My dad is 89 and 5 months.  As with young children, so, too, with the aged, the months matter.  89 is different than 89-1/2 which is different from 90.  The body ages as rapidly at that age as kids develop between the ages of 6 months and 3 years-old.

Today, after seeing my son’s Spring Festival performance, my father experienced chest pains, elevated blood pressure and dizziness and presented with a pallor suggestive of serious heart failure.  He had to be taken by ambulance to my sister’s hospital.  Of course, I knew that it had to be serious in order for my father to expose my son to this episode.  Still, as a mother, I thought, “you couldn’t catch a cab outside?”  Imagine my thinking my father should grip his heart in a state of distress and schlep out to Amsterdam Avenue to go to the hospital lest my 7.5 year-old child be exposed to trauma.  The power of motherhood is that you think these thoughts.  Fortunately, my psychotic moment gave way to remorse and the knowledge that if I didn’t repent, my mother — in Heaven — would send a lightning bolt to warn me to tread carefully.  (Our Seder theme this Passover is “where is there evidence of a loving G-d in the Hebrew Bible?”; however, wrath of G-d or Mom can really keep a person in line.)  Of course, my dad would never subject his grandson to trauma if he could avoid it.

My dad is ok.  I called my son (through his baby sitter’s cell phone) to tell him that Grandpa is okay.  “I was worried about Grandpa, E-Mom,” he told me, “but I really did a good job in the play!!”  I want to cry because my son can accept (and yet not understand) the simple and the complex simultaneously and in the same priority, in a way only children can (as long as they feel safe).

My dad has low thresholds of pain and discomfort so I thought this was one of those false alarms.  Still seething slightly from having my son subjected to an emergency, I kept in “radio-contact” with my sister, the doctor, who was in the ER with Dad, but I didn’t drop everything and run to his side, as I had done so many times before.  Then, all of a sudden, I thought, “I am being selfish and petty and he will die.”  As I was about to run up to the hospital, my sister called to say he was being discharged and it was something, just not a heart attack (even though my father is technically in heart failure).

I called Dad about 45 minutes later.  He was discombobulated; he hung up on me and then when I called back he didn’t realize what had happened.  I called my sister, who called him.  I waited.  I called again.  He was fine and he said, “I just spoke to POB [partner of blogger].  FOPOB [Father of POB] asked me to tell her that [insert random information].”  Ok, all is back to normal.  My Dad is my Dad.

SOB [sister of blogger] is calling BOB [brother of blogger].  Maybe he should come visit sooner rather than later.

When my Mom died in early 2003 at age 76, I made my father promise he would love until 120 (like Moses).  He would just have to make up the difference.  Life is unfair that way.  But I am starting to understand what that entails.  My father always tried to be there for his children, even if it wasn’t always what his children wanted or demanded or expected.  That is the way — we are the parents we always wanted to our children and our children will be the parent they always wanted to their children, and so on and so on.  Neither our parents nor we will be the parents that our children wanted.  That is the human condition.

If I relieve my Dad of his promise, will he think that he is dying?  Will he go more quickly because his promise is forgiven?  How can I tell him it is ok to let go when I really don’t want to lose him?  And it is not time for him to let go.  Life is more constrained than it was, but it is not the end game yet.

So, now I hope he makes it to 90 in good health.  Ok, Dad, just 90.  120 is negotiable.  But less than 90, that is a deal-breaker.  Are we clear?