To gain a child and lose a father

My dad had always been one of my closest friends while I was growing up. Well, that is not entirely true. He never really knew how to deal with little kids, mostly teenagers. Any kids under the age of eight or nine were definitely younger than he really knew how to handle. Since he was a restaurant manager, he had learned to work with teenagers, which put him miles ahead of my mother.

 Of course, my best friend was Missy, who was a Fahringer at the time. (She is Missy C. here on Gather) Maybe I better take this back a few more years for some background before I just jump into the story.

 My mom met my dad at Sullivan Business College when they both were attending school.  My mom worked to improve her clerical skills. I believe my dad and Missy's dad, Jim, were working on their management skills. She also met Missy's mom, Ellen there too. Through a round-a-bout series of circumstances they ended up as couples, and eventually Jim married Ellen (Missy's parents), and Bill married Lucie (my parents). They would get together for game nights and cards from the time they left Sullivan. Jim was probably the best friend my dad ever had. After we were born, those traditions didn't stop, they just got more challenging. While the adults would play, the kids would have to amuse themselves with other games, and we usually got bored, and bugged our parents until they would send us away with whatever treat they had for the evening. When puberty hit things really became a nightmare. Missy's little crush had developed into a full blown crush on my brother, and the chase was on for her. My brother started to groan every time mom said that the Fahringers were coming over. I think he even tried to get sent to his room a few times. That phase passed, and eventually it settled down to just me and my sister being best friends.

I made many poor choices in my life, but I knew I could talk to Missy about anything. I could even talk to dad about most things, even though I lived with my mom after my parents divorced. Missy's mother died too young, she was just 34, and too soon for any of us to truly understand or be prepared to deal with that kind of loss. My mom moved with my brother and I to Indiana when my parents divorced, and it was far enough away that I didn't get to spend much time with my dad or Missy anymore.  When we moved to New Albany, I met my future husband. This was in my junior year of High School. After my senior year, Brian and I got married.

 Our parents didn't want us to get married. We had already run away twice, taking a car the second time. He was a year younger than I was so his parents had to agree to our wedding. Since I had already gotten pregnant and miscarried during high school, they decided to let us get married anyway. We got married on July 11, 1984. It didn't take me too long to get pregnant. My son was born on October 30, 1985. In March of 1986, I had severe problems and ended up needing my gall bladder removed. Unfortunately, my husband wasn't very good with doctor's orders, and I soon began to suspect I was pregnant again. By August, my doctor confirmed that I was pregnant again. I had already had one miscarriage so I didn't want anything to go wrong. Dad had given me some advice on finding doctors for low income families. (I had not worked since I had found out I was pregnant with my son a couple of years earlier. My doctors ended up restricting my movement from bedroom to living room and no carrying the baby.  My dad tried very hard to be helpful during my pregnancy, since he knew I wasn't ready. I was very upset because I knew our marriage wasn't right, and it was the wrong time to add another baby into the mix. My son was only ten months old and I had not recovered fully from the surgery to remove my gall bladder. 

 We found out in May that dad was not in remission. He was very ill. Since I had been through a pregnancy and major surgery in the last year, my body was exhausted.  They weren't sure how well I was going to deliver this baby. I was put on restrictions at 4 months pregnant. No heavy lifting, no long walking, basically no strain on the system. At Thanksgiving, my dad didn't look to good to me, but he didn't look like he was dying. I was looking at him with the eyes of a daughter too, a daughter who was not ready to lose her father. He was having trouble breathing when he lay down. My father asked my husband to make sure I saw him early so he looked his best. Since I was on bed rest, he didn't want to take any chances with upsetting me. I don't think any of them thought of what they almost cost me after the baby was born. You see, my dad was extremely sick. He had been told he wouldn't live to see Thanksgiving, much less Christmas. On a Friday night, my friend Missy and her husband had come over to play a game, just like our parents used to do when we were kids. I had to run to the bathroom about midnight and realized it wasn't what it seemed. I was thinking that I had a slow leak with my water. I had done something similar with my son, but since I wasn't having any contractions, I didn't say anything to my husband until they got ready to go home. I told him and we decided to go to the ER after they left (something Missy didn't let me hear the end of for some time!). When they checked, they couldn't decide to keep me, because I was still two weeks early. I surprised the staff and my husband by looking at everybody and telling them that I was going to have a baby, and I wasn't going home until after the baby was born. (They were very "Yeah Sure" about it) I don't know why, but I knew I was going to have a baby that day. I went through 14 hours of hard labor to get there. They finally gave up and called a surgeon to do a c-section because the chord was wrapped around the baby's neck. Every time there was a contraction, my blood pressure, and her blood pressure where dropping dangerously low. They told my doctor that if he didn't get there soon, they were going to lose both of us.

