Happy Birthday Daddy

Today would have been my dads 62nd birthday. It has been two years, two months, one week and two days since he passed away. 

To really tell this story properly I need to start at the beginning. I warn you ahead of time, this is going to be a long post, so please stick with me. This is really a story about Gods redemption power. 

My parents were never married. When I was two years old, my dad fell off a roof of a house and broke his spinal cord. He was instantly paralyzed from the chest down. He could still move his arms. He never let it stop him from learning new things or get in the way of doing the things he loved to do. He played soft ball on a national softball league, he played golf, he hunted, fished, and even learned how to snow sky down the rocky mountains.

 He was always in the picture. He always came to family events, Christmases, birthdays, even if they weren't mine. He got along great with my step dad. Growing up he was a great father. Always calling me, taking me out for dinner dates, took me to his soft ball games all the time. I fully enjoyed every minute I got to spend with him. I loved watching him live life. He never let his circumstances hold him back from anything. We took many trips to Red Lodge, Montana to go snow skiing. Wow what an amazing place! I love the small town feel of Red Lodge, and the mountains are breath taking! At first I wasn't very good, but he loved watching me learn. I was so proud of him. He would ski in a special ski that was designed for people who were handicapped. It was basically a chair with two skies under it. He held onto two small poles that were flat on the bottom to help him steer. He would have a guide helping him, which basically was a guy holding onto a rope that was attached to the back of the chair and skied behind him. There were times where I would yell at him cause he was taking too much of a risk. There was one time where he flipped over front wards a few times and I scolded him like a kid. I told him "you are already paralyzed do you want to break your neck too!?!?" lol yes even at a young age I was bossy and protective. He would just look at me, laugh, and say "Eh what wont kill me will make me stronger". He didn't care he was having fun. 

When I was about 15 years old, my family moved about a half hour north. Which meant we lived almost an hour away from him. It made it harder for us to get together. I was also growing up and I think it was hard for him to relate to the women I was becoming instead of viewing me as a little girl. Our communication changed, he didn't really know how to relate to me anymore. I think it pushed him over the edge when I started dating boys. What dad wants to see their little girl going off with a boy at the age of 16. It didn't help that by the age of 18 I was dating a guy who was almost 6 years older than me and I was smoking and drinking. He stopped asking me what was going on in my life. I felt like he stopped caring, and really didn't know who I was. It was hard to try and have a relationship with someone who didn't invest anything into it. He was a great man and had love to give, just didn't know how to.  

Over the next few years our relationship really was basically dinner dates every few months and phone calls once in a while, which usually only lasted for about 10 minutes. He would tell me what was going on in his life and then at the very end would spend about a minute asking me what was going on in my life, but by that time I thought he was just asking for the sake of asking so I would always respond with an "Im good, work is good, life is good". We became very distant. When I was 23 I was dating a guy, and it came time for him to meet my parents. I thought long and hard if I was going to invite my dad over. My thoughts were "how can he approve of a guy im dating if he doesn't know anything about me or what I want". I decided to invite him only because I didn't want him to find out that I had my mom and step dad meet the guy I was dating and not him. I didn't want his feelings to get hurt was the only reason I invited him. He came up to my mom's house and didn't say hi to the guy I was dating, barely said anything to me. The rest of us were in the dinning room playing a game while both my dads were in the other room playing cribbage. He left after about an hour of being there and said (very sarcastically) "well it was nice getting to know your boyfriend". I was livid! My mom actually called him afterwards and yelled at him. Which is something she had to do often. He called me and apologized so I forgave him and tried to really have a relationship with him. 

