So it’s Father’s Day, and I’m feeling a little melancholy, which friends have picked up on. See, my dad had a case of bad timing, passing four years ago. Now, every Father’s Day ad takes me behind the curtain at Westmoreland Hospital to long hours sitting with dad’s comatose body, passing the time watching medicines worm their way through tubes. This was no big deal, I was told–they’d induced the coma for healing, and if I wanted I could go…they’d have him call when they brought him up, and all would be well. And I’d show him the photos of me mugging over his unconscious form, something for him to chuckle at when he was up & around, and proof to him that yes, I was there for him.
And of course, that’s not what happened. It was already over except for the breathing, and I brought back as souvenirs pictures of me with my arm around him, grinning at the joke that I was there and he didn’t know. We’d have a laugh about that later, I thought.
So I wish he’d passed near Arbor Day–or another holiday with little or no advertising budget.