The chapter in which our daughter goes away and her father cries
Savoring our last morning with Sara before she left for college
My daughter, Sara, is beginning her freshman year at a university a couple hours from us, and last Saturday was her day to move into the dorms.
I had planned to help her move, so weeks ago I lined up a daytime caregiver for my husband, Todd, who has ALS and is paralyzed. However, on the Wednesday before the big day, the caregiver let me know that she was feeling congested. Her symptoms had started a few days earlier, so there was a chance she’d be better by Saturday, but it was iffy. I didn’t want to miss the big milestone, so I scrambled to find backup caregivers.
As I received one “not available” after another, I felt so disappointed at the thought of having to miss this experience. Sara, my oldest child and only daughter, would move into the dorms for the first time only once. I wanted to meet her roommate, help her unpack, and get her set up. But in order for me to go, I needed someone to take care of Todd.
Yet another caregiver responded that she wasn’t available, and I cried.
Finally, I heard back from someone who was available. My tears turned to joy, and preparations for the big day continued.
A special breakfast
Sara was working Monday through Thursday of the week before the move, and she set aside Friday for loading up my husband’s accessible van and my car that she’d be taking to college for the first month.
That Friday morning, she sat at the dining room table to eat toast while her father was in his wheelchair, pulled up to a counter-height folding table, where he sipped coffee from a straw. I was preparing Todd’s breakfast, and our dog, Comet, sat at Sara’s feet under the kitchen table.
“Comet knows you’re going away but doesn’t know why,” Todd said, making a literary reference to A.A. Milne’s “The House at Pooh Corner.” “Why don’t you read the last chapter of the second Winnie-the-Pooh book to Comet?”
Todd had read the original Pooh books to Sara when she was young, using voices for each of the characters.
“Really?” Sara said, gazing down at Comet, who sat up looking expectantly at her until she rubbed his head.
“Dad wants you to read it to him,” I interjected as I sat next to Todd to feed him his breakfast.
After Sara finished eating, she retrieved the book from a bookshelf in her bedroom, where she keeps some of her favorite childhood memorabilia. She opened it to Chapter 10, “In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There.”
She read the first line: “Christopher Robin was going away.”
Tears formed in my eyes, and Sara looked at me. “I’m OK,” I said. “Keep going.”
“Should I do the voices?” Sara asked.
“Of course,” Todd said.
She continued reading about how Christopher Robin’s friends in the forest knew that he was going away, and Rabbit arranged for a meeting. Eeyore wrote a poem, and Sara read it in a slow, monotone voice.
The other animals then left, and Christopher Robin and Pooh made their way to Galleons Lap on the top of the forest, with 60-something trees in a circle.
In a clipped British accent, Sara read of Christopher Robin telling Pooh, “What I like doing best is Nothing.”
Tears rolled down Todd’s cheeks, and his face turned red.
“How do you do Nothing?” Pooh asked.
“Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, What are you going to do, Christopher Robin, and you say, Oh, nothing, and then you go and do it.”
Christopher Robin explained to Pooh that he wasn’t going to do nothing anymore because, “They don’t let you.”
Sara paused, taking notice of her father crying. She and I began to cry, too.
Sara pressed ahead, reading until the last line. She could barely get it out.
“I’ve never been able to read that last line without getting choked up,” Todd said.
Sara finally got the words out: “But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.”
Wherever Sara goes, no matter how her father’s ALS progresses, we will always savor our last morning with Sara before she went away.
Sara with her dad. (Courtesy of Kristin Neva)
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