Calling

I was summoned home.

The telephone call came on a sun-filled April afternoon, just as I was leaving my dorm room to take a test. An uncle would be coming downstate to pick me up and bring me home. It was time.

I took the test. It was what my father would expect me to do. I took the test then returned to my dorm room to pack, not really knowing what to bring. I’d never been to a funeral before. A long-haired coed of 1969, I wore bright colors and short (very short) dresses with granny shoes. We were all so young and inexperienced, especially me, but I somehow got through the packing and waiting for my uncle to arrive.

I loved, love still, my friends, who gave me strength and allowed me to be me through that spring. They gave me a few items of clothing, a cross on a necklace, hugs – and off I went, home, my life to change in ways I never anticipated nor knew how to navigate.

I made it in time to say goodbye, but, Daddy was already in the final throes of death, his vacant eyes looking at me, knowing yet not knowing, the room filled with family.

Dottie and I were brought home, which for me was an apartment I had never lived in before. My mom, dad and sister had moved in a month or so before and I first saw it just a week before when I was home on spring break.

The next phone call came, in the middle of the night. He was gone. I remember it all, so clearly, and I felt Daddy’s presence today, 50 years after he took his last earthly breath.

I’ve never stopped missing my father; his wit, his smile, his integrity, his love. I keep this photo out. One of his friends, Romeo, made copies for my sister and I, not long after Daddy’s death. My father loved fishing and would head up north every spring, around Memorial Day, with a few friends and cousins. He fished for walleye and for the sport of it all. He never learned to swim, though he served in the Navy, and needed a life vest – and always a cigarette in his mouth, which was, in the end, what killed him.

I’ll have a few good cries, visit the cemetery, mark the day – for such things should be marked and loved ones should be honored. So off I go, the only thing calling me today is to make the most of what is before me.