Life marched on for our country and for music, but it's true that it was never the same.
On February 3, 2007, the 48th anniversary of the terrible crash, my life came crashing to the ground. My own legend had met his end. That was the day my music died.
It was 2 days after my 25th birthday. My family was planning to get together that evening for my birthday dinner. I was laying in bed only half awake when I heard a knock at the door. I thought it was probably my dad. He often popped by. My parents had been having a difficult time right before that, and, being my dad's best friend, he often vented to me and asked my advice on how to deal with women - especially his.
I threw on my robe and walked into the living room and saw my pastor standing on the other side of the glass.
"Hi Sarah"
"Hi. What's up?"
"Sarah, where's your husband?"
"Um, he's in the bathrooom. He'll be right here. What's up?"
"Uh...(getting visibly uncomfortable)...no let's just wait until he gets out here"
"Okay"
My then husband finally came into the living room and my pastor instructed us to sit. It's funny. I will never forget where I was sitting or the way the early morning light streamed into the living room that I painted in a deep green shade. It all played together in that moment in the most surreal way. My pastor began to speak again.
"Sarah.....*sigh.....your dad got up this morning and (I started to mentally supply words for him feeling sure that he was going to tell me that my dad had moved out of the house - not able to take any more of my mom's menopausal moods....I was so, so wrong)...had a massive heart attack...(my mind raced demanding to know what hospital he was at but my mouth wasn't fast enough) and passed away."
"NOOOO!!!" I screamed. "Please! Please tell me this is a joke! This is a joke, right?! Please tell me it's a joke! I'll think it's funny. Please just tell me it's a joke."
I writhed around and screamed on the cushion of our love seat. My husband grabbed me and held on tight. "Shhhh" He said at first.
"PASSED AWAY?!" I thought. "What does that even mean?! He didn't pass away! He's DEAD!" This was all in my mind. All my voice could do was scream. My husband grabbed my head and whispered in my ear "Well now we know what we're going to name our son". I wasn't even pregnant, but I thought "Damn straight!".
Another strange thought that passed through my head as I battled through my outward hysterics: "Well at least I know now. I'll never have to lose him again. It's already over with, and I know how it ends".
In short order, we collected our 8 month old daughter and drove over to my best friends' house to leave the baby and then went to my mom's house. I burst through the door and demanded from the EMT's "Where is he?"
"Now, ma'am...I don't know if you should go up there. He looks.."
"NO! Where is my dad?! I want to see him now!"
"Ma'am, he's upstairs, but...."
I pushed past him and walked up the stairs to my parents' room. I reached the bathroom and saw him. He looked asleep. My mother was at his feet talking to him. My older brother was standing at his head. I dropped to his side and grabbed his hand.
Those hands. So strong. So able. So loving. In stark contrast to those of his own father, my dad used his hands to cradle my tiny baby body. The day I was born, he wrote a note to my mom with those hands that read "Now you've made my dreams come true; a boy for me a girl for you". He used them to hold my tiny little girl fingers and bend my hand to kiss it. He used those hands to fix all our cars and let me stand beside him and learn how to reach my skinny arms into the guts of a car and fix a serpentine belt. He built things with those hands. He used those hands to lovingly stroke my cheek or grab my tiny chin and hold me in his lap. He used them to hold my own little girl and tell me with his voice what a good job I'd done. So many handshakes. He shook so many hands. I always knew the value of a good, manly handshake, so very early in my life I abandoned the notion of prim handshakes and followed his example instead. "Shake their hand like Dad does" I always admonished myself. Those hands wrote many hours of computer code that ended up providing for our family. It was connected to a brain that was, in fact, brilliant. Those hands rested in the pockets of his khaki pants while he waited for me on the corner in front of his house after I took an unannounced walk out of my house 3 weeks after giving birth. No one knew where I had gone or where I was, but, while everyone else was out driving around looking for me, he just stood there on the sidewalk. He knew I would find him. He was my anchor. He just stood there until he saw me and then made a little half smile. His hands came out of his pockets and spread open. I ran the last few steps to him and collapsed into his hands. They held me up. They were strong enough. They were always strong enough.....and then it was gone. I thought of all of this while I knelt there holding them. I squeezed...a few times. ALL I wanted was for him to squeeze back. He was still warm. I just wanted him to squeeze back....but he never did. He never would again.
I kept waiting for him to pop his eyes open and laugh. I still wanted it to be an elaborate joke. I swore to myself that I would think it was funny. They stayed closed. I bent down and kissed his lips. I knew that would be the last time I would ever be able to do that again with any warmth left in them.
