This chronologically fits into my New Zealand series, but it was written a few months ago, when the Bonzer writing site was looking for stories about Dads. But they only allow 750 words, so I have embellished it.

Mid July - early August 1976

My stepmother, Grace, had phoned us earlier in the week to say that my dad had been taken into the hospital with congestive heart failure, but that he seemed to be doing well and there was nothing to worry about.

But that wasn’t the case.

Philip came home from work and I called to him.

‘My Dad’s dying. Grace called. It’s only two months since he retired, and although he had been hospitalised with congestive heart failure, we thought he was doing okay.'

‘What happened?’

‘Grace said the nurse went in to take a sputum specimen and somehow punctured his lung. He died, then and there, but the nurse called a red alert, and they managed to resuscitate him. So he is now on a life support machine in intensive care, and Grace says she thinks I should come home.’

‘I’ll go to the airline tomorrow and cash in your return ticket. I’m sure if they know the circumstances, they will allow it.’

No one is allowed a visa for New Zealand, without a return ticket. It was this ticket that was our only way of financing my trip to the States.

Having done the deed, even though it was on a Saturday when nothing normally was open, Philip booked me on a flight via Auckland, Hawaii (where I carefully preserved the orchid from my breakfast tray for my dad), to Los Angeles  I needed to stay overnight there and then take a North Central Airlines flight to Bismarck the next day via Denver.

Sunday I was in the air, leaving the welfare of our three children in the capable hands of my husband. Andrea was booked into the nursery for five days a week up until 3 pm, when Philip would stop work, and pick her up and be at home in time for the arrival from school of the other children. Before I left, we made a tape recording of the kids for their grandpa.

Grace picked me up and as we drove to the hospital she said, ‘He is holding his own,’

When I walked into his cubicle he was linked up to all sorts of tubes. He didn’t really look much like my dad – he was pale and drawn. But the look he gave me when I went in the room was one I had never seen before or since. It was one of pure love. It occurred to me that perhaps he thought I was my mother, his first wife, whom I resemble. I kissed him gently, so as not to disturb the various machines. We didn’t talk long as he was so weak. He couldn’t listen to the tape he said because it wouldn’t do to use a tape recorder when oxygen being used. But he liked the orchid from Hawaii.

Both my sisters came in the next day. Kathleen, our half-sister, had never known her own dad who died when she was 6 months old, but Chet hadn’t married our mother until Kathleen was thirteen, so she never really viewed him as a dad. She and her husband Neal flew in, and my other sister, Judy, and her husband Larry drove in, having left their three kids with Larry’s parents for the weekend.

Next day when I went to visit Dad told me something that really spooked me.
‘I died, you know, and afterwards I floated above the room and saw them trying to resuscitate me.’

Near death experiences were not much known or talked about in 1976. He was wanting to share with me a unique and wonderful experience, but I was too young and silly to even let him discuss it so I changed the subject.

He seemed to be doing very well in his improvement and before long was allowed out of ICU into a private room. After Judy left there didn’t seem much to keep up occupied in Bismarck, visiting was only allowed for a few minutes a few times a day. We were very crowded in Grace's apartment, and she was obvious in her dislike of Kathleen and Neal's presence, which they did they best to exasperbate, as it made quite a funny joke. They enjoyed having a shower together, because they knew it would shock her, for instance.   I didn't really feel I should leave with them, but I hadn't been to the States for four years, so I really wanted to see some of the other relatives too. So Kathleen and Neal and I borrowed Grace’s car and took a trip to visit other relatives in the area, including our favourite aunt Rose (my book Annie and Rosie is partly about her).

We were gone three days, but called home each night to see how Dad was progressing and the reports were good.

When I got back, Dad was very pleased to see me, but obviously had felt slighted that we had taken time away from visiting him. He made some comment about how “my” mother had said something about it. At first I thought he was living in to the past, as my mother had been dead for eight years, but then I realised he was referring to Grace. “You mean Grace, don’t you?” I said. “She is not my mother,” I said very firmly.

The day before I was due to fly back to New Zealand, Grace and I took Kathy and Neal to the airport, and as we had some spare time, we went shopping and bought presents for my kids, whom I was missing so much. When we got to the hospital for visiting, Dad was very agitated.

‘Where were you? They called and you weren’t in!’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘They’re going to take me to surgery this afternoon to put a breathing tube in my lungs.’

Poor Dad. He was so scared. He knew that surgery in his very weak condition was a risk, but the doctors had told him it was his only hope, so he had agreed.

He had the surgery that afternoon, without a general anaesthetic and returned to his room an hour or so later.

‘I can breathe better now than I have for years,’ he said. He was in pain, and yet very hopeful about how it had all gone. We stayed with him until nine, Grace spoon feeding him ice cream, which rather annoyed me, while he happily watched the Minnesota Twins baseball game on TV.

