My dad saved someone’s life today. He was in the kitchen at work when a woman started choking, and he gave her the heimlich. I’ve only seen someone administer the heimlich maneuver once in my life, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately.
It was probably ten years ago (scary that I can think of memories in terms of decades) and I was at my oldest friend’s house eating pizza with her and her two sisters (one older, one younger). The little one (about 9 or 10) started choking on a mozzarella stick and the rest of us panicked. Her mother was in the shower getting ready to go out to dinner, and her father wasn’t home yet. The way I remember it we are all crying and the oldest sister is screaming for her parents, and out of thin air her dad is running into the kitchen to save his daughter.
He passed away this summer, their dad, after a long illness during which I never visited. Despite being friends with A since we were 3, I didn’t know her dad very well. He was private, and proud, and worked constantly but I never doubted that he loved his family.
At the same time, he wasn’t a nice man. He was hard on his children and took his wife for granted. He once called my mother a ’stupid woman.’ I can’t forgive that. But he was also A’s dad, and his death was unfair. I would have liked to say goodbye to him, but life got in the way. It shouldn’t have, but there it is. I was too busy with work and friends and my own family to say goodbye to a man I’ve known my whole life. The truth is, I wouldn’t have known what to say. I would have wanted to ask if he regretted the way he’d lived his life, but that’s rude. What is there to say when someone is dying but ‘I’m sorry.’ I’m sorry you were brought up in a culture that devalued women. I’m sorry you spent more time at work than with your family. I’m sorry that you died and left my friend in this horrible place. I’m sorry you were in pain, it shouldn’t have happened like that.
I’m grateful that you were there when it really mattered. And I’ll miss you.