A few months later we made a dinner date. As usual it was my pick for the restaurant. My dad really spoiled me when it came to where we ate. He loved crab legs, I would order chicken tenders. I hated the smell and the look of crab legs. He would always try and get me to taste them, I finally did and loved them. So of course I ordered them all the time, he would complain that I was getting expensive. I would tell him it was all his fault for making me try them, I was content with my chicken tenders. So for our date night I wanted to introduce him to my new favorite restaurant, Benihana. If you have never been I highly recommend it. Its absolutely amazing. Sushi, chicken, steak, fried rice, shrimp, veggies.....don't even get me started on the shrimp sauce mmmmmm. Okay Tiffany focus, back on track. Going into that night I knew I had to test the waters to see how he would handle a real heart to heart. So before I talked to him about our relationship I decided to talk to him about his relationship with a few of his siblings. He has 7 siblings. He was only really close with a few of them. I brought up his relationship with one of his sisters and one of his brothers. I won't get into details, but basically I just asked him how the relationships got to where they were. He blamed everything on the other persons and didn't take responsibility for anything. I told him even if what he was saying was true that it takes two for a relationship to go bad. He yelled at me in the middle of the restaurant. I let it go after about a half hour of trying to talk to him about it. I got into my car and balled. I cried so hard I could barely drive. If that was how he reacted to a conversation about his siblings, I could only imagine how the conversation about his relationship with his only child would go. After that we didn't really talk much, he would call every few weeks and sometimes I would pick up. He knew I was mad but didn't know why. I shut down, I stopped answering his phone calls. I had nothing more to say to him.

Soon after that it was my birthday, he has never missed my birthday. That year he didn't call. Two weeks later it was fathers day, I didn't call him. I should have but I was immature. I felt justified in my actions. "Why would I call him, he didn't call me on my birthday." He called all my relatives to complain that I didn't contact him for fathers day. My grandma yelled at me, then I explain that he didn't call me on my birthday. She immediately got mad and would say things like "thats not right" or "why would he do that" lol my grandma is hilarious. I know it was wrong of me not to call but at that time in my life I felt like I was right. My mom was one of the people he called. As you read in my previous post about it, she told him how she felt. After that he stopped trying to get a hold of me. 

Every Christmas eve we would get together and go to his side of the family. I will be completely honest with you. I hated going. I was only close with one of his siblings, her son and his wife. I only knew a few of their names because I only saw them on Christmas. I felt like they were fake. I come from a family that gets together every birthday and all the holidays. My moms side of the family is pretty close, its also pretty small so its easier to get together. I didn't feel like they truly cared about me because they had never made an effort outside of Christmas. In the past couple of years it was different because he was in the hospital for one Christmas, the weather was too bad to drive in the next Christmas. So I decided not to go that year because I hadn't talked to him or anyone on that side of the family for almost 6 months. 

At that point he had had a few surgeries to fix some bed sores. For those of you who don't know what bed sores are, they are basically caused by having pressure in the same spot for too long. Since he had been paralyzed for over 20 years and literally sitting on his butt the entire time, he developed them. The doctors did skin graphs from his legs. They did about 5-6 surgeries. He was having nurses come to his house to change out the bandages and were suppose to be taking care of him. In June a good friend of his went to visit him and stood him up . He noticed that one of the sores was down to the bone. The nurses weren't doing the job they were hired to do. When a bed sore isn't properly cleaned and bandaged it becomes infected. When that happens the infection can spread to the rest of your body. He was put in an assisted living home. He had been in a few of those before to recover after having a surgery so I didn't really think anything of it.

While I was at work one night I received a phone call and was informed that my dad had been given 6 weeks to live. I was shocked, mad, sad, confused. I didn't know how to respond. So after work I called my dad for the first time in over a year. I asked him why he didn't call me himself to tell me. He apologized, I was still mad because I was just informed that someone I love so much had a month and a half left. There were so many thoughts going through my head. I knew I needed to fix our relationship, but had no clue how to. That night while the staff was transferring him into bed, something went wrong and they broke his leg. He was sent to the hospital to get it fixed. The doctor told him they could fix his leg or remove both legs. Removing both legs would have extended his life a little while. It would have removed the infected tissue of the bed sores. He decided to just fix his leg. I decided not to visit him after his surgery. I didn't want my first time seeing him in over a year to be at a hospital. I knew I couldn't handle it. So I waited till he got sent back home. I asked my mom to come with me because she is a great support system. We pulled up and he was outside smoking a cigarette. We went inside and starting playing cribbage. It didn't take long for things to get tense. The way I play is if you are counting your points and miss a few I will tell you, instead of being mean and letting you take less points. He was getting mad and started yelling at me. Right then I knew that I couldn't tell him how I felt. I left after playing just two games with him. 

