Day lilies and Remembrance

Posthumous portrait of Carl Totemeier by artist James Yale.

I've been thinking about my dad a lot this past week.

The day lilies outside my window conjure up many memories of my dad and his plants. A horticulturist, we were always surrounded by plants and flowers. After retiring, my dad went into the farmer's market business, gradually shifting from fruits (apples, berries, peaches) to perennials, especially day lilies and hostas. He was well-known and much beloved by all who knew him. Known as a raconteur, he could regale us with story after story of his youth on an Iowa farm, his college years, and so on.

We've moved a lot in our nealry 24 years of marriage, from Missouri to Delaware to Ohio to Iowa, and to 4 different locations in the Des Moines area. At each and every house, my dad would come visit with loads of plants and help us landscape. Our house previous to this one was landscaped solely by us, using the plants my father left when he died.

This is the only house I've ever lived in that doesn't have plants grown by my dad.

I tend to think of these gardens at my former homes as memorials to my dad. Sometimes I drive by and am instantly flooded with memories of him.

But of all the lessons I learned in the 41 years I had with my father, there is one that is, perhaps, the most important, and certainly the most poignant.

You see, my father taught me how not to die.

July 3 was the fifth anniversary of my father's death. It was a horrible death, precipitated by a sudden and devastating illness. In January, he's seemed hale and healthy, by March he was ill, by May, diagnosed with myelodysplasia; and gone by July 3.

There would have been no mitigating the severity of our loss, no other medical decisions could have been made to extend his life.

No, the lesson I learned is never, ever leave anything unsaid.

My father grew up during the Great Depression, a time when men were discouraged from sharing their feelings. Though my dad's every action in life showed that he loved me, I have no memory of his every telling me so.

We just didn't do that in my family.

As his health declined, I made sure my children, who saw him for the last time two weeks before his death, told him how much he meant to them and how much they loved him. I was shocked when he told each one of them that the loved them, too.

At least I did that much right.

But my dad didn't have a "final" converstation with any of us; my three sisters, myself, not even my mom. We didn't talk about what ifs, or what we meant to each other. We didn't even talk about his impending death.

My dad wasn't fully himself those last few days in the hospital, and though his doctor asked him in a veiled sort of way if he wanted to go on and told him "things didn't look good," we never directly talked to him about the decision to end the treatment that was prolonging his suffering but would never heal him.

He never took the opportunity, even before those last two weeks in the hospital, to tell us whether he was ready to die, that he loved us, what he wanted for our futures.

And though I told him in those last few hours that I loved him, it may have been too late for him to hear.

I have a hole in my heart that can never be filled. An emptiness and longing to hear the words I know I will never hear.

I've always been outspoken about my love for my children and my husband, telling them each how much they mean to me, expressing my love for them. If I have time to prepare for my own death, hopefully far in the future, I will make sure none of us leaves anything unsaid. It will be okay to talk about my death, for me to help them cope with my death before I'm gone. To share our memories, our love, our fears and our hopes. And I will tell each and every one of my loved ones what they have meant to me, how proud I am of them, and how special they each are.

I will leave nothing unsaid.

So I look out my window at the day lilies and remember my dad.

I know he loved me.

But I will live the rest of my life never having heard the words.

The beauty of the day lilies, their grace, their toughness and their delicate resiliency will always remind me of my daddy.

And how much I loved him.