"HELLO ANN!"

It is Saturday morning and Rory and I are savoring his delicious soy lattes. He creates his lattes one at a time using very specialized, hand-powered and fine, craftsman made, coffee composing tools.

It was after this kind of early morning weekend coffee savoring time that Rory would say,
"Now, it's time to call your Dad."

I would take my tiny cell phone out to the quiet little patio beside my herb garden and pull my chair right into the warmest rays of sunshine before entering one of my Dad's phone numbers. I would have to try one and then another of a variety of phone numbers I had for him.  If I was lucky, I reached him.

"Hi Daddy!"
"HELLO ANN!  HOW IS EVERYBODY?  LET'S SEE, WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME I TALKED TO YOU?"
"Last week, Daddy.  What's going on in SC?  Did you have any of that snow from that system in NC?"

We would talk on and on and he always had very current comments on politics, on his new church, and about his special lady friend.  He asked about each of my children, wanting to be told specifics, not just a general, "They are all fine."  He told me a few stories he had already told me.  I told him a few stories I had already told him.  Finally, I would ask how he was feeling.  He would say, "I have been a little bit tired, I take a nap after breakfast and a nap after lunch."

That was all he would ever say about his health.

In the last six months I had been getting calls late at night, in CA, from him.  These calls were made in the wee hours of the night in SC.  He sounded disoriented when I answered and, I could tell, he was surprised to hear my voice on the other end of the line.  A couple of times he would relate to me that he was glad to have finally gotten home, that he had been trying to get home but had gotten lost.  These were calls I did not know what to make of and by the end of the call I had halfway dismissed them.  I let myself believe, way far away from him in CA, that he had woken from a dream and had reached for the phone just to hear a familiar voice on the other end.

Now I am having dreams.  I dream that I am driving a huge white Buick sedan that belongs to my Dad! I am navigating perilous roads in the darkest hours of the night at high speeds!  The roads end abruptly on the edge of  ravines!  I am driving in a unfamiliar inner city!  I am lost in a maze of narrow streets, trying on-ramp after on-ramp, each under construction with unmarked dead-ends!  My Dad always appears at the end of  the dream after I have wrecked or lost his car.

I am knitting a prayer shawl for myself that is similar to the one given to my Dad while he was in the hospice.

The wife of one of the elders in his church knit a prayer shawl with yarn the color of the Pacific waters of Hawaii.  Her husband related how she had prayed for the person who would wear the shawl with each stitch.  When I entered Daddy's room at the hospice in the early morning hours I would find this shawl lovingly tucked around his shoulders by his hospice nurse.  Later in the day I would wear it as he often became too hot with fever to wear it.  We buried him with this beautiful shawl wrapped around his shoulders.

I think when I finish this shawl that I will wear it in the garden where I sit in the sun sipping weekend lattes with Rory.  My Dad was not one to go around holding trespasses against a soul.