In a rare occurrence, the four Konnor kids are gathered here around my dad’s bed. The nurses and doctors have told us to expect dad to die in the next day or two, so we’ve all silently agreed that we need to stay here, or probably more accurately to not leave at least for the moment. I haven’t seen my dad lucent for quite a while. For a long time now I’ve been focused on the things he used to say to me, and to others. When he spoke his message of faith and hope to pro athletic teams, a ministry he started with another man named Ira Eshelman, I used to hear him talk anecdotally about many things. Frequently at the end he would cite Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”.
In the end, after her death, Emily is given the chance to go back to one day in her life. She can see what’s going on around her but it’s as if she’s watching a film of the characters, including her beloved mother. They cannot hear her. Emily chose to go back to the best day she could remember in her life, her sixteenth birthday. Her mother is busy in the kitchen making preparations for a little party and making sure everything is perfect for her girl. Emily repeats for her to stop; “stop all that you’re doing so that I can tell you why I love you and that all of this is insignificant in comparison…” But her mother can’t hear her and continues on.
I always understood the lesson but it has never been more obvious to me than tonight; that time is fleeting and the most important thing in the end is not the superfluous preparations of special days but rather the relationships you formed with the ones you loved. Every time I left this forsaken place I told my dad I love him. Still, I wish he would open his eyes and look at me just one more time.
As for the rest of the rather small group of people I truly love, Emily didn’t have the opportunity to say what she felt until it was too late, I do. Of the million or so lessons I learned from my dad, this is one that he emphasized time and again; that life is ultimately fleeting so be sure you pay attention to the things that last, namely the rarity of love. For him it was his children, and he never failed to communicate to me or the others in this room that he loved us, not only in the little note he slipped us at church but more importantly through his actions of always, always being there for us.
I’m sure if there were an internet in my dad’s day he would have logged onto it every night not out of some conscious effort, but because instilled in him was the desire, to send each of us here a note, the actual content while important, would be subordinate to the subtext which would say softly, in the white space of the page “I love you and I’m here for you.”
