At age 18, after a late night of last minute exam preparation, I woke up to some strange activity at home. My mom who had been sleeping next to me was missing. I sat up just in time to see my normally sprightly 58-year father, looking all bent and old, being walked out of the house in his home clothes, by strangers! My mom followed with a duffel bag and then I heard a car door slam and my dad was gone. I probed mom for details but she was tight-lipped and not forthcoming at all. She busied herself instead in packing me off to college and then rushing to be with my father, wherever he was. My dad didn't come back that night either. Then slowly, little by little I pieced things together.
My father, sleeping alone in my parents' room, had suffered a massive heart attack early that morning around 2AM. He had dragged himself to my room where my mom and I were sleeping ('cos I was too sissy to sit and study alone!) and had repetitively whispered my mom's name since the crushing pain in his chest wouldn't let him cry out. Somewhere in the foggy realms of sleep, my startled mother heard his voice calling out to her and abruptly awoke to be with him. They sat together then, husband and wife, holding each other, white-faced and afraid, unwilling to disturb anybody (even me), simply praying. Since we live in the suburbs and didn't own a car then, they had to wait for 4 hours before my dad would let my mom finally disturb a doctor friend who immedately responded by bringing down his car and whisking my father away to the nearest cardiac facility.
When the truth unfolded, I (to put so many complex emotions in one word) freaked. Everything said and done, I'm daddy's little girl and the reality of what was happening was like a slap in the face. Overnight my childishness faded away like gay paint washed off a drab canvas and I grew up. I was torn between my fears of whether I would see my hospitalised father again alive, stress on performing well in my annual semster exams and a miserable, aching desire to see him somehow. But they wouldn't let me visit him....said I was the last person who should, since he loved me the most and it would excite his condition if he did. So though I kicked everything in sight in frustration and fought with everyone who visited him about the unfairness of it all, I was simply left suffering from a distance, living only for the scraps of info that relatives chose to toss my way.
It turned out he had 3 severe blocks in his arteries and needed open-heart surgery with 2 bypasses. I was completely undone. My father didn't smoke, he didn't drink and he'd been the epitome of goodness and integrity, the man I'd looked upto all my life! Whatever had he done to deserve this? My grandfather, a pastor, died at 48yrs of age (of cardiac arrest again), leaving my 16-year old dad and his family helpless. Would history repeat itself? I was terrified! I didn't want scalpels touching my dad. I was afraid he wouldn't get off the operating table alive. I worried and grieved that I wouldn't even have spoken to him one last time if that happened. I cried sleeplessly for nights together, begging God not to take my daddy away.
But God was gracious and the surgery was successful. It took more than a week before I could see my dad again and when I did, I cried bitterly. He was weak and emaciated and long surgery scars ran across his chest where the doctors had broken the sternum and ribs open to reach his heart. His fair facial skin had started darkening in patches from all the strong medication he was taking and he looked so helpless and defenceless lying there....so frail and mortal. Hardly like the brisk, strong father who had once tossed and caught me in the air and whose quick long strides I had once struggled to keep up with - 3 hops, skips and jumps to his every step! I would sit by his side as he slept and stare at him, wondering if he would ever laugh and sing and play the piano again......sometimes, if he would even awaken again.
But dad pulled through and slowly recuperated. Though even as his surgery scars healed, my psychological scars didn't. For years after that, I would wake up in the middle of the night with a sick feeling in my stomach. Hurriedly flipping on the lights, I would stare at my sleeping father willing him to be breathing normally. And it was only after I saw for myself the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, would I go back to sleep. The nightmare of being left fatherless was ever with me.
Eight years went by peacefully. And then, 3 years ago, just when we thought he'd beaten the heriditary disease and that we'd all live happily ever after, my father's bypassed arteries clogged again. Doctors said he couldn't stand another procedure at his age. I clearly remember the cardio specialist's shattering words delivered so calmly, "There's nothing more we can do for you now Mr.Samuel. You'll just have to manage on medicines and maybe.....pray". I cried again that day.
I loved my father with all my heart and like every other son/daughter, I wanted him to live forever. Also, all my life I had dreamt of how my father would be the one to give me away to be someone's wife. But here I was - 27 years old, with marriage nowhere on my horizon and time running out on my father's clock. Well the specialist wanted us to pray didn't he? So pray we did. And I asked the Lord this: "Father, my dad's greatest desire is to see me happily married. But it is you who delay the day I meet the one you created for me. It is your responsibility then Master, to sustain and nourish my father and keep his lifeline in your hand until, and past that glad day, for I don't want to be given away by a stranger like an orphan. So help us God."
Praise God Reader.... for last week, my father celebrated his 70th birthday! This is so big a deal for me and my family. Like in the case of King Hezekiah, the Lord has been gracious and has added days to His life. And for this, I am eternally grateful.
Wedding bells are still faraway for me, but I am no longer afraid. For the last 12 years I have seen the wonderful ways in which the Lord has held our family in the centre of His grace and will. He has been in control of my father's health and has blessed us with abundant joy and loving familial ties. He has taught us through our travails to appreciate each other. and in the short time that we have left, to openly express our love for each other. He has enabled us to overcome the crippling emotional side-effects of heart disease and continue to serve him with Christ-centred hearts and renewed spirits.
And finally, He has planted and raised in me, a faith so strong that for me, no doubt remains. If and when I do walk down the aisle, it will only be on my father's arm!
"Praise the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits - who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion, who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." (Psalm 103:205)
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