The Bridge

Forty years ago, nearly to the day, I boarded an early morning flight to Miami with my one-month-old daughter. We would return to Gainesville that evening. I’d left my two preschool sons with their father, who was to be relieved by a babysitter mid-morning so he could get to his office.

Having explored every variable of a day trip, I packed her diaper bag with four changes of clothes and twenty newborn diapers. I included a change for myself, too—little ones can be hazardous to a wardrobe at the most inappropriate times, and I wanted us to look our best when we reached the hospital.

The logistics worked perfectly. The flight was only half full, and a sympathetic attendant gave me an entire row of three seats. I snuggled and nursed my infant for an hour, closing my eyes to lightly doze as only an exhausted mother can. When we touched down in Miami, I changed her quickly and fastened her into the carrier on my chest, cupping one hand gently against her head, to hold it steady.

The car pickup was a breeze. The infant seat was already installed in the back, and we were soon on our way to my parents’ home in southwest Miami—the house where I’d lived from age eight until I left for college.

My mother and I had spoken daily since Christmas, when I’d last visited with my then-husband and sons. I was eight months pregnant. While an ultrasound predicted a third boy, my father insisted it was a girl. He was weak, having come home from the hospital just before the holiday, determined to spend it with his family: two daughters, two sons-in-law, and four grandsons. Everyone hoped for that little girl.

My father had been ill for over a decade. A lifetime of heavy smoking had led to severe congestive heart failure, but the foundation of his decline was the thirteen months he spent as a German POW during WWII. There, he was deprived of food and bore witness to relentless torture—a period of sustained trauma. He was a navigator for nighttime bombing missions over Europe and North Africa, in the Allied attempt to control of the Mediterranean arena. One night his plane was shot down over Yugoslavia, and he was struck by gunfire as he parachuted to earth. He carried shrapnel in his back and seat for the rest of his life, a constant physical reminder.

He suffered from damaged organs and digestive issues stemming from severe malnutrition. Nightmares shook him awake for decades. Often, the light in his bedroom burned through the night as he sat up reading and smoking. Today, we call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, but that label—and the treatment for it—didn’t emerge until distressed and troubled Vietnam veterans pushed for treatment. PTSD wasn’t a recognized diagnosis until 1980. By then, my father was one of the legions of soldiers who had spent a lifetime self-medicating with alcohol to lock the horrors away.

In 1973, my mother went to war with the Veterans Administration. She fought to force them to recognize his illnesses as service-connected so he could qualify for benefits. Watching that battle taught me everything I know about strength and tenacity. By his mid-fifties, he was too ill to work, and my mother feared they would be buried in medical bills. The fight took years, but he was eventually granted a 100% disability rating. He began receiving Social Security Disability and Veterans benefits. As a dependent I received a small monthly check that I saved for my college tuition.

My mother, who had worked full-time since my first day of elementary school, had taken the day off for our visit. She had prepared tuna salad sandwiches and iced tea, her excitement palpable—she hadn’t met this little girl yet, either. As I ate, she admired her granddaughter. I was still getting used to the baby’s name: Michelle. We had been so certain of a third son that we hadn’t given much thought to a girl’s name until she arrived.

Eventually, my mother checked her watch and suggested we start the drive to the VA hospital in downtown Miami. As I navigated the highway, I told her I couldn’t wait to see his reaction when he finally met Michelle.

My mother looked out the window and sighed. “I don’t know how he’ll be,” she said quietly. “He may not be awake, or he may not even recognize you. He’s been drifting in and out.” She explained that he had become mostly non-responsive. “They have him on so much medication, I don’t think he really knows when I’m there.”

It wasn’t until we reached the nurse’s station that I realized my father was in a ward reserved for dying. I had assumed he was in a semi-private room and was stunned when the charge nurse told me the baby could not go in. She even advised against me going in myself. Looking back, I realize a few of those men were likely dying of AIDS—a new, terrifying disease that, at the time, still had no approved protocols or treatment.

Undeterred, I asked if he could be brought out in a wheelchair. The nurse quietly shook her head. “We can’t do that,” she said, glancing at my mother as if to scold her for not warning me. In that look, I realized either my father had suffered a devastatingly sudden decline, or my mother hadn’t actually visited him recently. Either way, I was determined to see him.

Other nurses gathered, drawn by the baby. I handed Michelle to my mother, who sat down and was instantly surrounded by women whispering and cooing in the unmistakable, calming voices of mothers and grandmothers. I followed the charge nurse into the ward.

I stayed close to her as we walked to the far end of the large room, passing men tethered to heart monitors and oxygen tanks. The mechanical hums, the low moans, and the clinical cocktail of sickness, decay, and antiseptic became hardwired into my memory. I heard the death rattle for the first time. I was afraid to make eye contact, afraid to acknowledge their finality. I kept my eyes on the nurse until we reached my father.

He was in a bed next to a window. When I greeted him, he turned to look at me, struggling to recognize who I was. I sat in a chair and began to talk. I told him about Michelle and how I had tried to bring her in to meet him but wasn’t allowed.

I suppose I had hoped for one last compelling conversation. We had always dissected the world together—from deciphering the enigmatic lyrics of “MacArthur Park” to figure out who ‘left the cake out in the rain,’ or debating who was the superior songwriter: Johnny Cash or Bob Dylan. Before my trip to Europe and the Middle East in 1980, we conducted a thorough examination of Poland, focused on the occupation and the annihilation of six million people during the war.

“How does something like the Warsaw Ghetto happen?” I asked over a pot of fresh coffee in the kitchen. “Could that occur here, in the US?” He explained how slowly and deliberately rights can be stripped from citizens under the guise of ‘safety’ or ‘for our own good.’

But that day in the hospital, I realized those conversations were over. It hit me then: this man who taught me to love reading, to drive a car and change a tire, to use a hammer, to curse, drink black coffee, and to always, always question authority—was dying.

“Susie,” my father said after a lengthy silence. He was the only person on the planet who used this nickname. His voice was slow, deliberate, and quiet. He was afraid. As death drew closer, he fought against it, convinced he was a “bad man” doomed to an eternity in Hell.

He spoke of his actions in the war, his indiscretions, and the people he’d hurt, especially my mother. He regretted his inability to be a faithful husband or a good father. Though he claimed to be agnostic, at the edge of death he retreated into the rigid teachings of his youth, gripped by a firm belief in a literal Heaven and Hell.

I did my best to alleviate his fears, but he was too remote for comfort. He asked me to come back the next day. I reminded him I was flying home that evening to my sons, Jacob and Danny. He told me to take care of my family; that there was nothing more important.

“I guess this is goodbye, then,” he said. By then, tears were streaming down my face. He turned back to the window. “I’m not going to be here much longer, but you’ll know when I go.”

He drifted off to sleep. I looked at my watch; I’d been with him for forty-five minutes. My last visit with my father was over in a flash, yet it felt like a heavy, enormous expanse of time.

Twenty days later, I sat in the front seat of my car in the early pre-dawn morning on Paynes Prairie. I held my eldest son, four-year-old Jacob, on my lap, both of us shivering slightly in the damp Florida air as we scanned the horizon for a glimpse of Halley’s Comet. My father, who navigated by the stars on nighttime bombing missions had looked forward to this astronomical event for years, but I knew he’d never see it from that hospital window.

Suddenly, a bright light streaked across the sky, cutting through the darkness of the savanna. In that moment, I knew he was gone.

This year, I am the same age as my father when he died. My children only know their grandfather through my stories and faded photographs. Forty years later, I still find myself wishing he were here—to share one more pot of coffee and talk about life for a while.

---