It was a comforting room, warm and wide, with a wooden floor, a store of some sort, not food I don't think, clothing. . .yes clothing. . .with dressing rooms at the back and some hanging racks around, but not too closely spaced.   Gradually I noticed a man walking toward me, brown mock-turtleneck, black slacks, fit, athletic, dark tan, dark hair, skin that's seen some weather, but a wise and kind face.  We catch each other's eyes and he looks down, as if he shouldn't be noticed.

It's my dad.

He realizes he's been seen, and I look again, to make sure it's him.

It's him.

And we walk toward each other and meet in a hug, the kind of hug every person wants in their lifetime, secure, strong, not wavering, the kind of hug kids need from their parents.

The hug.  No words.  Just a hug, holding still, taking it all in.  Feeling secure.

*******

My father left us too soon--a week short of his 25th anniversary with my mother, two years short of fifty--tall, athletic, strong, quick of mind and spirit, and, we thought, reasonably healthy.  Until the backache, the backache that came after Christmas and made him do something he didn't like to do, see a doctor.   Living in rural Wyoming there weren't a lot of doctors to be found, and most of my childhood a good doctor was a car ride away, or longer, maybe hours, but we got the bad news by February from Dr. Close--there were tumors on an X-ray.

Dad went to Salt Lake to see a surgeon, who scheduled him for surgery.  I remember sitting with Mom and Grandpa, my Dad's dad, in the waiting room when Dr. Stevens came out.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Lawrence, we did everything we could."

I took that to mean the situation was grave.  My grandfather and mother heard it differently, that it was hopeful.

I knew we were in trouble.

I couldn't believe how he looked when he came out of surgery after all those hours.  I'm not sure I saw anyone on a ventilator before, and I didn't expect him to make it, but he did, recovered from the dramatic surgery, went home to Wyoming.

They'd had to shave tumors off his spine.

There was some question about the kind of cancer he had, since it had invaded his testicles.  Dr. Stevens initially thought it was testicular carcinoma.

I went back to Provo, where I was working and going to school, and to the bowels of the BYU Library, the closest thing we had to a Google search back then in the late '70's, to research.  Everything I read told me it wasn't testicular carcinoma.  I wondered if it was melanoma.

Biopsy results came back.  I was right.

It was a tough time.  Dad was acting like everything was fine, like he'd been healed, and was going to be all right.  Mom was acting the same.  I needed to know what was really happening.

I placed a call to Salt Lake.

Graciously, Dr. Stevens returned my call and afforded me great compassion and understanding as he said to me, "Your parents both know the truth, that your dad only has a few months to live.  They've both asked that I not tell the other."

It was a hard moment when my father finally acknowledged this to me, but an important one.  I couldn't live whatever time he had left in denial.  Whatever time we had together had to be real, and genuine.

*******

Dad and I had been close since my earliest memories, riding on his knee, riding on his shoulders to bed, having him tuck me in, jitterbugging in the living room.  He had the appeal of a James Dean, an Elvis, Brylcreemed hair and a t-shirt for rolling things up in it, smart and funny.  Second oldest of ten, he never had the opportunity to go to college and joined the Marines instead, but if anyone deserved a college education he did.   He'd create math problems for me, like figuring out clock angles.  The oil field that came home with him got washed off immediately, and he was always Lava soap clean.  Mom said that was one of the reasons she married him, because he was so well groomed.  Clean fingernails, she said.  She noticed that.  And he was well spoken.

Vitalis.  Brylcreem.  Colgate toothpaste.  Gillette Right Guard.  Old Spice.  All these smells jumbled together with a soft shirt and lots of black wavy hair.

*******

When my dad died, the undertaker goofed up his hair.  It was really so hilarious, all my siblings and I could do was laugh.  They'd parted it right down the center and pulled half over one ear and half over the other, something out of Dark Shadows.

"Give me a comb," I said.

And so I fixed my father's hair.

We had to laugh.  We couldn't do anything else.  It was the best way not to cry.

******* 

The three months we had with Dad were painful, as he shuffled between our hometown in Wyoming and the hospital in Salt Lake City four hours away for chemo, radiation.  We wondered initially why he was having any of it if he was facing certain death, and the doctor gave us the best reason possible.

"Pain management."

Still, it was hard to watch, and as the pain grew more intense his need for pain relief did, too.  He kept track of the methadone pills he took on a little slip of paper he kept in his wallet, every day writing down every one so he wouldn't get ahead, wouldn't make a mistake, wouldn't be tempted.

I have that wallet today, and the slips of paper, one of the few things I have left from my father besides some books and some of his favorite shirts.

And the memories.

He told me he'd be taking his own life if he didn't have us kids.  He'd heard about a doctor, someone else, facing cancer, who'd decided to take his own life, and he told me he could understand that.  He wasn't going to do it, but he understood it.  

He wondered why this was happening to him.  I heard him ask the doctor.  Was it because he'd drunk too much Coke in his life?  Done this?  Done that?

No, the doctor assured him.  None of that.

One would assume it was from the sun exposure, except the primary, when they finally found it, was on the inside of his upper thigh, not a likely place for sun exposure.

Dad came home some summer afternoons from the oil fields, put on his swim trunks and went out in the yard and mowed the lawn.  We laughed a little because on top he was always darker than down below.  He could have been a Native American, the look he had, dark and ruddy, but from chest down he was creamy white, soft.

It's just as likely it was an increased risk of melanoma from working in the petroleum industry.

Still, it was there, and it was spreading fast, and wouldn't surrender.

