March 6, 1980 is a day that I will never forget. I was 14 years old.
My dad used to work for a large steel company here in Dallas and he was in the Steelworker’s union. This particular night, he was at a union meeting and my mother had allowed me to stay up later than usual so that I could see my dad before I went to bed.
Well, my dad came home from his meeting and had brought me a chocolate shake from our local Dairy Queen. He handed me the shake and said, “This is just because I love you”. Shocked I was, because my father really didn’t say that to me often… I drank my shake, hung out with my dad for a few minutes, and then headed off to bed. (Much later, I realized that he must have known…)
The next morning, at about 6:00am, I was awakened by my mother’s frantic screaming out in the hall outside the restroom…”Melvin, please open the door”….”Melvin, please answer me”…. I bolted up out of bed to see what the commotion was and found that my dad had been in the bathroom, my mother had heard a noise, and she was concerned that he wasn’t responding… We broke into the bathroom and there he was…lying on the bathroom floor.
We drug him out into the hallway and called the Emergency room at the Hospital, who sent out an ambulance. They arrived and began performing CPR. I watched as my father was placed on a stretcher and taken away in the Ambulance to the hospital. My mother and I followed.
Upon arrival, we were not allowed to see what was going on, but were assured that the doctors were doing the best they could.
Their best wasn’t enough, for my dad passed away from a massive coronary attack on the hospital table.
It has now been 24 years since this happened and I realized, within the past 10 years, that I never really gained any closure to this situation.
My closure is this:
I love you too, dad. Rest in Peace
