Waiting and Worrying

I got a text yesterday evening from my sister saying our dad was on his way to the hospital with a possible stroke.

The fact he was being transported by ambulance scared me more than the word "stroke". After all, my father is a tough old cowboy who scoffs as doctor's order, punches dentists, and is the reigning King of Unconcerned to my mom's Queen of Downplay.

We're talking the couple who called his four day hospitalization with pneumonia "a little sick", me running my foot over with a lawnmower "a little accident caused by not paying attention", and delivering me breech with no epidural "a tough one". Dad once rolled a huge truck loaded with wood down a 75' embankment, got out of the mangled vehicle, hitched a ride home and told mom his new coffee mug worked great because he didn't spill a drop.

For them to call an ambulance is not in character.

I waited by the phone for hours, waiting to see what the doctors would say, waiting to see if it was a heart attack or a stroke, trying to translate the downplay and make sense of the jumbled acronyms.

As it turned out, it was "only" a mild stroke. A "warning" for him to change his lifestyle to prevent a future stroke.

My father is a lover of whiskey, hand rolled cigarettes, and my mother. I hope the third will come in first because Lord knows he won't listen to his daughters.

Because daughters nag. Daughters fret. Daughters worry. Daughters try to walk the balance of keeping him around a little longer and not setting off the stubborn, bull headed streak we all inherited.

I took the day off from work in case I needed to go to Bakersfield. I don't so I'll go into work. I'll continue my day with the worry in the back of my brain like a tickle of awareness.

Because my dad? The man who can still split a log in one strike, the man who believes in honesty and the strength of a person's word, the man who nurses puppies and chicks and tiny critters, the grizzled old man who reads romance novels by the dozen? That guy needs to stay around. For a long time. I don't like the idea of a world without him.