“Father’s be your daughter’s first love and she will never settle for anything less.”- Unknown
I got the call around midnight that my father had a heart attack.
“It’s serious, you need to come here right away”, my dad’s neighbor urged frantically as she sent me a picture to prove that my father was in this hospital bed.
Surprisingly I accomplished finding myself in this Mexican hospital room 36-hours later unable to rid myself of the antiseptic hospital smell unsuccessfully masking the odors of medications, bodily fluids and other odors I can’t identify.
Looking at this picture on my phone my father would not be happy, he is always clean and impeccably well-groomed and elegant, not the vulnerable man before me now.
“The stroke damaged his brain stem, this is permanent and irreversible,” at that moment the resident’s voice turned into an inaudible faint sound.
“He will wake up”, my inner voice reassuringly consoled me. “Daddy, you said our mind is powerful, we can heal ourselves. I need you to wake up,” I whispered in his ear as I kissed his forehead and I began to hum the first Bolero song he taught me when I was four years old.
“Even in tears, my baby girl, you’re so beautiful.”, four songs later with a loving smile he whispered.
