Who Needs A Witness?
It was late summer, and a rainy morning.
I stood in front of my kitchen window with my back to the clock which already had me 15 minutes late to work. Next to me on the counter, both my smartphone and my laptop screens were lit by the PDF copy of the test results detailing the malignant mass in my dad, Redmond’s, kidney.
My dad had just turned 70 and was newly retired when he got the diagnosis. At 35 myself, I knew the man my whole life and half of his. While watching the raindrops pound the window, I didn’t relive our days of playing catch in the yard or laughing equally hard at Looney Tunes cartoons. Instead, my mind’s eye cycled between three memories of my father during my adulthood.
The first event came when I was home visiting my parents during my second year of med school. While giving a heated recap of an exam I had just taken, a piece of the mouthful of broccoli I was talking around dislodged and stuck in my throat. Without taking a beat, my old man stood up and gave me one thrust of the Heimlich, restoring my airway. I was too wrapped up in finishing my story to stop and consider the experience, despite the look of terror on my mom’s face. My dad sat back down and listened while I carried on.
It wasn’t until years later that it occurred to me that my dad was the only person in my family that could have saved me from choking. By that I mean neither my mom nor my sister would physically be able get their arms around me to give me the Heimlich. My dad was the only person who could have fit his arms around me.
A couple years after the broccoli incident, I was directionless and burned-out from my medical training. Needing a break to get back on my feet, I quit a prestigious medical residency program. Rather than solving my problems, the initial result was that I had no connections to the life I had been living since medical school. Completely untethered, I fell further into depression. When I was at my lowest point, my dad showed up at my door and knew what I needed to hear.
“It is just a career.” he said as he hugged me in the doorway, again wrapping his arms around me.
The third memory came in the years after the second, when I moved back home at 28 with a medical degree and no job. My dad knew I had a lot to work through mentally and emotionally, and that getting back on your feet takes more than just getting off your ass.
“Keep talking.” my dad told me.
This time, he figuratively wrapped his arms around me and encouraged me to find myself. Over the next months and years, I learned as much about my dad as I shared with him about myself, and my father and I came to know each other as men.
My dad knew how to engage people from all walks of life, how to take the measure of a person and their circumstance to consider how he could help them. He would have loved to change your tire or give you a ride. He also taught himself complex scientific and economic concepts for fun, then compulsively needed to share what he learned with the next person he saw. Even if he didn’t have it for you in the moment, he would get back to you with an idea, a suggestion, or some reassurance.
This skillset was how my dad built a career as a teacher and mentor. People wanted to know what he thought, what he saw from his perspective. He was the perfect witness when you needed one, and he shared everything with his family, friends, students, and strangers. This was evidenced by all his cheerleaders who reached out from dozens of states and multiple countries with encouragement, love, and reminders of my dad’s presence and kindness and thoughtfulness and curiosity.
My dad could even be his own witness. After a complicated surgery followed by chemotherapy and associated complications, he told my mom he wanted to stick with the treatment plan because he thought it was an interesting experience. When I spoke to him myself, the way he talked about the things he was doing to stay busy told me how much he wanted to beat his illness.
Five months after the morning I stood in my kitchen watching the rain, it was winter, and my dad, Redmond, was dead.
In life and death, my dad taught many of us how to be a witness and a friend. All he would ask of us in return is to consider who in our lives might need some love, encouragement, presence, kindness, thoughtfulness, and curiosity. Who needs a witness?