That day again...
In case you may be wondering why I find August 29th a day to be endured rather than enjoyed ... today is the 35th anniversary of my father's death. For those of you who haven't been around me long enough to know the full story, and/or those of you who don't want to touch LiveJournal with a ten-meter pole, I'll put the original LJ entry from Aug. 29, 2003, under a cut.
Lots of times I know I dreamed something overnight, but I can't remember what it was.
Somehow I managed to remember that last night I dreamed I saw three kinds of hydrangea bushes, one each with pink, white, and blue flowers. That's all I recall.
But I still remember what I was dreaming 21 years ago this morning. [Remember, I originally wrote this in 2003.]
Back then I was a small-town newspaper reporter. So of course I was dreaming about work. In the dream I was covering a school committee meeting, and the board members had just voted to arbitrarily shuffle the town's school principals around to different schools, regardless of their past experience with the needs of the various age groups.
(My own home town's school committee had done just that the year after I graduated from high school, only to reverse themselves a week later in the face of massive public outcry. A few weeks later, my high school principal was killed in a motorcycle accident.)
So I was dreaming until my mother woke me up around 7 a.m. by yelling, "Patty, get out of bed NOW. I NEED YOU."
And my Mom, a super-early bird by nature, ALWAYS nagged me to haul myself out of bed in the morning. Except this time, there was an unusual kind of urgency in her voice.
I dragged myself out of bed, still groggy, with an incredible attitude: "What could POSSIBLY be so massively important at seven o'clock in the morning?"
Seems as if my Dad had collapsed in the bathroom and was making a gurgling sound I'd never heard before. Mom was trying to "wake him up" by wiping his face with a cold washcloth. I groaned and headed for the phone.
After the rescue squad had whisked my father away from the house he had designed and built, Neighbor Dave appeared and asked my mother and me if we wanted him to drive us to the hospital. I pulled a shirt and jeans on over my pajamas and ran out to his car in my bare feet (even though, moments before my father collapsed, my mother had looked at the outdoor thermometer and saw that it was only 36 degrees F).
In the emergency waiting room at the hospital where I was born, my mother and I sat around for a while. The TV in the corner was tuned to a public-TV show about how to draw pictures of birds. Like we really cared. Then a Dr. L. (same last name as my high school chemistry teacher) came out to tell us Dad was gone.
I still remember what the receptionist/aide/whatever said when she asked my mother what funeral home she would like the hospital to call: "You know, they worked on him for over half an hour and they usually don't work on them that long when they're that old."
That old??!? Excuse me??!? Dad was two days short of his 65th birthday. He hadn't even retired yet (he was planning to do so in a few months). He still went bowling twice a week and did all the outdoor chores around the house. In our society today -- or even back in 1982 -- a man that age is NOT OLD!!!!!
I still get the urge to vent about that today, even as I remember my Dad.
And here's another way I think about my Dad, even today. Heck, you can read more of my past writings by clicking on the "dad" tag on whichever journal you're reading this on.
As far as the rest of today ... it's been a quiet, rainy day, with not much to do except plug away at my freelance writing and keep tabs on the Harvey flooding situation in the Houston area.
This entry was originally posted at http://luscious-purple.dreamwidth.org/218468.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.
Lots of times I know I dreamed something overnight, but I can't remember what it was.
Somehow I managed to remember that last night I dreamed I saw three kinds of hydrangea bushes, one each with pink, white, and blue flowers. That's all I recall.
But I still remember what I was dreaming 21 years ago this morning. [Remember, I originally wrote this in 2003.]
Back then I was a small-town newspaper reporter. So of course I was dreaming about work. In the dream I was covering a school committee meeting, and the board members had just voted to arbitrarily shuffle the town's school principals around to different schools, regardless of their past experience with the needs of the various age groups.
(My own home town's school committee had done just that the year after I graduated from high school, only to reverse themselves a week later in the face of massive public outcry. A few weeks later, my high school principal was killed in a motorcycle accident.)
So I was dreaming until my mother woke me up around 7 a.m. by yelling, "Patty, get out of bed NOW. I NEED YOU."
And my Mom, a super-early bird by nature, ALWAYS nagged me to haul myself out of bed in the morning. Except this time, there was an unusual kind of urgency in her voice.
I dragged myself out of bed, still groggy, with an incredible attitude: "What could POSSIBLY be so massively important at seven o'clock in the morning?"
Seems as if my Dad had collapsed in the bathroom and was making a gurgling sound I'd never heard before. Mom was trying to "wake him up" by wiping his face with a cold washcloth. I groaned and headed for the phone.
After the rescue squad had whisked my father away from the house he had designed and built, Neighbor Dave appeared and asked my mother and me if we wanted him to drive us to the hospital. I pulled a shirt and jeans on over my pajamas and ran out to his car in my bare feet (even though, moments before my father collapsed, my mother had looked at the outdoor thermometer and saw that it was only 36 degrees F).
In the emergency waiting room at the hospital where I was born, my mother and I sat around for a while. The TV in the corner was tuned to a public-TV show about how to draw pictures of birds. Like we really cared. Then a Dr. L. (same last name as my high school chemistry teacher) came out to tell us Dad was gone.
I still remember what the receptionist/aide/whatever said when she asked my mother what funeral home she would like the hospital to call: "You know, they worked on him for over half an hour and they usually don't work on them that long when they're that old."
That old??!? Excuse me??!? Dad was two days short of his 65th birthday. He hadn't even retired yet (he was planning to do so in a few months). He still went bowling twice a week and did all the outdoor chores around the house. In our society today -- or even back in 1982 -- a man that age is NOT OLD!!!!!
I still get the urge to vent about that today, even as I remember my Dad.
And here's another way I think about my Dad, even today. Heck, you can read more of my past writings by clicking on the "dad" tag on whichever journal you're reading this on.
As far as the rest of today ... it's been a quiet, rainy day, with not much to do except plug away at my freelance writing and keep tabs on the Harvey flooding situation in the Houston area.
This entry was originally posted at http://luscious-purple.dreamwidth.org/218468.html. Please feel free to comment either here or there.