One Sunday afternoon when I was 17, I woke up confused, not knowing where I was. After looking at the white sheets beneath me and the IV machine at my side, I realized I was in a hospital room. My dad was by my side.
A couple hours prior, another soccer player had slid into the back of my legs, jolting me into the air. My head slammed down against the field, which consisted more of dirt than grass, knocking me out.
When the evening staff came on that night, they informed us that only one parent could stay the night. My mom had arrived hours prior. “I want dad to stay,” I said.
Small moments accumulate with time. There were so many that led to that one.
I had learned through the soccer games dad drove me to, the bagels he handed me as I ran out the door to school, the nights he tucked me in and all the times he volunteered at my schools that he always showed up. He was the gentle shadow that enabled me to jump, knowing he’d catch me.
Ten summers after the concussion, my dad called to say that he wanted to drive me home from South Bend, Indiana to Washington, D.C. Just finishing law school and with a job lined up at a big firm, it seemed ridiculous that I needed help packing my car and navigating U.S. highways.
But every time I spoke to him, he calmly reminded me he’d be joining me. “Dad, I’m fine!” I insisted. Eventually, it seemed easier to give in.
The day we drove home, I cried the whole way. “You need to take a breath, Katie,” he said, overwhelmed by the intensity of my tears.
A couple days prior, my mom had told me that she had recently been diagnosed with ALS. I didn’t want to cry in front of her so the minute both car doors closed, I erupted.
He did not say much during that trip. But I knew through his presence that all he wanted was to make sure I was okay.
We cared for my mother together and after she passed, he became my focus. When I found out he had cancer a year and a half later, it was the first time I’d considered that I could lose him, too. He completed the first round of chemotherapy, but the cancer came back less than two years later.
“What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be at work?” he said when I arrived at the hospital shortly after he was admitted. His body could no longer sustain the side effects of the second round of chemotherapy.