Mom called, Dad is gone. It had only been a few days since I saw him in the hospital. I assured her I would be there as soon as I could get myself ready and find someone to take care of my advertising clients with the Shopper.
The day was a blur of activities, phone calls and tears; finally late in the afternoon I had made all the arrangements for someone to handle my job, I was packed and ready. I knew this was going to be an emotional time. The drive to Los Banos was filled with remembering as I thought about this beloved man I call Dad. I was six when they married and that was 40 years ago.
Tears and hugs upon arriving from the few family members that had gathered. One of my daughters had driven from San Francisco. Mom, bless her heart wanted me to immediately help her pick out Dad’s clothes. So we moved to their bedroom and stood in front of the open doors of the closet looking through his shirts and suits. I feel a wave of dizziness, mom also sways, I catch her and as I do I see the hanging lamp moving. “Mom, we have just had a little earthquake.” “No, No, we don’t have earthquakes here; your dad is trying to tell me something.” At that moment she passes out.
We quickly pick her up, all 98 lbs and put her in the car and drive to the emergency. While they are checking all her vital signs and making sure she is OK. I am in the waiting room panicked, knowing she has had heart problems in the past. While all this emotional energy going on inside me I hear on a portable radio that there has been a huge earthquake in San Francisco.
The hospital gives my mother a sedative, assures us it is just shock and stress. We take her home and put her to bed. Then we turn on the television and are stunned. We are seeing live footage that is being broadcast in the moment from the helicopters that were filming the World Series at Candlestick Park. We watch a car plunging in the ocean, the results of the collapse of the bay bridge. We see rubble everywhere, buildings burning, the terror on people faces and hear the emotional broadcaster repeating that is it a magnitude 6.9 on a section of the San Andreas fault, the Loma Prieta near Santa Cruz. The images are shocking and they continue to repeat them over and over, adding new and more shocking footage as the minutes go by. Finally they announce it was a magnitude of 7.1.
I am beyond emotional, my dad has just passed, and my mother is fragile and she might no withstand her loss. I don’t know about the well being and safety of my other daughter and grandsons. If this earthquake took down a bridge 75 miles away, and destroyed huge buildings, I have probable lost my home which is close to the epicenter. In this brief moment in time I might have lost everything. Looking back I realized that I was in shock as I watched the news broadcast until it went off the air, seeing the images of the bridge collapse, the fires, devastation, and hearing the panic in the newscaster’s voice over and over again.
Early the next morning I received a call, my family was safe and our home was still standing. They reported that the inside was a total mess with piles of broken dishes, books and treasures, amazingly no broken windows or visible damage.
We buried my dad; I helped my mom with the basic things with the promise of coming back soon. It was ten days before my return to my beloved home; the area looked like a war zone. I was an emotional zombie for weeks, frightened and scared to go upstairs. Even today the slighted tremor invokes that fright followed with sadness. They are somehow emotionally intertwined.
It was months later that I had the realization that my dad’s passing might have saved my life and my daughters. I would have been in the stores and on the streets that day because Tuesday was my day to contact clients on the Pacific Garden mall. My daughter worked in one of the high rises severely damaged. Dad knew he was dying, and in that space between life and death was he aware of what was coming and did he choose to make his transition knowing it would remove us both from the danger. I want to believe this is true.
By Peggy Black
©2009 Peggy Black All Right Reserved. http://www.peggyblack.com
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