Around Father’s Day each year, I take some time to reflect deeply. It was in the early morning hours of Father’s Day thirteen years ago that I stood by as my father took his last breath and passed away. And while it still makes me have a quiet cry when I think deeply about it, it is not a cry of sadness. It is the cry of deep gratitude. I tell many “dad stories” these days, not because he was a model father or the perfect daddy. I tell them because of a gift he gave me, a gift so overflowing that I can share it deeply and freely with all. Let me paint some perspective for you.
In the spring of 2007 I visited my home town to celebrate the marriage of my oldest child. I was honored to perform the wedding ceremony, but the excitement of the joyful occasion was dotted with worry about my father’s health. By the morning after my cross-country return home, my father was hospitalized and it was serious. It was so serious that I returned to the other side of the country the same week to hear that the diagnosis was stage 4 inoperable cancer. With the best estimates and the maximum treatment available, the doctors speculated that it would prolong his life for one year. They also estimated that without treatment, he was facing the last three months of his life. And then they asked, “What would you like to do?” I know — sounds like a sad story looming — but stick with me to the end of this dad story.
Stunned but strong, I told my father that I would not be the one to make the decision about his life and death. Only he had the right to choose how he would live in the days to come. I remember the conversation that followed a few short hours later. Little did I know that I was going to get a crash course in Learning How To Live Life Fully Each Day. This would be the final course that he had to offer me in his role as my father. As I sat beside his hospital bed, he said, “Cancer won’t be what kills me. It will affect my life, but I die when I’m done! Until then, I choose to live.” For those who don’t already know, my dad and I share the same corny sense of humor, so he followed this seriously profound announcement with “‘Cause I like those retirement checks and I’d like to get a few more.”
He went on to teach me that whereas there are situations in life that may affect our bodies or our health, we get to choose how we live every day. I didn’t fully understand that day when he said, “Listen — you will never be able to live fully until you lose your fear of dying.”
But today, thirteen years later, I realized that what he showed me in the three months that followed that conversation was how to live every day I am gifted to have. I realized, today, that my father showed me how to live by firmly planting his feet into every day. He saw death coming and never flinched. I saw him know, each day that he woke up, that he was supposed to be here, even knowing all the while that there would be a day that he wouldn’t, and he anticipated that the day was coming soon. It was.
He reminded me daily that he would die when he was done, when he had fulfilled his assignment here on this earth in his role as a man, a black man, a father, a grandfather. He would die when the universe, God to him, said he had finished. I remember the day my father said “I’m done.” But more importantly, I remember every single day, while I walked next to him during the last mile of his life’s walk, that he woke up choosing to live.
I realized today that I want to live my life so that when I die, it will be because I’m done. Until then, I will live. I will love. I will live and love as fully as I can, and my mission in life is to remove anything that stops me from doing those two things. I’ll die when I’m done. Until then, let’s live!
Memorial tribute to my father, Charles Hughes, 3/7/1937 – 6/17/2007
