Too All The Dad's

Happy Father's Day ~ I realize it is a day early ~ but wanted to share a beautiful story a friend sent me. So many have lost forever the opportunity to forgive, or be forgiven........simply because of pride. What a rotten shame that pride/ego is more important than having peace in one's heart. "I'm so sorry I hurt you. Will you please forgive me?" Two little sentences that can take the weight of the world off our shoulders, and replace the burden we carry with overwhelming peace and contentment. It is such a pity that so many adults simply cannot utter those words, nor be willing to humble themselves. Broken hearts can be mended,and friendships and relationships restored so easily when we are willing to replace pride with true repentance and humility.

Here is the story ~

Room 712

The hospital was unusually quiet that bleak January evening, quiet and
still like the air before a storm. I stood in the nurses' station on the
seventh floor and glanced at the clock.
It was 9 P.M. I threw a stethoscope around my neck and headed for room 712,
last room on the hall. Room 712 had a new patient. Mr. Williams. A man all
alone. A man strangely silent about his family.
As I entered the room, Mr. Williams looked up eagerly, but drooped his eyes
when he saw it was only me, his nurse. I pressed the stethoscope over his
chest and listened. Strong, slow, even beating. Just what I wanted to hear.
There seemed little indication he had suffered a slight heart attack a few
hours earlier.
He looked up from his starched white bed. "Nurse, would you -" He hesitated,
tears filling his eyes. Once before he had started to ask me a question, but
changed his mind. I touched his hand, waiting. He brushed away a tear.
"Would you call my daughter? Tell her I've had a heart attack. A slight one.
You see, I live alone and she is the only family I have."
His respiration suddenly speeded up. I turned his nasal oxygen up to eight
liters a minute. "Of course I'll call her," I said, studying his face. He
gripped the sheets and pulled himself forward, his face tense with urgency.
"Will you call her right away - as soon as you can?"
He was breathing fast - too fast. "I'll call her the very first thing," I
said, patting his shoulder. I flipped off the light. He closed his eyes,
such young blue eyes in his 50 - year - old face.
Room 712 was dark except for a faint night light under the sink. Oxygen
gurgled in the green tubes above his bed. Reluctant to leave, I moved
through the shadowy silence to the window. The panes were cold. Below a
foggy mist curled through the hospital parking lot.
"Nurse," he called, "could you get me a pencil and paper?"
I dug a scrap of yellow paper and a pen from my pocket and set it on the
bedside table.
I walked back to the nurses' station and sat in a squeaky swivel chair by
the phone. Mr. Williams's daughter was listed on his chart as the next of
kin. I got her number from information and dialed.
Her soft voice answered. "Janie, this is Sue Kidd, a registered nurse at the
hospital. I'm calling about your father. He was admitted tonight with a
slight heart attack and "
"No!" she screamed into the phone, startling me. "He's not dying is he ?"
"His condition is stable at the moment," I said, trying hard to sound
convincing. Silence. I bit my lip.
"You must not let him die!" she said. Her voice was so utterly compelling
that my hand trembled on the phone.
"He is getting the very best care."
"But you don't understand," she pleaded. "My daddy and I haven't spoken. On
my 21st birthday, we had a fight over my boyfriend. I ran out of the house.
I haven't been back. All these months I've wanted to go to him for
forgiveness. The last thing I said to him was, 'I hate you."
Her voice cracked and I heard her heave great agonizing sobs. I sat,
listening, tears burning my eyes. A father and a daughter, so lost to each
other. Then I was thinking of my own father, many miles away. It has been so
long since I had said, "I love you."
As Janie struggled to control her tears, I breathed a prayer. "Please God,
let this daughter find forgiveness."
"I'm coming. Now! I'll be there in 30 minutes," she said.
Click. She had hung up. I tried to busy myself with a stack of charts on the
desk. I couldn't concentrate. Room 712; I knew I had to get back to 712.
I hurried down the hall nearly in a run. I opened the door. Mr.Williams lay
unmoving. I reached for his pulse. There was none.
"Code 99, Room 712. Code 99. Stat." The alert was shooting through the
hospital within seconds after I called the switchboard through the intercom
by the bed.
Mr. Williams had a cardiac arrest. With lightning speed I leveled the bed
and bent over his mouth, breathing air into his lungs (twice). I positioned
my hands over his chest and compressed. One, two, three. I tried to count.
At fifteen I moved back to his mouth and breathed as deeply as I could.
Where was help? Again I compressed and breathed, Compressed and . He could
not die!
"O God," I prayed. "His daughter is coming! Don't let it end this way."
The door burst open. Doctors and nurses poured into the room pushing
emergency equipment. A doctor took over the manual compression of the heart.
A tube was inserted through his mouth as an airway. Nurses plunged syringes
of medicine into the intravenous tubing.
I connected the heart monitor. Nothing. Not a beat.
My own heart pounded. "God, don't let it end like this. Not in bitterness
and hatred. His daughter is coming. Let her find peace."
"Stand back," cried a doctor. I handed him the paddles for the electrical
shock to the heart. He placed them on Mr. Williams's chest. Over and over we
tried. But nothing. No response.
Mr. Williams was dead. A nurse unplugged the oxygen. The gurgling stopped.
One by one they left, grim and silent.
How could this happen? How? I stood by his bed, stunned. A cold wind rattled
the window, pelting the panes with snow. Outside -everywhere - seemed a bed
of blackness, cold and dark. How could I face his daughter?
When I left the room, I saw her against a wall by a water fountain. A doctor
who had been inside 712 only moments before stood at her side, talking to
her, gripping her elbow. Then he moved on, leaving her slumped against the
wall. Such pathetic hurt reflected from her face. Such wounded eyes. She
knew.
The doctor had told her that her father was gone. I took her hand and led
her into the nurses' lounge. We sat on little green stools, neither saying a
word. She stared straight ahead at a pharmaceutical calendar, glass-faced,
almost breakable-looking.
"Janie, I'm so, so sorry," I said. It was pitifully inadequate.
"I never hated him, you know. I loved him," she said.
God, please help her, I thought.
Suddenly she whirled toward me. "I want to see him."
My first thought was, Why put yourself through more pain? Seeing him will
only make it worse. But I got up and wrapped my arm around her. We walked
slowly down the corridor to 712. Outside the door I squeezed her hand,
wishing she would change her mind about going inside. She pushed open the
door.
We moved to the bed, huddled together, taking small steps in unison. Janie
leaned over the bed and buried her face in the sheets. I tried not to look
at her at this sad, sad good-bye. I backed against the bedside table. My
hand fell upon a scrap of yellow paper. I picked it up. It read:
"My dearest Janie,
I forgive you. I pray you will also forgive me. I know that you love me. I
love you too, Daddy"
The note was shaking in my hands as I thrust it toward Janie. She read it
once. Then twice. Her tormented face grew radiant. Peace began to glisten in
her eyes. She hugged the scrap of paper to her breast.
"Thank You, God," I whispered, looking up at the window. A few crystal stars
blinked through the blackness. A snowflake hit the window and melted away,
gone forever. Life seemed as fragile as a snowflake on the window.
But thank You, God, that relationships, sometimes fragile as snowflakes, can
be mended together again - but there is not a moment to spare.
I crept from the room and hurried to the phone. I would call my father. I
would say, "I love you."

EXPERIENCE IS A WONDERFUL THING ~ IT ENABLES YOU TO RECOGNIZE A MISTAKE WHEN YOU MAKE IT AGAIN.