Approval

"Are you ok? Are you?", the thin man said to me from the wheel chair. The skin on his arm were paper thin, and while his body was failing in the final hours of his impending death, his mind was all there.

I saw it in his eyes. Even the morphine and oxygen couldn't take away his sound mind, the sincerity in his question, the love in his eyes.

It had been seven years since I saw my father, and yet here I was, a thousand miles away from home at his bedside. They all told me that I was his dying wish.

"What does one wear to hospice?” I asked my husband. "Is the little black cocktail dress appropriate since its pre funeral or fleece and jeans better since I am going to Denver? They dress like shit there. I should try to fit in."

No one ever said living with a writer was easy.

What got me to Denver - Morrison, actually, was Jennifer. She called crying. Who on earth manages your fathers case load and calls crying? Apparently, I was my father's dying wish, according to her, which is all I could understand between her heart felt sobs. She looked all over a state where I no longer resided. It took her weeks to locate me, and when she did, she came apart. Afraid I wouldn't come, she told me about my Dad and the importance of my visit.

Lots of water under that bridge. I couldn't even muster up the strength to get angry, although people expected it and frankly justified it.

But I couldn't.

A dying man.

What on earth would I say to him?

What would he said to me?

Twenty eight hours later I'm there at Bear Creek Home, hardly recognizing the body that was in the chair called Jim.

My father being the stoic refused to be in bed. The nurses offered him to lay down in bed several times due to his condition, but oh, no. Dad would never allow his child to see him in that way.

Pride. One of the deadly sins. Apple doesn't fall from that tree, I thought with a laugh choking in my throat.

"I'm good, Dad. Real good." I smiled. We locked eyes. The oxygen tank hummed.

Pictures over his bed of children and grandchildren that weren’t of his blood, but were deemed as family. Not one shot of me. Elizabeth Lions: forgotten and invisible.

But I wasn't.

"You sure?" he asked, blue eyes never leaving mine.

"Yeah." Yup. Dad is all there. I can see it. Somehow it was important to me that he didn't lose his marbles along with his body.

"Dad, I have a good life. I have a book out and a second one coming out. I have a radio show, too. I help people that are lost in their career. I help engineers, and CEO's and even men in the military that come home. It's a good job, Dad."

"You don't say.” his eyes filled with wonder of the little girl that became the woman in front of him that he didn't know. All the years and all the fears vanished. It didn't matter what he did to me or what he had said. In these last moments, it just didn't matter.

"I am married now. My husband loves me and treats me well.” I reported.

It wasn't the married part, but the how I was treated part that mattered to him. The therapist in me sat in wonder watching his reactions. For a moment, I wasn't his daughter. It was therapist and patient. He held onto my hand tightly as we spoke in quiet whispers, like two children with deep secrets.

Bending over him, holding his hand, I proclaimed, "I am a good woman. I don't drink or do drugs like my brothers did. I am highly respected. Everyone knows who I am through my work. I work hard, Dad."

His response and the only one he really gave to me in those two days in hospice continue to roll around in my head, giving me affirmation and approval - the two pathetic things I craved my entire life.

He commented, "It couldn't have been easy for you."