Expressing love to parents no longer taken for granted

As a kid, the thought of going a day without having my parents in my life never dawned on me.

I never even entertained it as a possibility -- although there were many times when my youthful stubbornness could have done just fine without them. If I had a dollar for every time an escalation of emotions ended with me wishing mayhem upon one -- or both -- of my parents, I'd probably be able to enter the $10,000 Main Event at the World Series of Poker every year between now and, oh, 2031.

There are those who grow up without one of their parents. When she was a teenager, my ex-wife lost her mother to cancer. My brother-in-law lost his father when he was young as well.

Earlier this week, my dad entered the hospital to have a lap band tied around his stomach, a rather serious procedure designed to help him do something he's been trying to do for a good chunk of the last 20 years -- lose weight.

It was during the agonizing three hours waiting to hear how things went, though, that I faced the reality that the day may come soon when I will be without one of my parents.

Dad has been battling his weight for a long, long time. When I was growing up, he was never FAT, per se -- but you could tell it had been a while since he'd missed a meal.

My parents divorced in 1986, and it was soon after that he went on this health kick that left me asking one question -- who was this guy and what the hell did he do with my dad?

Dad was eating right. He stopped drinking. He was walking somewhere close to the equivalent of a round-trip journey from Omaha to Sioux City -- EVERY FREAKING DAY. He went through so many pair of tennis shoes, he got thank-you cards from the folks at Nike for years on end.

By the time I got married, dad was in probably the best shape of his life. He weighed the same weight that he was at in high school. Seeing the two of us standing together the day of my wedding, it was really hard to tell which one of us was the best-looking member of the Carnes family.

Then came the 90's. My dad stopped doing the things he had been doing to take care of himself.

He and I didn't speak to one another -- civilly, anyway -- for three years due to a family argument run amok. When I did finally call him to mend fences, we met at a Wendy's in Lincoln that had been a favorite family place to go and eat on our trips to the big city. And I will never forget the day he pulled into the restaurant and got out of his car. Had he not had his "CARNES" vanity license plate attached to the 1988 black Baretta he was driving at the time, I'd have never known it was him.

He was easily twice as big as he was the last time I'd seen him -- and he's been like that ever since.

It hasn't been for lack of effort, though. Diets, exercise, divine intervention -- he tried about everything you could think of, but to no avail. He'd lose 20 or 30 pounds, but it would just come back. Up until just before his recent surgery, he wouldn't tell anybody what he weighed, but my conservative guess was somewhere on the wrong end of 300 pounds.

There were many times when he and I would be engaged in something requiring physical activity (moving me from town to town, mostly). Many was the time when I all but had to hog-tie dad to keep him from overdoing it. The mind was going where the body wasn't about to go, and I could just see him dropping dead while trying to pick up a box.

A couple of months ago, he told me that he was going to have surgery to have a lap band tied to his stomach, which would effectively shrink the space in his stomach, making him "feel full" faster and -- as logic goes -- eat less.

His surgery earlier this week went well -- although the delay in the start of the procedure was enough to almost drive me to the point where my DAUGHTER was going to be without one of her parents.

"No news is good news" was one of the remarks a co-worker said in an effort to try and talk me off the ledge, so to speak. That did little to curb my growing concern and the sudden barrage of "what if?" questions that were creeping into my mind as I tried to work through some annuity contracts at Pacific Life.

What really troubled me, though, was the fact that I had talked to my dad earlier that morning. We talked for about five minutes, and we joked about what was about to take place and how he was going to be good as new -- but not once did I tell him that I loved him.

When Kylie and I are together or talk on the phone, the conversation always ends with her saying, "I love you, Daddy" and "I love you too, Kylie." Even when the topic of discussion isn't a pleasant one, it always ends the same.

My parents and I don't share that greeting often enough. It's not that they don't love me (and vice versa). Far from it -- but for some strange and inexplicable reason, we seem to end conversations ASSUMING that the love is there. It is, of course -- but it's almost always implied and almost never expressed.

It really bothered me, as I stood two steps short of a full-scale meltdown, that the last thing I said to my dad wasn't that expression of love. "See you after surgery," I believe, was my closing remark.

What if I was wrong? What if, perish the thought, something dreadful happened and he died right there on the table? How do you walk around the rest of your life knowing that you had a WIDE OPEN chance to tell your dad how much you cared about him, and all you could muster was a lame, see-you-on-the-other-side remark?

I made it a point, as we left the hospital that night and I hugged him in his bed, to let my dad know that I do love him. That it took telling him as he laid in a half-groggy state in a hospital bed -- I suppose -- beats telling it to his lifeless body after he's gone to the afterlife, but you can bet that the next time I let ALL of my family know how much I love them all won't be so long in coming.

I've tried not to think about it, but I'm fully aware now that the day will come when all the older adult influences in my life will have passed on. It's a guarantee, though, that they won't leave without knowing how much they mean to me.