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| Ole and D.D. near Hill City, Minnesota, 1957 |
In spite of his avoidance of most people, my dad liked his wife, kids and grandson. In fact, he loved us, and didn’t mind our expectations of him unless it involved being around more people. The last seventeen years of my dad’s life, I lived within a few miles of my parents, so I saw them often. Conversations with my dad during these years mostly involved animals.
If he was home alone and the phone rang, he rarely answered it unless he was pretty sure it was my mom or one of his kids. Primarily, our phone conversations were usually he informing me what all of his cats were doing at the moment. After he retired, he surprised all of us by becoming a very nurturing man - to his cats. I have to admit, I was a bit jealous because he didn’t exhibit that quality when I was growing up. But it was gratifying to see that he was capable of it.
As my parents got older, I would drive them to various venues, sometimes to fun places like the casino or the State Fair; sometimes to not so fun places, like the doctor. On these trips, my dad and I started looking for bats that roosted in out-of-the-way places in late summer. Bats, especially the young ones when they first start venturing out alone, will roost on the side of brick or stucco buildings and under overhangs, if they don’t make it back to their usual roosting area. Ole (not my dad’s given name, but it’s what everyone called him) and I made a game of finding the bats that glommed onto buildings. It was our secret because most people are weirded-out by bats. We never kept a count. Finding a bat was like finding a quarter on the street.
One of the less fun trips with my dad was to the clinic for him to have an endoscopy. The door to the clinic was under an overhang, the perfect place for a bat to take a daylong nap. As we walked to the clinic, my dad and I automatically checked the walls and ceiling of the overhang for bats. We saw one bat and gave each other a nod.
Post-endoscopy, after my dad was awake and alert, we started the twenty-mile drive home. I was driving; my dad was in the passenger seat, my mom in the back seat. My dad was sipping water on the drive home since he couldn’t have any food or water before the procedure. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him take his tin of Copenhagen out of his shirt pocket, tap the lid twice with his knuckle, and put a wad of snuff inside his lower lip.
Then he passed out.
We were closer to the hospital in our hometown than the clinic, so I punched the accelerator. I was hoping a cop would see me so I could motion to him that I needed to get to the hospital FAST.
It seemed like a long time, but it was probably only five minutes by the time we arrived to the hospital emergency door, which was located within an overhang at the rear of the building. My mom rang the buzzer (this is a very small-town hospital) so the nurse could let us into the emergency room. Meanwhile, my dad was starting to come to in the car, still holding his glass of water and spit-can. He might not have been quite sure where he was, but he could see we were under an overhang. As the nurse arrived and started taking his blood pressure, he said to me, “Do you see any bats?”
The endoscopy revealed esophageal cancer and he lived for just a few months after that. I know my dad would have preferred to die at home or better yet, in the woods. But it didn’t turn out that way. But yet, I think he was a lucky man. He had a family that loved him. And since he was the first to go in my immediate family, he didn’t have to watch any of us get buried. He is with me when I see a coyote, deer or eagle. And I sometimes wonder if he’s telling the bats where to roost.