*******

Dad had an Alan Alda sense of humor, dry wit, always a laugh.  As the oldest, I was daddy's girl, and for a long time I think, his best friend, not necessarily the best position for a child to be in, but there I was.  Yes, we understood each other.  We got each other.  We were from the same genetic fabric.  We spent hours talking, riding around in the car, out to the oil fields in the sagebrush, rides home from college.

He loved Coca Cola, and Hershey bars.  Cream puffs.  Coconut cream pie.  Steak, medium rare.  He wanted Roquefort dressing, not blue cheese, and knew the difference.  He teased waitresses.  He knew something about everywhere.  He played basketball, well, for the town team, bowled exceptionally well, on a league, loved to golf although the nearest golf course was hours away, was good at sports.  When high school came for me and he had no sons in sports, you wouldn't have known it, since he made his presence known at football and basketball games and had colorful expressions for the referees.  I'd shrink into the bleachers.  Technical foul.  Still, I loved him.  That was my dad.

He had a Sunday voice and a voice for the rest of the week.  On Sunday, he put on his Sunday suit, and his Sunday voice.  We knew the difference.  

He loved to hunt, to fish, to be outdoors, to camp.  He went many years on an excursion with other men into the Wind River Mountains, a mountain man retreat, and came back with a beard.  He always carried a gun in the truck, since one never knew what was in store in the Wyoming wilderness.  He and Uncle John shot a bear once.  I was with him when he stopped hunting altogether, after we came across a wounded pregnant doe.

That was that.

*******

We had many hours together when he was in the hospital, those last months.  I'd drive over from Provo an hour away after work and school, often spend the night in his room, be with him when Mom couldn't, spell her when I could.  He'd send me on errands, to get her a Mother's Day card, some candy, a dress.  We read a book together and talked about it.  He wondered why some people didn't come to visit, and why others only talked about themselves when they did.

He saw things differently.

He told me about his life, about his hopes, his dreams, his fears.

He wondered what would happen to Mom, to all of us.  It was a great fear.

*******

He placed a call to the office of the person who was then President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Spencer W. Kimball, the church we professed although Dad came at it different than some, and wanted to meet with him.

The meeting happened, but it wasn't with President Kimball.   It was with someone on the staff.

Dad pleaded with the man, please take care of my family after I'm gone.  The man assured him they would.

It was a lot for my dad to ask.  It wasn't an easy meeting to take.

*******

It was a great gift to be with my father those last months, as it was the rest of his life, just different, but it was hard, running back and forth between two counties, going to school and work during the day, back to the hospital when I could, hours alone with him, doing what I could.

One day a friend from college appeared in his room at the hospital, Mike Sturgill, who intended to go on to medical school and was working at the hospital.  Somehow, seeing him helped.  He knew.  I knew.

I gave Dad backrubs.  Emptied urinals.   Filled in the gaps where nursing staff couldn't.  Was just there.  Sat in a chair.  Read.  Wrote for him.  Listened.

The night I most remember, he'd been readmitted to LDS Hospital in severe pain and Dr. Stevens wanted him to have a private room so he could get some rest, but there were no private rooms to be had.

Dr. Stevens stayed in that room all night, with me, while my dad cried out in pain.  And I saw tears in the doctor's eyes.

"I've never seen anyone suffer this much," he said.

Later, after my father was gone, he sent my mother a beautiful letter.

"No more bills" it said. 

Such a man.  

*******

The last time I saw my father, it was Memorial Day.  He came down to Utah to a family reunion, in the town of his childhood, where we gathered in the shadow of Sugarloaf Mountain, near Salem Pond, as a family, as we'd done so many Memorial Days before.  We went to the cemetery to decorate graves with flowers, and he laid down, in pain, on his mother's grave, and sobbed.

I took him back to Grandpa's house, and we were alone, together, in the quiet.  In his pain.

******

By that time he wasn't able to ride in a car anymore, and a local family in aviation was flying him to and from Utah from Wyoming, two hundred miles each way, out of their own generosity.  I was supposed to go to the local airport in Provo to see him the next day and say goodbye.

They left early.  By the time I got there, they were gone.

******* 

When I got the call the morning of June 9th from my Aunt Ruth, I knew.  They'd waited to tell me.   He was gone in the middle of the night, but they waited to tell me.

No, I couldn't do the eulogy, like Mom asked, but I wrote it and someone else read it.  I wrote the obituary, called it in to local newspapers, stopped to pick up special burial clothing, got a ride from a friend north to Wyoming.  My brother was off getting his own space to deal with it, next oldest, but my four younger sisters were all there.  

We slept in one bed that night, spooned tightly together, and cried.

*******

I miss my father every day of my life, but the first five years were the worst.  After that, as anyone who's lost someone they love knows, it fades a little, the pain lessens a little, life goes on, and there's just the memory, the memory of what was, what has been, what we meant, what we meant to say, what we meant to each other, what we meant to do.

What.

I'm sorry my sisters didn't know him better, that he never saw any of us married, never got to know any grandchildren.

But he had a life. 

******* 

It was a comforting room, warm and wide, with a wood planked floor, clothing I think, and a man, in brown and black.

Dad with my youngest sister Coleen, about 1975 or 1976, Astoria Hot Springs near Jackson, Wyoming. 

I will be forever indebted to the service and memory of Dr. Lawrence E. Stevens, former chair of the department of surgery, LDS Hospital, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Dr. William Taliaferro Close, my father's personal physician in Big Piney, Wyoming, who dedicated most of the last years of his life to patients like my father in a community that very much needed a doctor.