Four Hours From Home

Relationship Desk, Delhi-Magazine: My daddy was four hours away from coming home when he took his final breath.

Four hours.

After nine months and thirteen days in the hospital, after three times coming off life support, after nearly $50,000 raised and a house prepared for his care, I was finally going to keep my promise.

I was bringing my daddy home.

His name was Robert Edward Clarence. Everybody called him Bob. But to me, he was Dad. My protector. My teacher. My hero. The man who promised me he would never leave me.

He worked hard, gave generously, and made beautiful things with his hands. He knew the little things that made me happy.

I couldn’t imagine a world without him.

The Long Wait

For nine months and thirteen days, I watched him suffer.

I visited the hospital almost every day. I missed only three days. Sometimes I was exhausted. Sometimes I couldn’t find a way to Toronto.

Even now, I think about those three days.

Three more days I could have spent with him. Three more days to hold his hand. Three more days to hear his voice.

When he came off life support for the third time, I knew we might not have much longer together.

His condition was so serious that I had to put on protective clothing and pass through a special room where air blew around me before I could enter.

One day, I brought a tape recorder and a blank cassette.

I sat near my father’s feet on his hospital bed.

“Dad, this is the time that I really think if you have something to say to anybody, you should say it.”

I told him I would press Record and leave the room. After half an hour, I would return and flip the tape over.

That way, he would have his privacy.

He could say whatever he wanted to whoever he wanted.

“Okay, Dad? Love you.”

I pressed Record and walked out.

About half an hour later, I went through the protective procedures again, returned, and flipped the cassette.

I wanted my father to have the chance to leave his own words behind.

The Final Moments

Meanwhile, I was doing everything possible to bring him home.

I drove my little Honda Civic everywhere, begging, borrowing, fundraising, and finding whatever equipment we needed.

I raised nearly $50,000.

I arranged the ambulance. I prepared the house. Everything was finally ready.

Only four hours remained before he was supposed to come home.

I looked at my father.

He looked at me.

And suddenly, I couldn’t stop thinking about his suffering.

I wondered whether he had been holding on through all that terrible pain because he knew how desperately I needed him.

I started crying.

“Oh my God, Dad. I’m so, so sorry.”

I loved him more than anything. But I didn’t want him suffering anymore.

“It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay. I love you.”

“You can go, Dad. Go to sleep. It’s okay.”

He looked at me.

He took a deep breath.

And exhaled.

That was it.

My daddy was gone.

Saying Goodbye

I laid down beside him on his hospital bed, rested my head against his shoulder, wrapped my arm around him, and held on.

I didn’t want to let go.

Over the next half hour, perhaps closer to an hour, I watched my father’s appearance slowly change.

His smile disappeared. His wrinkles relaxed. His face grew gray and cold, almost frozen.

Yet beneath where I was holding him, he was still warm and sweaty.

How could he still be warm and be gone?

I kept hoping it meant he could come back.

Please, God. Please bring him back. Please make my daddy wake up.

Only moments before, I had told him he could go.

Now I wanted to take every word back.

“No, Dad! It’s not okay! Please wake up!”

“You promised you wouldn’t leave me!”

I cried. I yelled. I begged.

The longer I looked at him, the less I recognized him.

I had known that face my entire life. Yet within an hour, he looked like someone I had never met.

His body was still there, but everything that had made him my daddy seemed to have gone.

I felt something inside my soul shatter.

The Value of Ordinary Moments

Years later, I still remember lying beside my father after his final breath, desperately wishing that the warmth of his body meant he might somehow, someway, wake up again.

That this was all a nightmare.

A horrible dream.

That any moment I would open my eyes, and none of it would have happened.

We would all be home again.

Sitting around the kitchen table.

Eating shepherd’s pie.

Talking about our day.

Maybe laughing about something silly. Maybe discussing what happened at work. Maybe not talking about anything important at all.

Just being together.

Just being a family.

And there would be my daddy.

Sitting at the table, talking about absolutely nothing.

But what I would give now to hear him talk about absolutely nothing.

Because what seemed like nothing back then was everything.

I just didn’t know it.

I didn’t realize how precious those ordinary moments were.

The sound of his voice across the table. The familiar way he spoke. His laughter. His little comments. The things he said without even thinking.

Things I heard a thousand times and never imagined I would someday beg the heavens to hear again.

I took those moments for granted.

I wish I had stopped what I was doing and just listened.

I wish I had treasured every word.

Because one day, there was no more voice coming from his place at the table.

No more ordinary conversations.

No more Daddy.

And nothing in this world could bring those moments back.

The Lost Voice and a Movement

After he died, I still had the cassette I had recorded in his hospital room.

But eventually, that cassette was lost.

To this day, I have never found it.

I cannot begin to tell you what I would give to hear my dad’s voice one more time.

Not an imitation. Not a recreated voice. Not something pretending to be him.

His real voice.

His own words.

His laughter.

His pauses.

The way he sounded when he talked to me. His voice changed when he was angry, happy, sad, or proud, but even when we disagreed, I could hear the love behind it all.

Hearing him would bring back how he smelled when I hugged him, the warmth of his skin, the comfort of his touch, and the feeling of being his little girl.

A photograph can show me his face. But for me, a photograph is cold. It can be folded, put away, and faded by time.

It cannot laugh with me.

It cannot speak to me.

It cannot bring back the sound of my father’s love.

His real voice could bring back something no picture ever could.

Just my dad.

That’s all I want.

Just my daddy, one more time.

And that’s how #finddadsvoice began.

It began with the pain of losing my father and the remorse of losing the one recording that might have let me hear him again.

But as I thought about all the other people who had experienced the same loss, the idea became something bigger.

It became #findtheirvoice.

Because everyone deserves to have their voice preserved.

Not only our parents or grandparents. Not only our husbands, wives, children, partners, and friends.

Ourselves, too.

People with families. People without families. People who live alone. People of every gender, identity, background, and walk of life.

Every person who believes they have something to say.

And even the people who believe they don’t.

Especially them.

Every voice matters.

Our voices carry our laughter, our love, our experiences, and the ordinary stories that make us who we are.

One day, when our bodies are gone, those voices can remain.

Someone can press Play and hear us again.

Someone can remember what it felt like to be loved by us.

Someone can sit at a kitchen table years from now and hear a familiar voice talking about absolutely nothing.

And discover that it means everything.

I couldn’t bring my daddy home in time.

I couldn’t make him wake up.

I still haven’t found his recording.

But perhaps his story can help another family save something that cannot be replaced.

Please don’t wait.

Record the people you love.

Record yourself.

Tell your stories, even the ordinary ones.

Especially the ordinary ones.

Don’t just write your story. Tell it.

Every voice matters.

Even when our bodies are gone, our voices can carry on.