Daddy's Girl

Showing up even when your heart is breaking.

Me and my dad at my mom’s 60th birthday party

My family kept saying that my dad was losing weight. While there was concern, there didn’t seem to be panic. And so, while I knew that it was important to get back home, I was in no way prepared for what I would see.

Since I was a little girl, I saw my dad as Superman. It was like there was no problem he couldn’t solve, no moment when I got too big to be swooped up in his arms. He was this police officer facing danger every single day and I thought about how brave he had to be to show up to that line of work each day and not only survive, but thrive. So, when I did get back east, and saw the frail man with big eyes that had lost their shine looking back at me, my heart nearly shattered into a thousand pieces.

I had just seen my dad a few months before in December of 2024 when we buried my niece. He cooked a bunch of food for the repast. I remember us parking the cars a bit away from the venue and walking together with him, and he was fine by outward appearances. Only a few short months later, he was barely moving from his bed.

We thought it could have originally been an episode with his pacemaker where it was trying to shock his heart back into rhythm. It was a bit of a traumatic experience of my neighbors trying to help my mom get him to the hospital. They did, and I thought maybe that was stress on his body and he was trying to recover from that.

But that only lasted a short time. Something was wrong. Seriously wrong here and something about that visit seemed to wake everyone else up to the fact that something was much more dire than they’d thought. When my father went in to prepare for a completely different procedure for his heart, the doctor told him that he should go to the emergency room immediately.

Last year, I was living in a constant state of fear that I would lose my dad. Within the same 12-month period that we lost my aunt, my niece, and my mother-in-law. Everything else got really grey and it was hard to see anything in color. There was a purgatory of not really knowing what was wrong and knowing that he’d likely been downplaying the amount of pain and discomfort he’d been in, because this was Superman here, we’re talking about. But even Superman couldn’t escape his weakness to kryptonite, and in this case, a body turning on itself.

It was the C word. And I rather not get into specifics because that’s my dad’s story to tell. I only want to talk about how fiercely we fought for him to be with us. How no one tells you as a daddy’s girl, how to show up in these moments when you are terrified but will not fail the man who always fought for you. The one who said to your mother before she had you, “I just want a girl, so I have a kid that loves me too.” Like my brother loved my mom at the time, you know, toddlers.

And so we rallied. While my mother-in-law was deciding that she didn’t want to continue treatment, my dad was trying to sort out a lot of appointments and options. I was trying not to worry about being 3,000 miles away, and that is what a village is all about. Family showed up to visit at the hospital when I couldn’t. My mom and my brother made sure he made every appointment. I was able to fly back a couple of times on short visits and went to some of his visits. When I got a clearing in my schedule, I went and spent a few weeks in September helping out, and cooking, and cleaning, and giving my mom and a brother a break. I was determined. This was my dad, and I was not ready to let him go.

It was so difficult to see him that way. There were many moments where I put on a brave face and then cried in my mom’s arms. God bless her cause she is not a crier. But she comforted me. And I worried about her too, because he was her husband before he was my dad. But we did what we needed to do as a family.

My dad is doing much better now though he still has a road ahead. Once he got on the right medications, he was moving around again, gaining his weight back much to my mother’s chagrin.

It’s still difficult to be far, but the thing about my dad is that he loves how much I go after it. I send him pictures from hiking trails and live concerts, and he is always telling me how proud of me he is. Both of my parents have encouraged me to just live my life, because they have, and somehow that makes it hurt more at times.

Though I know that my dad won’t live forever, none of us will, I’m glad that we got a little more time. That we can hear him singing again while he cooks. That he is watching football however many days of the week they will show it. That we chat for hours now on the phone, and I know that eventually it will lead to him yelling about politics.

The last two years have been some of the hardest of my life, and I’m not sure people know or understand what people are truly going through even when they show up smiling and getting all the normal things of life done. I read recently that the average person will experience some level of crisis at least four times a year. So, while I know we’re not in the clearing, LORD KNOWS, we have had our fair share of grief and sadness, and shock over the last two years, so I’m hoping that we at least get a chance to catch our breath.

Happy Father’s Day to all the daddy’s girls out there. And I’m sending love to all those who have lost the first man who was the blueprint and set the tone for how they show up in this world.