The next little while is a total blur of being ushered downstairs because they had to take "the body". The EMT's wheeled in a gurney and laid my dad atop it and covered it with the famed white sheet. The ambulance drove away silent.
In the days that followed, we accomplished many tasks and greeted many people. I sang at his funeral. My mom suggested that we let someone else do it, but I didn't feel anyone else was good enough - not that my singing ability exceeded theirs. It's just that the words therein and the man for whom the songs were being sung COULDN'T mean the same thing as what they did to me. I began each of them on the wrong note, but I finished both of them.
My world after that was so empty. Continuing with any happiness seemed like sacrilege. It still does.
My dad woke up that morning, greeted my mom and went into the bathroom to start getting ready for men's prayer breakfast at church. After just a couple minutes, my mom heard a thud. She called out to my dad and heard no answer. She rushed into the bathroom and found him slumped against the wall. His head had slammed into the wall in front of him, and his glasses had smashed into his face and broken the skin leaving a smudge of blood on the wall. She lowered him to the floor and tried to begin CPR on him while she screamed out for someone to call 911. As he lay in the floor, his green eyes were fixed...on her face - the face of the knockout red head that had made him so nervous 28 years before that he could barely muster the courage to ask her to go out with him giving her just enough time to say yes before he ran out the door of the Taco Hut in Harrison, Arkansas. The face of the woman who gave him a son and then a daughter.....and then another and then another son. The face of the woman who stood by his side while he made crazy choices for which everyone told my mom that she should just leave him. No. He was hers, and she was his. The face that had whispered "I love you" and so many other wonderful things over more years of his life than not. That was the very last thing upon which his eyes were fixed in this life - her face.
My sister Hannah ran upstairs and tried.....so hard....to administer CPR. God love her little heart. It didn't work. It couldn't have. He was already gone. I think we were actually told that he was actually gone before his knees gave out causing him to collapse. She was 15.
Someone called 911, and EMS quickly confirmed that he was dead on arrival.
So we had a funeral. We had a burial. Dad had served in the Army, so he was buried at the National Cemetery in Chattanooga. They played "Taps" at his graveside. After the service, I saw the hole up the hill where they were going to put my dad. Everyone drove away, and I walked up the hill and fell to my knees in the grass and cried. I wanted so badly for someone to hold me and cry with me, but, though I had the company of one on my trek up the hill, no one held me. I was alone. He was gone, and I was alone. No one would ever provide rescue for me again in this life.
I would try to sleep, but as soon as I closed my eyes, I would see him laying there in the bathroom floor. I would gasp for air and sit up straight and cry. After receiving enough instruction to stay quiet because the one with whom I shared a bed had to work the next day, I learned how to cry more quietly....alone. I guess my quiet sobs continued to be to loud because I grew very familiar with being literally pushed out of the bed and told to go sleep on the couch. "He's in a better place. Just go to sleep". .....alone. I was alone, and he was in a better place - better for him - not for us.
Time after that is a bit blocked. I remember going on some trips. I remember people having birthdays and babies. I, in fact, had another baby - a boy. Noah Daniel - after my dad. Noah was actually born in the same room as my little brother, so I will never forget the day I had him being reminded by my mom that the last time we were in that room, my dad had been there. He was there again. I know he was. Noah was also born the same day as my dad's dad. His birth was a tribute in so many ways. Noah actually has a picture in his room of my dad, though he has never met him.
Eight years have passed. Eight years.
It is so strange to me that there has been eight years of life since then. I have been smacked in the face with the cruelty of this world so many times that I've lost count. I was so much less aware of this before losing my dad because he absorbed the full impact of so many of the blows or would wage full on war against whatever it was that attacked me. It has been a terrible reality to know how hard life actually hits with the absence of someone acting as a shield for you.
Now, though, now it's my turn. Now I'm the shield. I'm the defender of the innocent and downtrodden. I'm the strength.....but I will never stop feeling the loss. I don't think I'm supposed to. How wrong would it be for me to just pretend that there never was a song that played? That I am numb to the fact that it ceased to play? Music was important to my dad. Remember Madame Butterfly?
I'm at a loss and this post is just all over the place, but that's how grief goes. Another song that was my dad's favorite was "Free Bird". Funny how many parallels exist with the words and his life and his exit of this life. So......raise your lighters, everybody. Blow it up. See how long you can keep that flame lit. His burned for 48 years. Light it up.
For William Daniel Baker, Sr. September 23, 1958 - February 3, 2007....the day the music died.
No comments:
Post a Comment