Mention 9/11 to
anyone and you’ll get a predictable negative reaction. Even after sixteen
years, people still remember where they were and what they were doing when they
heard the news of the first airplane crashing into the World Trade Center. It’s
a shocking day that will live forever in American history. Although I lived
just a few miles from the Pentagon on that fateful day, each September brings
different memories to my mind.
When I think of
September 11th, I think of the same day ten years ago when my father-in-law
passed away. Rich Walker was a wonderful man. Kind, funny, hard-working,
devoted to his wife of fifty years, his four sons, and their families. His second
son, Dana, was born on September 10th. Although he was in a coma at
home with Hospice after a failed heart valve replacement surgery and years of
struggling with Parkinson disease, we think Dad waited until September 11th
to take his last breath so he wouldn’t leave a somber reminder every year on
Dana’s birthday. He was just that kind of a man, so thoughtful. I can’t believe
he’s been gone ten years.
Eleven years ago on
September 25th, my own father left mortality. Richard Meldrom had
been bedridden for a few years with a form of dementia called Binswanger’s
disease. He had numerous strokes that eroded his ability to do even the basics
for himself. When he had another stroke in early September, 2006, which left
him unable to swallow, we knew his time was short. My two brothers and I
traveled to see him. Miraculously this took place when my brother Ethan was
home for a few weeks from his year-long Air Force deployment in South Korea.
When I arrived at Dad’s bedside, my mom told me Dad was unresponsive, but as I
leaned down to kiss his sunken cheek as he lay curled in a fetal position, I
took his hand in mine and felt a tiny squeeze in response, even though he
couldn’t speak. It was if he had been waiting to see each of his children one
last time. He died the next day.
And this September
marks one more goodbye. Not one of death, but one that leaves an ache in my
heart nonetheless. My daughter Meilin turns eighteen today. The daughter I
longed for and went all the way to China to adopt. The precocious, beautiful,
brilliant child who filled a special place in my heart, even after God blessed
me with four wonderful sons. I needed that rosy-cheeked orphan as much as she
needed me.
But now Meilin doesn’t
need me anymore because she’s a college student at NC State University, my alma
mater. It was so hard to leave her at her residence hall last month and then
get in a moving van and drive across the country to our new home in Utah. Just
like that, my baby girl is grown up, but she’s not just a short drive down the
road from our former home in Holly Springs, NC. Now I can only see her at
Christmas break and maybe next summer unless she decides to study abroad. This
goodbye probably hurts most of all. Yes, they grow up, but do they have to do
it so quickly?
Happy birthday,
Meilin.
