When a giant falls, the earth shudders.

You might have noticed that there has been a pretty big gap in my blog entries between mid-summer of 2009 and early summer of 2010.

On the afternoon of July 31, 2009 I was working in my office when my mother called my cell phone and said "Wade, you dad has fallen at work and hit his head.  They think he's going to be okay, but they're taking him to the hospital just to be sure."  I told her that I wasn't working on anything too important at the office and that I would head toward the hospital.  I told a few folks at work that I was going to leave a little early and that my dad had fallen and started making my way to the hospital--about an hour drive away.

Within 15 minutes, my mom called back, in tears and said that the situation was worse than they had originally thought and that they were going to airlift him to Methodist hospital in Indianapolis, a bigger hospital with more resources.  My heart sank and I turned left on Capitol Avenue.  I was closer to that hospital and I knew that I would be the first of my family and friends to arrive.  I had some time to think...

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My father was always a scrappy kind of giant.  He wasn't very tall.  Most would describe him that way--scrappy.  As a child he played little league baseball.  In high school he ran track.  He carried papers, stacked hay, and was industrious.  He was known as a hard worker, focused on his family and an all around nice guy.  I take a lot of my physical characteristics from my mother's side of the family, so by the time I was in high school I towered over him, but I never had to wonder who was the more powerful force in this father-son relationship.  He was stronger than me in every way--physically and emotionally.

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Before long, my best friend, who lives near the hospital, showed up with a bottle of water and a cell phone charger.  He's one of those guys who is always thinking and planning ahead and he knew that I'd need to be hydrated and that I would probably need to charge my phone.  He's a great guy.  He and I started talking about what might have happened to my dad while we waited for the sound of the helicopter on the roof and waited for my mother to arrive.  The strange and surreal conversation included a lot of postulation about how my dad, who was at work selling cars at the local dealership, might have fallen and injured his head so badly that he needed to be airlifted to the hospital.  We wondered if he had fallen down the stairs or had been in the shop area.  It didn't make sense.  A car salesman isn't usually exposed to many typical workplace risks that would result in a serious fall.

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My dad spent the first twenty plus years of his life as a self-employed electrician.  He and I spent a lot of time working together.  I helped him pull wire through the walls of houses.  I helped him dig ditches for cables that connected televisions to satellite dishes.  We worked in the garden together.  My dad was famous for climbing utility poles without safety harnesses.  More than once I saw him standing on the top rung of an extension ladder, leaning too far out to reach some live electrical connection and working on a farmer's grain dryer in a way that would make any safety inspector cringe in fear.  He was often a daredevil on the job but was never seriously injured.  In fact, he went more than 30 years without going to the doctor at all.  He never got sick and never got hurt.

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I called my sister, who was just checking into the hotel for her first day of a well-deserved vacation.  She and her husband had driven several hours and were just starting to unpack their bags when I called to tell them that dad was hurt and that should be on stand-by.  I didn't know how bad the situation was yet, but we were waiting on the helicopter to arrive and the doctors to start giving us an idea of how badly he had been injured.

My mother arrived and, over the next hour, several friends, family members and dad's coworkers started filling up the emergency room's waiting room.

It was about an hour before the helicopter arrived.  The helicopter ride should have taken about 10 minutes.  It took the doctors at the first hospital almost an hour to stabilize him to the point that the airlift would even be possible.

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While owning his own business in the same area of Indiana for over 30 years, Dad made a lot of friends and contacts.  We used to joke that he knew "everybody and their brother."  It only made sense that when dad realized that the satellite dish and electrical contracting business was drying up that he should do something that relied on the many contacts he had made over the years.  He briefly considered real estate, but quickly started selling cars.  It was a good "retirement job" for him because it wasn't very physically draining and his relationships with many people were already built on trust--trust that can make the experience of purchasing a car much less stressful on the seller and buyer.

That Friday afternoon in July, dad was working on selling cars during the "cash for clunkers" promotion that was part of the government's fiscal stimulus package of 2009.  The car dealership was very busy and in order to help car salesmen get to customers on the lot, they were riding on golf carts from place to place around the dealership.  One of my dad's close friends was driving one of the golf carts while my dad was riding on the back where the golf bags and clubs are supposed to ride, when he fell backward and hit his head.  The cart didn't hit any bumps, nor did it swerve, my dad just simply fell back and fractured his skull, badly, in several places.

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Eventually I was allowed to go back into the emergency room and see my dad.  It was a gruesome sight.  He was intubated and was bruised almost beyond recognition.  He was unconscious--he would remain that way. Mom and I held his hand while we waited for doctors and nurses to give him various IV medications and perform tests.  Several hours later my sister had made the drive back from their interrupted vacation.  We started a three day process of greeting visitors and making phone calls to family and loved ones.  We didn't sleep for almost 72 hours and when we did it was fitful, brief and full of nightmares.  We were surrounded by support from friends and strangers.  We lived in a hospital room and used a nearby hotel room as a base of operations for receiving grim updates from doctors and sharing those updates on dad's condition via phone and internet.

By Sunday night we all realized that dad was not going to survive his injuries and we had many tearful and difficult conversations with doctors, social workers and grief counselors.  We were in the process of making the difficult decision to remove life support and allow my dad's life to come to an end.  On Monday morning, after we all slept a few hours, we gathered up dad's grandchildren, we asked the nursing staff to make him look as normal as possible by removing all but the most critical tubes and medical gear and we brought his three granddaughters in to say goodbye to their Papaw.  They were too little to completely grasp the situation, but I believe that they understood what was happening.

After the girls went home with a dear friend, my mother, my sister and her husband, my wife and I sat and held dad's hand and stroked his forehead while the ventilator and all life support was removed.  It wasn't like what you see in the movies.  The heart monitor didn't flat line.  His battered brain tried to keep his dying body alive.  He breathed, agonally, for about two hours.  During those two hours we said very little to one another. The few words were limited to a strange mix of reminiscing about the best times in our lives and giving each other obvious updates on the heart monitor that was hanging right in front of everyone.  When he stopped breathing in the early afternoon, my mother was stroking his head, my sister was holding his left hand and I was holding his right hand and we cried.

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In my meditation practice I often focus on my breath.  During these three days my "flirting with Buddhist practice" became solidified.  While at the hospital, I took several opportunities to slip away and meditate in the chapel or patient consultation rooms.  I found myself taking deep, focused breaths while talking on the phone to my dad's brothers and sister--it helped to keep the tears from coming and allowed me to share important information more clearly.  At one point, in a moment of humor, my mom said "Son, you're handling this well.  You're like Stephen-freaking-Seagal!  Is this a Buddhist thing you're doing?"

During these three earth shattering days, I realized that Buddhism and my meditation practice were going to be key to dealing with this situation and, most likely, a lifetime of other important events.  For two hours on the early afternoon of August 3rd, I silently meditated with my dying father and my family.  I was focused on dad's breath until it stopped coming and going.  I have been focusing on mine ever since.

Namaste.

Phillip Maurice Wingler
September 17, 1949 - August 3, 2010