I was so discouraged. How was I going to tell a dying man how I felt. At this point in my life I was not really walking with God. I would go to church every once in awhile, but I rarely let him in my life. I was living for myself and making my own decisions. I am a very strong person and I can handle a lot, but I was lost. I had no clue how to do this. I prayed hard that night. I gave God control over the situation. He told me to write my dad a letter. Through giving Him control over that area of my life He did so much more. He showed me how He viewed my dad, He changed my heart towards him, I became the person I used to be instead of the selfish person I was choosing to be. I fell in love with God all over again. I would go visit my dad before work. I went to high school with one of the nurses that worked with my dad. I asked her to read to letter to him. He called me later that night and all he said was "Tiffany I love you". Which says so much more in his words. 

During this time I got really close with his twin brother (Cal) who was kind of handling all of my dads affairs. One day I received a phone call from him while I was at work. This was the call I was dreading. I didn't want to answer it. My mind was distracted when I first picked up. He had to repeat it a few times "Tiff....Ted past away this morning". Wait what! "Your cousin, he pasted away this morning".  Cals only son, who had twins on the way. I wont go into details but it was heart breaking. I left work and went straight to his house. I hadn't seen most of that side of the family in years. I didn't know what to expect but I didn't care. I wanted to be there for him. I decided not to tell my dad that my cousin passed away. I didn't want to make matters worse for him. The funeral was hard for many reasons. Unfortunately I wasn't really close with my cousin, but it was still hard to watch my family go through it. 

During this time I went to visit my dad as much as I could. Knowing how much he loved crab legs, my mom, grandma and I brought him Red Lobster. I felt like I was brining him his last supper. He refused to eat the potatoes or the veggies, all he wanted was the crab legs. It didn't take long for the infection to spread to the rest of his body. He was joking around and playing cards on Sunday, falling asleep a lot in his chair on Monday, then bed ridden on Tuesday. I got to his house Tuesday morning and imminently called into work for the rest of the week. At that point I knew he was "actively dying". One of the nurses had put on a Christian music station on the tv, so there was worship going on 24/7. When you are in that state the body reacts in certain ways due to the infection and the drugs you are on. He would sit up randomly and say things that barely made sense. He would sit up say "mommy" and reach out to hug her. She passed away 4 years prior. There was one point where Cal and I were making fun of one of the family members hair styles. My dad really loves the person we were mocking. He started moaning and almost yelling at us. He understood everything that was going on around him, he just couldn't really communicate. I sat by his bed side for hours every day, holding his hand. There was one point where I needed to use the restroom, so my mom held his hand while I was gone. He immediately started moaning. I had to tell him that I would be right back. Then he stopped. Things were good again. 

I spent all day there on Thursday, holding his hand and talking to him. My mom was with me the entire time. I left around 7 and she stayed. I had to work at 6 the next morning and wasn't feeling well. She stayed for a few hours reading the bible and praying with him. Because of the state he was in he couldn't move his head, so she got into his line of site and said to him "things are good with you and Tiff, you can let go now". The next morning at work I was talking with a few of my co-working about it. They asked me how he was doing and how I was handling it. I said "As much as I don't want to loose him, I hate to see him in pain. I don't want him to suffer anymore. I want him to go and be in peace." Not even 5 minutes later I got the phone call. "Tiff, your dads gone". 

Through all of this the Lord has done so much in my life. I gave him access to one part of my heart and He cleaned house. He brought me back to the person I was created to be. He restored my relationship with my dad, and his side of the family. He taught me to be quick to forgive. He also showed me that in relationships its not about being right or wrong, its about truly honoring the other person. Even writing this post was hard. I felt like I was talking bad about him. When I look back, I don't see the hurt. I only see the good things. I see God in it all. 

I wouldn't have joined YWAM if it wasn't for all of this. I wouldn't be the person I am today. As painful as all of it was, I am so grateful that God not only redeemed me, but he restored my past, present and future. 

"The Lord redeems the life of his servants; none of those who take refuge in him will be condemned." Psalm 34:22 

Phillip Nicholas Prise 01/13/52-11/04/11