SOMETIMES I DO

Pt. 1

It so happened that my wife and I were watching, “The Green Mile” when our phone rang, and an RN at the skilled nursing facility notified me that my father had fallen in the bathroom, that he had sustained a stroke, and that he was being transported to the hospital. I thanked her, called my mother, stopped by her house and picked her up, and we joined my now deceased father in a small cubicle in the local E.R.

I recall the last time I saw him alive, and I will always remember the last words we exchanged with one another. My sister, Linda, and I had spent an hour with daddy. And now we were both preparing to leave.

Linda spoke.

“Daddy, I love you.”

And while by now my father looked haggard, and he wore his age like a garment, he smiled, and said,

“I love you too, honey.”

Now it was my turn.

“Daddy, do you love me too?”

Suddenly, the smile on his face was as big as all outdoors, and he responded with,

“Well, sometimes I do!”

Of course, I knew he was just teasing me. And with this, my sister and I stepped out of his small room.

I could not have known this would be the last time I would see him alive.

Pt. 2

My father came along during the Great Depression and like most people of that time period, he experienced some deprivation, grew up helping his dad on the family farm, and only managed to get through the 8^th grade. It was a hard life, and the people of that day and time were more intent on eking out a living, than giving sway to their emotions. As a result, the men of my father’s generation were not prone to verbalize, or demonstrate any degree of affection; (except perhaps, as in my dad’s case, towards their daughters).

But for all of my father’s deficiencies, (and to be sure, there weren’t that many), I knew he loved me, though I would have to “say it first to hear it back.” I honestly don’t recall one time during the sixty years that I knew him that he said, “I love you” first. It simply wasn’t his way.

And yet, I think he was the hardest working man I ever met, and many times he would speak to me before being spoken to. I have a few old black and white photos of daddy and me which were snapped during my toddler days, and which I cannot recall having ever happened.

My father and me standing in the surf of Miami Beach; his large hand firmly gripping my tiny outstretched one. Climbing a two hundred foot mountain of sand in central Florida. Lying next to my him on a day bed; he a strapping young man, and I a curly headed little cherub.

But I knew. I just knew he loved me. He loved me more by his actions than his words. What he lacked in the verbal’s, he more than made up for by his motions. He was a good man; a very good man. And I simply never questioned his love for me.

“Daddy, do you love me too?”

“Well, sometimes I do!”

In the final moments that my father and I spent together, that grin as big as all outdoors gave him away.



I knew he loved me not just some of the time, but

…all of the time.

by William McDonald, PhD. Copyright pending

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