Coach Dad

A designated day to honor fathers is a fine idea, unless you don’t have one anymore.

My father died in 2003, in a way so rare and stupid that a reporter from a local news station interviewed my mother about it. Dad contracted West Nile Virus and died from complications associated with the mosquito-borne virus. Mom did the interview as a public service, which was incredibly brave of her after what she’d been through for eleven long days.

My sister Donna called to inform me Dad had been admitted to the hospital and I made plans to travel to Corpus Christi the next day to see him. My daughter Juliana and I had stopped for lunch at a Dairy Queen on the way down, when Donna called again. Dad had gone into some type of coma, and it appeared I might have blown my last chance to talk to him. Cue the guilt.

After finally reaching the hospital, I entered the ICU and immediately noticed Dad’s hazel eyes had turned a bright blue. When we asked the doctor about it, he looked at us as if we were insane. This was the same doctor who couldn’t figure out why my father exhibited stroke-like symptoms, when tests showed no signs of a stroke. Mom finally asked if they’d checked for West Nile Virus. The geniuses who worked in a city swarming with mosquitoes had not, and three days later the tests came back positive.

My parents lived twenty-seven miles from the hospital and Mom and I made the trip every day. We’d sit by Dad’s side and talk to him despite his unresponsiveness. On the sixth day of our vigil, we came back from a quick lunch and hospital personnel were wheeling my father on a gurney out into the hall. I leaned over and whispered, “I love you, Dad.”

He opened his eyes, looked at me and said, “I love you, too.”

My father improved rapidly and his doctor transferred him to a different hospital two days later. I had been unemployed for three weeks and had a job interview I couldn’t afford to miss, so I told him goodbye and promised to come back the next weekend.

The next night Donna called again and Dad had gone into another coma. This time he wouldn’t be coming back, as all his organs had begun to shut down. I made the difficult decision not to race back down to Corpus. We said our goodbyes and I preferred to remember him smiling at me and telling me he loved me.

My father, for all his annoying traits, had a good sense of humor and something happened at his funeral which would have made him laugh. Donna’s husband Ben is a Methodist minister and he officiated at the funeral. Poor Ben, I know he must have been nervous, but could there have been a Freudian slip when he said, “We condemn his soul – uh, commend his soul…?”

When it comes to happy memories, I tend to be a chickenshit. If I drag those out, next thing I know, all the unhappy ones will be circling like a cackle of starving hyenas around a herd of carefree and unsuspecting antelope. Looking back this Father’s Day, there are many happy memories involving my father, so the hyenas are just going to have to slink off into the background for a bit.

With a father in the newspaper business and a schoolteacher mother, we weren’t exactly wealthy, but my parents always made Christmas special. They bought a real Scotch pine every year and decorated it with ornaments my mother made. One memorable year, Santa brought me the best present I’ve ever received. It started with a huge box, wrapped in colorful paper and tied with a big red bow. Inside that box I found another, and in that one another. As I unwrapped the last box, my gift seemed to be a letter from Santa in my father’s handwriting. It read:

Kat,

Your present was too big to fit under the tree. He’s a horse named Lighting and he’s in the back yard.

Merry Christmas!

Santa Claus

I raced outside in my pajamas, not even caring that Santa apparently couldn’t spell. Instinctively, I felt sure my very own horse was named Lightning and not Lighting. Sure enough, there he was in all his glory. The poor nag had to be over eighty in human years. He had black stockings, a black mane and tail, a white star on his long, sad face, and every rib could be easily counted through his shaggy brown coat. Lightning had probably been just days from being shipped off to the glue factory and I’d be willing to bet Santa didn’t pay over fifty bucks for him.

For me, it was definitely love at first sight. Lightning preferred not to return that love and instead attempted numerous times to scrape me off his back as he raced under our lone mesquite tree. Whoever named him had a twisted sense of humor because thunder and lightning terrified him. When one of those violent Texas storms blew in, Lightning would break down a fence, lope to a neighbor’s house and cower. She would call Dad and he’d have to leave work to coax my neurotic horse off her porch.

My imagination took over once Lightning became a part of my life. I became King Arthur, spearing my black knight of a brother’s hand painted cardboard shield with a bamboo lance - at least until Dad caught us. My success as a world famous jockey racing the noble Man o’ War to victory after victory was unparalleled. From the back of my steed, even Annie Oakley couldn’t compete with my sharpshooting skills as I fired my BB gun wildly and often at hostile enemies.

Poor Lightning’s reprieve from a bottle of Elmer’s only lasted a couple of years. The day he died, my father and one of his buddies got drunk, and with nothing but shovels, managed to dig a hole out back large enough to bury my horse. In this part of Texas, dirt only goes down about three inches – after that it’s practically solid rock. As I sat on the porch and cried for ten hours, I could occasionally hear the lyrics to The Old Gray Mare being belted by the boozy gravediggers.

Although I didn’t always appreciate my father, I’m the woman I am today due to his sense of fair play. Besides being sports editor at the newspaper, he coached Little League. After retiring he coached a junior high girls’ basketball team. Late in life, he attended school and became a volleyball referee.

Dad was that rare coach who remembered kids are supposed to be having fun while competing. He tolerated no bullshit from parents or fans at Little League games. He’d stop a game to chastise any parents berating their children. Dad gave even the biggest klutz equal playing time with the young superstars and he didn’t care if that caused the team to lose.

He once coached a talented girl who so far out-shined her teammates with her basketball skills that she became a ball hog. During a game, he became sick of it and called a time out. Dad told her since she thought she could win the game by herself, she could play by herself. He made her four teammates sit on the bench, explained the situation to the refs, and sat back to watch the carnage. She got clobbered, the other team won the game and she learned a valuable lesson about teamwork. To this day, she speaks fondly of my father.

When I became an adult, my father and I argued constantly. I think he enjoyed it, but I never did. Those are stories for another day, not today. Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you.