eye falls on the only message that mattered: Sandy Daddy passed away. This morning. 

The message was sent the day before - the day I was at the Copper River. Poor Karen trying phone, text, Signal and Facebook. Poor mom, alone as dad lay dying, how confused and panicked she must have felt. 

No! I wail it aloud. No no no! 

What? The husband looks over, his voice alarmed. 

My daddy! I say. I cry and cry. The husband pulls into a parking lot.

He died! I scream the words. 

He hugs me. I’m so sorry love.

I call my sister and am crying too hard to talk. 

Take a deep breath, she tells me. I’m with mom. We’ll talk more later but here’s what you need to know. He didn’t suffer. He died, fell and hit his head. It was over quickly and he didn’t know. He hadn’t been feeling well. He threw up yesterday and this morning couldn’t eat his breakfast and went back to bed. He died trying to get in bed. 

We cried together.  I apologized for being off the grid forcing her to have to text me such news. 

We hung up and I spent the next 8 hours booking flights. Then we drove back to 19 mile. Only later that night, after everyone is asleep, do I have time alone, and have to face the raw force ot it: my father is no more. The letter I was writing him will never get sent.

The wifi at Mile 19 was finally restored, up and running, the day I flew home.