JUNE 2018 - Twenty years ago this month, I talked to my dad for the very last time.
I was a busy 35-year-old with a wife and 21-month old son, active in my church and working full-time as the Feature Editor at the Rome News-Tribune. I decided to buy my dad an electric razor for Father's Day that year. He had gotten tired of his old soap, brush and Gillette blades.
I woke up that Sunday morning, got dressed for church and then remembered that I had not bought the razor. Crap! It would be OK. The only thing my dad really wanted was to see Ethan, who had become the center of my dad's attention since he'd been born. We'd take Ethan over, eat lunch or dinner with my folks and let him enjoy his only grandchild. Crisis averted. I would buy the razor the next week and give it to him.
I never got the chance.
Two days after Father's Day, 1998, my mom called. Something was wrong with my dad. I called 911, hopped in my truck and sped over, beating the ambulance there. He was sitting on the side of his bed, clearly not well.
"Are you OK, Daddy?"
"It's gonna be a bad day, Bill."
Those were his last words. By the time he got to the hospital, the bleeding aneurysm in my dad's brain had put him in a coma. He died a couple of days later, after the doctors and nurses told us he had no brain activity and my mom and I made the agonizing decision to remove life support.
I won't ever forget that day. What I had forgotten, until this week, was the column I had written in the newspaper a couple of weeks later. I found it this week. I read the words, now 20 years old, and cried, missing my dad, but thankful that I was privileged to have had a job that allowed me to chronicle moments like this.
I'm reprinting those words here for two reasons. First, I don't think Ethan has ever read this, and I think he'd appreciate them. Second, I don't want you to forget your dad this week. There's no guarantee that your dad will be around next Father's Day or even next Wednesday. Don't put off buying him a gift, spending time with him or telling him you love him.
Loss of husband, father, grandfather will be deeply felt
Ethan walked through the door and looked toward the bedroom where my parents had slept for the past 13 years.
"Papa?" he called out, his big blue eyes wide with expectation. When no answer came, he toddled off toward the kitchen. "Papa?" he said again. Still now answer.
"Ethan, c'mere buddy," I said to my son, kneeling to his level. He came closer and looked toward me, puzzled.
"Remember the other day when Papa got sick? Well, Papa had to go to heaven, and he can't come back," I told him.
Through all the tears that I've cried, through the gut-wrenching pain I feel in the pit of my stomach, the hardest part of losing my daddy was trying to help my 21-month-old understand that Papa is gone.
Papa was Ethan's number one fan. From the day his only grandchild entered this world my daddy beamed with pride. His 66-year-old joints popped and creaked, but he didn't let that stop him from crawling around on the hardwood floors after Ethan. Emphysema had taken much of his breath, but Papa didn't let that keep him from blowing heartily on Ethan's bare belly.
If he didn't hear a daily status report on him, Papa would call to find out what "his baby" had been doing.
Ethan returned that attention with a giggle and grin every time Papa came into sight.
He would squeal his name as we turned to cross Silver Creek on our way to Papa and Mimi's, and he would stand at the gate of their white picket fence flashing his infectious smile as he waited for Papa's familiar figure to appear in the doorway.
The sight of the two of them together was a little bit of heaven on hearth.
That little piece of heaven died on June 24.
Odis Felton Fortenberry was never elected to any office. He wasn't a member of any civic clubs, and he didn't play golf. He didn't earn any diplomas; he never even learned to read or write. He came into this world poor, the son of a sharecropper, and he left this world poor, retired from a strenuous and dirty job of molding aluminum.
He was my hero.
Without titles, education, achievements or affiliations, Pood, as most all of his family called him, could only be judged at face value. While he had a past of heavy drinking and hard living, there was much in his life of which to be proud.
Over 20 years ago he laid down the bottle at an altar in a Pentecostal church in Waco, Ga. He emerged a man dedicated to God and family with an uncanny ability to memorize scripture despite his illiteracy. He had his occasional stumbles, but that just proved he was human.
It's been a long time since he blew on my belly, but like Ethan, I'm going to miss Papa. I'm going to miss his sense of humor. Daddy was always willing to make a fool of himself for the sake of a laugh, and he used it to challenge people on their beliefs.
When faithless co-workers said they couldn't believe in things they could not see, my dad told them about a flying mouse so strong that he could lift a skyscraper.
"I know it's true because I saw it on TV," my daddy told them with a sly grin.
I'm going to miss his music. He loved to play the "Wildwood Flower" and "Little Brown Jug" on his guitar, and he had a habit of singing a line of a song to illustrate a point.
I'm going to miss his dedication to my mom. Despite the fact that he detested traffic and crowds, he faithfully drove my mother, who does not drive, to discount and grocery stores for most of the nearly 37 years they shared. After he retired, he always had a cup of hot coffee waiting for her when she got home from work, and if there was one biscuit or one slice of cake left, he wouldn't touch it if he thought Mama might want it.
I'm going to miss his retelling of the stories of his indulgence of me. Once when I was about 2, my mother said I refused to obey her. No form of punishment worked, so, in desperation, she put me in the closet for five seconds.
When my dad got home from work, mama told him what she had done, and evidently he lit into her like fire on dry wood.
In the 33 years since, there was seldom a time when the three of us were together that my dad did not jokingly say, "At least I ain't the one that put you in a durned old closet."
The stories go on and on. My favorite, I think, is something I heard my Aunt Connie say to Mama in the hospital waiting room, just after my dad died.
"Y'all were always so close," she said, the tears trailing down her face.
"Louise, when you and Odis married, it wasn't like it was two, it was like it was just one. And then, when Bill was born, it was the same thing.
"It wasn't like it was three, it was just one. Y'all just seemed to love each other so much."
I can't think of a better testimony to my dad.
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