My Hero, twice over.

My first true wakeup call crashed in when my lifelong protector, champion, and hero - my beloved father- died of pancreatic cancer. His diagnosis came as a shock, given that he was a pediatrician and careful with his health and wellness. His only health concern throughout his adult life had been heart disease. I remember often noticing the large blister pack card on his bathroom counter, containing one large red tablet for each day of the month. He was a participant in a Duke University study, in which he took this magic pill (I never asked what it was) once daily to stave off his own father's end. The blister pack was mailed to him monthly. I knew my Dad would never get heart disease, because I knew my Dad would always be around. He wasn't going anywhere...ever.

In December 1999, I made the drive from Charlotte to my hometown, Lumberton, to join my father at the ribbon-cutting for his new building housing his pediatric practice. He was beaming with pride....and knowing the selfless and child-centric father he was, his pride was focused on me and having me by his side. Just barely fleetingly, I couldn't help but notice how yellow his face looked. Cluelessly unaware of medical conditions or implications, I didn't think much of it. I was embroiled in my own new world of law firm and sleep-deprivation, a half-hearted romance, and general selfishness.

A day or two after New Year's, my father called me while I was visiting my mother and stepfather for the holidays (a final Christmas opportunity that will forever haunt me). He slipped a comment into the conversation, so non-alarmist and casual that I barely took note. He had been to the doctor and learned that he may have "some sort of a blockage in his bile duct." He said they scheduled him for a procedure to install a stent. My years of blind trust in my father caused me to gloss over the information, not asking any further questions or seeking information elsewhere. In today's Google and iPhone world, I might have researched his remark to find the truth, but this was not an option back then. I honestly didn't give it a thought, even when he asked if my brother and I would drive him over to his undergrad and med school alma mater, Duke University, for the procedure. Still, I thought little of it, as I inherently knew my father would tell me if anything were awry.

My brother and I drove him to his exploratory surgery appointment about a week later. We received no background information, and I never once thought to inquire. Such was the relationship I had with my father....total devotion and trust, no need to ever question his protection and care. We were told to expect him to be in surgery for a couple of hours. I just took the surface statement he had given me, that they were going to simply implant some sort of a stent, and thought nothing more of it.

My time in the waiting room suddenly and unexpectedly evolved into a foggy haze. Less than thirty minutes after they took my Dad back to the OR, I watched the surgeon walk down the long hall towards my brother and me, in slow motion. The hall stretched into a piece of taffy, the image blurry around the edges like an Instagram filter. My senses began to shut down as I found myself following my brother and the surgeon into a small, spare room. What was happening? I could no longer process anything around me. Closest I have known to an out-of-body experience.

The surgeon wasted no time in delivering the news, not even waiting for us to sit down. Adding extreme insult to injury, the surgeon looked directly at my brother, disregarding my presence. I assume he may have thought I was merely a wife, or perhaps he was just an ice-cold misogynist. I watched him laser in on my brother....."There was nothing to do once we opened him up," he said. "We just closed him back up. He will be in recovery for an hour or so to get over the anesthesia." I had been given no warning that there was even the slightest suggestion or possibility of danger. Such was my trust in my father that I unwittingly had a bubble of protection around me until this very moment, from which bounced any bad vibrations or worries. I don't know what was said or what happened after the surgeon's robotic delivery. My field of vision went blank, then dark, as I felt myself slowly melting downward. My brother caught me before I hit the '70s harvest-gold carpet. He guided me to the love seat, the color and feel of a giant vinyl Tootsie Roll. If I tried my hardest, I couldn't tell you anything that happened for the rest of that day.

I eventually understood that my father had a cancer previously unknown to me - pancreatic. The information swirled in too fast. Low survival rate, no effective treatments at that time, rapid decline, certain death. I stepped into an abyss of denial, frozen and helpless. I always assumed my lifeline, my father, was going to live forever. I didn't have time to process, or I didn't take time.

Dad's downward spiral was cruel and rapid. He passed away on the day after Thanksgiving 2000, just eleven months after he learned of his illness. Throughout his entire life, my father attended to my and my two siblings' every need, to a fault. I realize now that he rarely took the time to fill his own cup, and we three kids, selfish in our extended youth, certainly did little in that realm...a fact I have now woken up to regret. In his attempts to cover me and protect me, he ultimately and inadvertently protected me from learning to care for myself fully. Yes, I learned independence and autonomy from him, but I knew I could always fall back on him. He never failed me, even when he might have been better served (in retrospect for him, I know) to release me to fight some of my own battles. Since then, my struggles have seemed endless. Most of all, an abusive marriage that would have never happened had my father been in the picture, becoming an event that sent the rest of my life into an entirely-wrong trajectory.

I lived stuck in that tower moment and the resulting haze and "one foot in-one foot out" pseudo-reality until I turned 53. Over twenty years in one long state of suspension. I barely remember with any specificity the events of my life between my father's death November 2000 and May 2021. A waste of time and life that should have been lived. Yes, I went through the motions daily. Building my career and my philanthropy efforts in the community, marrying, creating a home, traveling, having a child. From the outside, I am sure I seemed somewhat together and normal to most, even productive and successful. But I was drifting in the clouds, never fully having both feet in any situation. I could not shake the grief and the shock. My now ex-husband often mocked my grief, telling me "you need to just get over it" when I was especially tearful or reminiscent on my late father's birthday or other dates that held special meaning to me. I picked up the phone to call my father for years after he died. While I "produced" in the material plane, nothing had any meaning to me. My heart and soul had been vacant since the day he died.

Jumping ahead to the present, 21 years later.....In May of 2021, I began to experience a strong vibration throughout my body. I believed it to be anxiety, due to the crushing and sudden loss in February of the one person who truly knew my soul. Of all the people I have known in my life, he was the one person I would never have believed would abandon me…he was the closest embodiment of my father I have ever known. My stressors seemed to increase exponentially in May…bitter battles getting my unusually-intelligent daughter to complete her virtual school work as the year closed out, the usual daily threats from my miserably and unnecessarily difficult ex-husband, financial troubles blocking my progress, and more. By the end of the month, the vibration was so intense that I felt physically sick. I could not drink enough water. The wave crested and crashed on a late May Saturday, the day of my daughter's tennis tournament. I attributed my intense nausea, headache, and confusion to spending five hours in the May sun with no shade, watching her play tennis. But by the next day, I was stricken with a very serious illness which lasted for three weeks. Countless doctor visits and prescriptions brought no relief. Three weeks of agony felt like years. I simply could not recover, no matter what I did. Eventually, a breakthrough occurred, and the condition finally diminished.

As I healed from the illness, I realized I was viewing everything around me in a different light, something I could not yet grasp or explain. I began to notice birds around me, everywhere I went. Deep questions appeared in my thoughts, and I noticed an errant feather here and there, as if in answer to my query. As I sat in my backyard one day, a red cardinal feather quite literally floated out of the sky and landed at my feet. As I watched it glide, I knew that my father sent it.

(to be continued....)