The phone rang at 4 a.m. Grace answered. The hospital said they had had great difficultly in waking Dad when they went in for his blood pressure check.

When we got there, he was sitting up in bed and smiling, ‘The Twins won last night. It was a really good game.’ He either didn’t know or was trying to make light of the situation.

The nurses reported that there was no urinary output. His kidneys had packed in. The doctors decided to do an x-ray (he had just retired after 30 years as an x-ray technician) and when the report came through, it said that his surgery has been successful. The breathing tube was in place and doing its job. I’m sure the medics sighed with relief that they wouldn’t be sued for malpractice.

I called the airline to cancel my flight. I called Judy and she said she would get on the next available plane back to Bismarck. I called the church, and told them he was dying. I called Philip and told him I wouldn’t be back for another week or so, and I burst into tears and couldn’t stop crying. I knew it was as much that I couldn’t go back to my family yet as it was about losing my father.

Dad went to sleep, not really sleep, but into a coma.

His doctor called Grace and me into the hall.

‘He is dying. We could try to resuscitate him again, but I don’t know if it will work or what the end result will be. Chances are he wouldn't have more than a few weeks at the most anyway.’

‘Don’t do it,’ I said, and then immediately said, ‘It isn’t my choice to make. I’m sorry Grace.’ deferring to his wife, as only appropriate. But she agreed with me.

He woke once, when I was alone in the room with him, and his eyes were wild with fear and pain. I rushed to get Grace, herself a nurse, and she asked them to give him morphine, which made him go back to sleep.

At about 11 a.m. he died. Within seconds, he looked like he was made of wax. I had never in my 33 years said, ‘I love you Dad’ and now it was too late, but I think he knew.

I picked Judy up at the airport, telling her as soon as she arrived that she was too late.  We knew that Grace had all the funeral arrangements in mind. She didn’t want to use the Catholic funeral home - owned by a family friend - but we felt we had to agree with whatever she wanted. But she had agreed to the funeral being in the Catholic Church where Dad had worshipped faithfully for 30 years.

We called the church to make arrangements for the funeral. Monsignor Garvin was very annoyed - as I had waited so long to tell him of Dad’s death. He said, ‘We have been praying for his return to health, and all this time he has been dead. You should have told me straight away.’ However, we felt other things had the priority immediately following his death.

We rang Dad’s sister and brothers and some of them arranged to come for the funeral. Judy and I decided we would like Dad to have a con-celebrated Mass - three priests all celebrating mass together, Msgr. Garvin, because we had to as it was his church, Msgr. Feehan who had baptised and married us, and a young priest who had married Dad and Grace. We asked the woman who had played the organ for our weddings to play for the funeral, and asked her to play Mozart’s Halleluia Chorus for the recessional.

Grace wanted me to wear one of her outfits - a pale turquoise suit - but she herself went shopping for a new black dress.

Before the funeral, we went to the funeral home for the last viewing of the open casket. Dad looked okay - they had done a good job on embalming him, - state law in North Dakota as well as your coffin being in a cement lining - but he wasn’t old - only 65. Then Judy felt ill and rushed off to the toilets. I went with her, and helped her compose herself. Grace was annoyed with us because we both missed the last kiss of the corpse before they put the lid on the coffin - but I felt Judy’s emotional health was a higher priority.

When we got to the Cathedral for the funeral, the Knights of Columbus had formed a guard of honour for the casket to walk through. I was so pleased about that. Dad had been a KC every since he became a Catholic, but in more recent years he had become an Elk - a non-religious and more middle class sort of men’s club and he hardly ever went to the KC’s after that. But it was his old friends who, without us asking them to do it, were giving him an appropriate last farewell.

The service was all right - the music was lovely, but everyone in the church cringed when Monsignor Garvin’s mispronounced our dad’s name during his little homily. He had known him for thirty years. Maybe he didn’t use our last name very often, but surely he must have known how to pronounce it.

The usual thing after funerals in those days was to have a meal at a church hall or at least at the family’s house. But Grace didn’t want any of that. So the immediate family went back to her apartment after the burial at the cemetery - next to our mother in the plot he himself had chosen eight years before, a day or so before Mother died. I remember Mom asking where Dad was. We could hardly tell her he was out picking out her grave - so we told her we weren’t sure. She said, “I expect he is at the Elks as usual,” but for once, he wasn’t.

Dad’s sister was upset that we hadn’t told her that he had been ill, so she could have seen him when he was still alive. But after the first episode, which had happened three weeks earlier, we thought he would have months if not years to live up until the day he died.

A few days after the funeral, I flew back to New Zealand. I think the connections were more convenient and I didn’t have to stay overnight anywhere. But it was a long trip, and I was very pleased when I once again flew into Christchurch Airport and was greeted by my husband and children, who had survived very well without me.