 Unknown to me, my father had gone into the hospital the day before I did. His blood count was bad, and so was his breathing. They weren't sure he was going to make it. At this time my dad had regular orders on file, which was to do anything they could to help him.

They still had not told me about him while I was waiting to have the baby. My mom caught sight of my husband in hospital scrubs instead of the usual 'father' gown, and she panicked, knowing that it wasn't a good sign. She parked herself right outside the doors to the labor and delivery area. The nurses were afraid they were going to hit her because of her location. They finally told my family that they were going to have to do a c-section and they were just waiting on the doctor (OB) to arrive. Since I had gone through a family planning clinic, I did not have much say about the doctor that saw me, and he later had his license removed in our area for prescribing medicine to people he had never even seen. (Ironically, his name was Dr. Payne) They finally decided to take me to the surgical area to be ready whether my doctor was or not. As they moved me to the gurney to take me to surgery, something very odd happened. My stomach heaved in a huge movement. The head nurses eyes got very large. She had never seen anything like that in her life. My daughter, somehow during the process of me getting moved from table to gurney, was able to get enough momentum to actually turn over!

God watched over us that day. You see, she turned over so that the chord came unwrapped from her neck. If she had turned the other way, she would have been dead before they could have gotten to her. The next thing we knew she was crowning, and the nurse had to call the surgeon up to do the delivery, since the regular doctor hadn't shown up yet. Unfortunately for everybody in the delivery room, the surgeon had not done a normal delivery in 20 years! He didn't give me the full shot for the stitches after and I felt every stitch. When he cut the umbilical cord, he cut it on the wrong side of the clamps and the blood that spurted everywhere creating a scene out of a horror movie. The poor surgeon was so flustered by the time the other doctor got there he let him finish up anyway. When he walked out of the area, he met my mom who thought I had gone into surgery so she asked him "How is my baby girl?" He looked at her in surprise and said, "How did you know it was a girl?" It tickled my mom, because that meant she knew I had a girl when nobody else did. She had actually wanted to know how I was doing, so she could say she didn't do anything wrong. (Except run to tell everyone in my opinion. LOL) She went immediately to the waiting room and started singing, "We've got a girl. We've got a girl!" 

 When I was taken to the recovery room, Jim was allowed to come in and see me along with the rest of the family. He took a Polaroid of my daughter, and he went to see my dad at his hospital. After talking to Jim, and being reassured I was going to be okay, and his granddaughter was fine, he gave new orders for no extra-ordinary measures from that point forward.

 When my mom came in to see me, she couldn't take people not telling me anymore, and she told me that dad was in the hospital. I am glad she did. It is one of the few things that kept me from going off the deep end the next day. My daughter was born that night at 6:30 pm. I was exhausted, since I had been up since the day before playing games.

 Somehow, I still woke up at 2:30 the next morning. I felt a sense of loss that at first, I didn't understand, but then I began to suspect that my father had come to say goodbye. I went and told them I wanted my daughter. I held her and cried and told her about him until we both went back to sleep. The next morning, my husband came in with my brother. They were looking for the words to tell me about my dad. I told them I knew. I just needed to know the arrangements so I could figure out when I had to leave the hospital, and make all the arrangements I could. We had to make a compromise with my doctor, since she had some jaundice and I was severely anemic. They put me on a timed release iron tablet, and very strict instructions on how long I could be at the funeral home, and how much I could stand at the gravesite etc. I went and took a nap after certain things. At the funeral, my younger brother David's curiosity finally got the better of him, and he started asking questions of those around him. While we are waiting for the funeral to start, we start hearing giggles coming out of the back rows. Finally, David came up and said, "Mommy, Aunt Silvia says I have to ask you, where do babies come from?" And that managed to get the front rows laughing and Silvia told David if his mother would not answer, to come back there, she would tell him.... After the funeral, we got into my step-mothers car. Now, one of my favorite all time groups is the Statler Brothers, because I grew up listening to them with my dad and mom. It is one of the few things on which they agreed.  The worst part that happened all day was when my step-mom started her car as we were waiting for the processional to start. The next song started to play. My step-mother pulled the tape out, and threw it in the back seat. I don't believe she has ever been able to listen to that music again.

The tape? The Best of the Statler Brothers.

The Song? I'll Go to My Grave Loving You.

Enough said.