I didn’t know I would die that morning. Why would I? I’d only been 48 years old for eight days, still relatively young in 1961. Just a few weeks before, the doctor said everything looked good other than a hole in my belly which caused the discomfort I’d been experiencing. Hole? I think he meant ulcer. Discomfort? Well, I’d call those sharp crushing stabs pain.

I’ve always had a quick temper, but the pain made it worse.

I woke up angry the morning I died. Rain poured in through the light fixture in our bedroom and I blamed Richard for not cleaning the leaves off the roof. I dressed in a hurry, all the time muttering and yelling about Richard. I forgot to notice my daughter, Ginni, only 12 and tall for her age, in the room frozen like a deer caught in headlights while she listened and watched.

I flew out of the bedroom like a storm, exited the house via the service porch backdoor. I’d almost reached the patio when a vice like pain crushed across my chest throwing me to the ground as I grasped the thick gold necklace I wore and ripped it off my neck.

I laid on the wet ground, my body a curled ball, rain pouring and drenching my hair, my face, my clothes, my body.

My wife, Ruth, called my name from the window in our pink bathroom. Over and over again, “Bud…Bud…Bud,” her volume increasing each time she called out. I couldn’t answer. I think I was already gone, hovering above.

Ginni followed Ruth outside and when they reached me, Ruth spoke my name again as she rolled my body onto my back. Her voice caressed me like a gentle breeze, the sound of a woman trying to awaken her beloved from sleep. Maybe that’s how I heard it. Maybe her voice trembled, maybe it was a sharp demand to wake up. I heard love. She didn’t realize I was already gone because my chest continued to move up and down. I guess a lifetime habit of activity stays in a body when life is abruptly pushed out.

For a moment, Ruth pulled her attention away from me and told Ginni to wake Richard and tell him to bring a blanket.

Richard never came. Ginni brought the blanket and soon Harold Davis, our neighbor from across the street, appeared and began pushing on my chest. He didn’t notice his soaked suit or his tie drowning in the water on the ground.

Firemen arrived, moved me to another place in the yard but still in the rain, and worked on my body. I was in it again and for a moment opened my eyes and saw Ginni standing at my feet looking at me. I wanted to apologize for yelling at her last night. I wanted to say, “I don’t want to leave you. I’m sorry,” but my body was no longer mine and I could only hope she could read the regret and love in my eyes.

Then I was gone—out of my body high above the yard. I struggled as an unseen force pulled to take me further up and away. I didn’t want to leave my family. Their pain began to take hold. Ruth stunned and frozen like a stone, Ginni in the living room in front of the fireplace, and Richard running up and down the driveway, wailing, his hands cupping his ears. I wanted to be there to comfort them.

“Stop it,” I yelled as the pulling continued. My anger, hot, burning coals fury, larger than ever because now I was being force to leave my family, my wife, my daughter, and son when they needed me most.

Angry because I wasn’t ready to leave my body and my life behind. I’d always been in a charge, didn’t my anger prove that, and now there was something bigger, stronger than me. My will meant nothing. My desires and wishes meant nothing. I was impotent against what was happening.

I heard Ginni saying over and over again, “Please don’t let my daddy die. Please don’t let my daddy be dead.” But dead I was and my wish that her wishes be granted went unheard, or, if they were heard, the answer was, “No.”

I raged against the injustice for years, stopping only for a brief time when Ruth died in 2005 and we drank and danced and laughed. When I couldn’t let go of my anger and outrage, Ruth left me and moved on, saying she still had a lot to learn and wouldn’t let me hold her back the way she had when she was alive.

The past couple months, I’ve felt something new. Ginni’s spiritual shamanic journeys and writing, seeking to heal us both, have awakened something in me. I think I may be ready to let go of the anger, to remember I was and am loved, and to remember I love. I think Ginni is healing us from a pain held onto long enough. I hope for her sake, she no longer has to feel that ache in her heart, but perhaps she needs it to guide her.

Perhaps there was a gift in my death after all.

 

 

For many years, I’ve written about the day my father died. I’ve been in a zoom writing group led by the fabulous Ann Randolph. When she offered the prompt to write from someone else’s perspective, without giving it a thought, I began to write that day from my dad’s perspective.

 

Photo by Mathias P.R. Reding on Unsplash