Fathers, You Have What It Takes!

Older Father

Dad just lay in the hospital bed – a shell of a man. He had been rushed to the intensive care unit at the Cleveland Clinic. My brother, Chuck, and I watched as he emerged from his comatose state to discover he was strapped into a bed. His bewildered look revealed his confusion of having needles and tubes stuck into his body. Perhaps his largest frustration was the ventilator tube stuck into his mouth, preventing speech and intensifying his feelings of being trapped and helpless. I wondered if he flashed back a few years to when he wept as he and I watched his wife of 52 years die in an emergency room with the same sort of tube in her mouth… An 80 year old man, helpless, trapped, with no resources and nothing to offer.

 

Chuck and I told him that he had been moved to the Clinic after he blacked out and required more intensive treatment. We did our best to orient him and communicate his condition. As he began to relax a bit, he tried to ask questions but couldn’t because of the ventilator. Though his hand was strapped to the bed rail to prevent him from pulling any tubes out, we got a pen and pad for him. We played, “guess the question” as Dad would write the letter of the first word of a sentence. He wrote, “D” and we guessed until we were able to understand he was asking about his doctor. Then he wrote, “S” and discussed that a stroke had been ruled out. Chuck and I were feeling like we were his parents and were talking to a helpless child until…

Dad did something that taught us a lesson about manhood and fathering that we will never forget.

He wrote the letter “N” and we guessed “no”. He nodded in agreement. Then he wrote “W” which meant “women”. Finally he scratched the letter “A”. Chuck and I sensed that he had shifted from the role of a submissive questioner to the authoritative role of a father. He was giving us an order. “No women a…” We put the pieces together. Dad was in a hospital gown, strapped to a bed with tons of medical equipment invading his body, and he was ashamed to be seen by a woman. “No women allowed.” Dad was weak, fragile, and didn’t want to experience the humiliation of being seen by his daughters or granddaughters in this condition. When I told him I understood that he didn’t want any women to visit him in this condition, he shook his head in disagreement. That wasn’t what he said.

 

So I thought about my dad, who he was, and how he lived. Was he a defeated man who had lost every semblance of strength and manhood as his body had failed him; or was he still strong despite frailty?
The truth of what he was telling us struck me as I looked beyond all his physical limitations and pondered what I knew about my father.

 

Dad had been a taxi driver. He was raised on the east side of Cleveland, not far from where he currently lay in a hospital bed. Dad had told us of the many times he was robbed and how he had to fight off thieves and muggers. Every time a family member drove to that part of town he cautioned us to lock our doors and be careful. The protector defender was alive and well in that frail, helpless body. “Dad,” I said, “you are telling us ‘NO WOMEN ALONE’, is that right?” He nodded his head in agreement. He didn’t want any women to be in harm’s way by coming to visit him in a dangerous part of town.

 

Chuck and I were stunned. Our father had moved past his own pain, fear, and helplessness and became the protector, defender of the women he loved. He claimed his role as a father and passionately expressed it, though he was weak, frail, and strapped to a bed. Talk about “thriving despite.” What a man!!

 

Men, you are made in God’s image. He has given you masculine strength which he desires you offer for the welfare of those he has placed under your care. You don’t have to be brilliant, skilled or accomplished. You simply have to believe God has given you what the women and children in your life crave – and offer it to them. Don’t give up on being a manYOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES!

 

Michael Misja

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