A Father’s Day Lesson

This Father’s Day was the first Father’s Day in almost a decade that I did not start the day sad and depressed, missing my father. This one started out well. A beautiful day (too beautiful as it would turn out). Linda made a nice breakfast and we started getting ready to go to the river to spend a day with our son, Chris, and his family, his mother-in-law, who is a long time friend, his brother-in-law, Dan, and his family, including his father-in-law. For us, family is the extended family, just as far as you want to extend it.

Linda came to the garage to help me get the large cooler down from its attic perch. I slid it down the ladder to her and just as I let go it started to tilt. She tried to hold it but could not and then I heard the thud when it hit my truck. Anybody that knows me knows that I like nice trucks and I am very fussy about keeping them nice.

“Did it dent the truck?

“Just a little bit.”

I came down and saw a dent just above the door handle.

@#*XX# and I bolted out of the garage.

Now, in recent years I have come to appreciate that little things are just little things. I guess I was unappreciative that day. I just could not get the boil to stop, even though I wanted it to stop. I just kept thinking that every time I opened that door I would see the dent. Why did she not stop the cooler from hitting the truck?

Still steaming, I loaded the truck with the cooler, chairs, grill, float toys, a book on wild turkeys, snacks, hot dogs and a dozen other things that we did not need. Linda just stayed out of the way. She was feeling pretty badly and I had done nothing to make it any better for her.

As we headed to the river I remembered that I had forgotten her black cherry coolers, so I stopped at a store and together we picked out her favorite brand. Things started to get better with that peace offering and by the time we got to the dock, we were working together to set up the boat and blow up all the floaties for the grandchildren. Our son and his family were uncharacteristically late, and that was not a problem. It is a little thing. Linda was floating in the water, I was reading my book and the day was great again.

We had a great time all afternoon. Most everybody spent a lot of time in the water, snacking, and talking the whole day. Dan took some of them on a cruise on his father’s pontoon boat. It was sunny and clear, and it reached 90 degrees. Around four o’clock I started to put the grill together and Linda went up to the picnic table to get ready to cook the hot dogs.

As I sat the grill down beside where she was sitting, she slowly leaned to her left and passed out. I sat her back up and although she was awake, she was non responsive. I feared stroke and hoped it was just the heat. But when she did not recover within a couple of minutes, Dan retrieved my truck and he, Chris, and I helped her into the passenger’s side.

She complained of being very hot while we were on our way to the hospital but she seemingly recovered slowly. It was only about 8 minutes to the hospital, but before we got there she said she was fine and did not need to go to the emergency room. I convinced her to get checked out by refusing to turn around.

The emergency room doctor decided to keep her overnight. He was not sure what caused her to pass out. She may have had a seizure, or it may have been a heart issue. He even mentioned a rare but troublesome disease. The hospital monitored her heart all night, did the required blood checks, and did additional testing in the morning. By afternoon she was home with a clean bill of health. It appears she forgot to drink water and was dehydrated. The silver lining in this cloud is that she roared through a complete battery of heart and brain scans and tests and showed no problems at all.

I did not sleep well the night she was in the hospital. I kept thinking that the little things are just little things. A ding in a door, even a Denali door, is a little thing. Her health is a big thing. I can fix that dent or replace that truck. She is irreplaceable. She is a big thing in my life.

She said she would pay for the dent in the door, but I am not getting it fixed. I am too embarrassed to tell her why. I thought the dent would bring up that anger every time I opened the door. But now it is a reminder: Do not act like a fool over little things. Be grateful for the big things. Do not forget what is important, really and truly important.