Keep In Touch

Hi. It’s me. Your Dad. We Came From Love, Part 2

When I was 37, my Dad changed my first name from Lisa to Jisa.

Entering my name as a contact on his flip phone required expert toggling through the J, K and L on a single button — a skill level beyond him for that first letter.

He could not — would not— figure out how to correct it. 

Much easier, of course, to give his eldest daughter a new nickname.

I can just see him in his leather chair in front of the TV in the vast, open first floor living room of the renovated barn east of Cleveland, the home he shared with his longtime girlfriend and their rescue animals. He’s pushing buttons, squinting to see the screen, getting frustrated.

Then, shrugging his shoulders, he gives up. Good enough.

So I became Jisa, to him, when we talked on the phone. Hey, at least he figured out the rest of the letters.

Beautifully Flawed

A dear friend recently described my Dad as “beautifully flawed.”

She nailed it.

David was infuriating, funny and charming. Stubborn, smart, and strong. He sold cars and insurance policies and maybe even commercial ovens at one time. He loved to chat, to joke and flirt. To schmooze.

He’d wanted, I believe, to be a family man like his dad — yet cheated on our two families, which helped bust his marriages, first to my mother then later to my stepmother. He’d left the heavy lifting of raising his daughters to his ex-wives.

He could drive a perfectly sane person to want to strangle him. I’ve seen white with anger, in response to his words. And rolled my eyes. (A lot.) And chuckled. And cried.

For about 10 years, I checked out of the relationship. We didn’t speak or see each other much. I was perfectly entitled to my anger.

Still, I could not help but love him, and miss him. He never stopped calling. I focused on what he had done and could do, less on how he’d failed. We rebuilt. We found peace. 

Coffee Break Check-In

By the time he changed my name, we talked every few days about completely ordinary stuff — mowing the lawn, fixing stuff on my house, what’s for dinner, keeping tabs on my younger sister. 

During my divorce year, we talked almost every day. He knew that grief.

On an ordinary, sunny summer afternoon he’d call to say he was sitting outside enjoying the sunshine, watching his Bassett hound play with the Airedale, drinking a cup of coffee — always the coffee — and taking a break from cutting the huge lawn on his riding mower. 

If I answered – Jisa, is that you?

If I didn’t answer, he left a voice-mail: “Jisa! Hi. It’s me. Your Dad. I was just thinking about you… Just wondering what you’re doing.  You must be busy. Guess I’ll go finish cutting the grass. I’ll talk to you later.”

Then a pause. His voice would soften, reflecting the puckering of his upper lip as he said: “I love you.” 

Keeping in Touch ~ More Powerful than it Seems

He is gone. So are the voice-mail recordings.

But when I read my grandfather’s letters from World War II, I can almost hear my Dad’s voice on the other end of the line.

My paternal grandfather, Bill, wrote his wife and young child every day from a Navy ship in the Pacific, to relay seemingly unimportant details about ordinary day-to-day things: laundry, last night’s movie in the mess hall, work shifts, the next cup of coffee, shower and shave.

In the midst of all that mundane stuff, the most important truth: I love you. I miss you.

The letters and my Dad’s routine phone calls remind me of how powerful it is for us to keep in touch with the people we love, especially those from whom we are separated — whether that distance is emotional, geographical, time or all of those. 

Even when there isn’t much to say — or it hurts an awful lot to say it.

Every Family Has a Story

We are all part of a family, and every family has a story. Most, if not all, of those stories include someone who is somehow separated. Lost, yet alive. So among all that pain, still there is hope.

If you are the separated someone, I promise you are loved and missed. There is always a way back to love.

Addiction. Divorce. Mental illness. Anger. Bitterness. Our families can go off the rails and fall apart in far too many ways.

Craving healing and wholeness in my family has been constant through decades. Maybe you know how that feels. I’m grateful for those wishes that have been granted, hopeful for those that remain.

Sometimes, it’s just not possible. No matter how much you want it or work for it, or pray for it, reconciliation remains impossible. Sometimes, self-preservation and staying healthy means severing ties. True, yet this makes me sad. Still, we must hope for light over darkness.

There’s Still Time

I had the good fortune recently to be nearby as a father and daughter got to see each other for the first time in too many years. Far too long. They hugged. They cried. They’d terribly missed each other. 

My heart ached for all of their lost time — and melted thinking about the time they still had together.

People who kept in touch over the vast distance made their reunion possible. They found a way to keep saying: You are part of me. I miss you. I love you. The faith that they would somehow be together again ultimately was rewarded.

Keeping in touch is powerful — more so than it may seem at the time.

Determination vs. Death

My dad never gave up on us or life, never stopped calling to say, “I love you.” 

He died in January 2013. 

A few years before that, 10 years ago this November, he had somehow defied death.

He battled a serious infection and spent about two weeks in a medical coma, struggling to live. As he deeply slept, I sat holding his hand, both talking to him and silently urging him, to fight and stay in this world. 

I pulled at him with more than I knew I had. 

I dug in. I yanked. I tugged. With him, we all battled death.

I love you. I miss you. Stay with us.

He survived, and we had a few more years. For several days after the coma, he was awake but loopy from the drugs, certain he had been in a car accident and suffered brain damage. Neither was true.

As his mental fog began to clear, the weekend of Thanksgiving, I was on the road, stopped at the Capitol Diner in Harrisburg, Pa., when my phone rang. My sister helped him call me.

Jisa, is that you?

The sweetest sound. Relieved and exhausted, I slumped into the booth’s vinyl seat.

Yep, right here, Dad.