MY LAST GOOD-BYE TO MY DAD AND MY RED SLED

Today, my plans were turned upside down. Once my Darfur lobby appointment was cancelled for December 17 with U.S. RI Representative Patrick Kennedy, I could stop studying the points to be made to the constituents prior to meeting with Patrick for Monday morning. I already had emailed all the important “asks” to Patrick’s office Friday, so I simply asked the scheduler to forward them to Patrick in Washington, D.C. because some of the things are to be up for a vote Monday. Although it has taken me since February 2007 to land this lobby meeting, I wasn’t upset with the change in plans for now. We will be rescheduled after I go to New Hampshire to volunteer in the Derry, New Hampshire Barack Obama campaign office through January 9.

So the big decision to be made after going to the Doctor’s this morning and getting a prescription costing $109 ~ a bottle, 1 inch high and ½” in diameter of ear drops ~ I decided NOT to buy a Christmas tree. I spent hours this afternoon decking the house out though. I cut lots of branches from my juniper trees in the back yard, put them in a bucket of water. Cut holly branches complete with the red berries. Got out all the Christmas stuff.

While in the attic, I saw the little red sled from my Indiana childhood, that my dad had repainted red with my name across the middle wood slat and transported to Rhode Island years ago when mom and dad traveled a lot by a 32 foot motor home. Great! I thought. Dad can be here in my decoration scene. My dad died May 10th ~ the same date that his mother died years ago. But dad died this year. I only cried recently about dad being gone from my mortal life. But mostly because he didn’t get to die living in his home, but in a tiny room in an institution.

My dad had a favorite song, that I don’t think anyone knew of ~ until I told them. It was “Go, Tell It On the Mountain”. We sang it together in that tiny room even when I had been told he couldn’t remember things, that he wouldn’t recognize me, he had no capacity to smile ~ only I found all of that to be untrue. He smiled with me, he remembered and talked with me and we shared some of the most intimate and memorable times while his memory was less, but still there.

The saddest part was that my mother kept me from being with my dad at the end. She denied me and my dad time and experiences together those last years. And when he was near death, she never called and told me. So here I was in Rhode Island doing my Darfur activist stuff. On May 9th I was organizing the thousands of divestment petitions to be delivered to Fidelity Investment Company’s main headquarters’ office in Smithfield, RI with students from Providence College and Brown University.

May 10th, my brother had arranged to have me talk to my dad in Warren, Indiana on the phone following his phone call to dad. And I called at 10:00 a.m. with a written out message to dad to tell him that I was coming to Indiana to see him next week, but that if he couldn’t wait until then, to know it is okay to go and that I love him. On the phone, I sang him one of his other favorite songs “The Old Rugged Cross” that I had sung to him on my recent visit to Indiana. At that time, while I was singing it, dad closed his eyes and I thought to myself that maybe he was passing away at that time, but no, he slowly opened his eyes later in the song and looked straight ahead. He was just taking it in.

This time I had the nurse who was holding the phone to his ear so he could hear me talk to him ~ also hold his hand while I talked to him. He was unable to talk anymore. But he understood everything that I was saying. I said again, I love you, dad. I asked him to squeeze Nurse Marcia’s hand to say that he loved me. After I said my last good-bye, Marcia came on the phone and told me that she thought he was gone. She was amazed at the peace that came over his body and face. She saw him take his last breath. Marcia said that he was too weak to squeeze her hand, but dad at the time I asked him to squeeze Marcia’s hand, winked his left eye. My dad told me he loved me with a wink of his eye. His mind was there for us both.

At his funeral I told the story of my last phone call with my dad. My dad’s sister told me that mom never looked at me once as I talked and sang “The Old Rugged Cross”.

Marcia, said he had waited for me. I adore my dad. And I am sad that my mother didn’t tell me he was this near death so that I could have gone home to be with him in person. But my mother hadn’t told me she moved dad into this institution either. Dad so badly did not want to go to this institution. He hated it there. He wanted to go to his final annual Hammel Family Reunion August 5, 2006. I wanted to grant him this wish. But my mother forbid it. So my mother got her way. And my dad is now gone from this mortal life.
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Uploaded by a 16 year old of Sweden called Hafor at Youtube.

At his funeral May 14, 2007, we all sang “Go, Tell It on the Mountain". I love this youtube of it. Dad liked music. But he was a sportsman. Right out of high school, he went to play for the Green Bay Packers with Curly Lambeau. Football was dad's favorite sport to play, although he was a track star also. Dad told me he loved playing football in the rain the best. None of this was in my dad’s obituary. He was an excellent basketball coach in two Indiana high schools, also. Bobby Knight would scout the boys on my dad’s teams for recruitment because of the fundamentals and X’s and O’s coaching that my dad did.

My mother left for the airport to go to Hawaii with my niece, on the afternoon of May 14th. The trip had been planned for a long time.

Recently, I have begun to write about my life, my feelings, my memories by sifting through my prolific writing over a lifetime and it is stunning to have all these feelings for a dad that belted me, but in the end, showed me how very special I was to him. In his heart, he was a teddy bear. The afternoon, following my dad's funeral, I went to visit his only surviving elder brother on a farm. Jerald told me that dad had received more whippings than the other four children in their family put together. Jerald died in his sleep 5 days later.

My dad's mom, dad, siblings and him. He's the one holding the ball.

Here you have my Christmas “tree” that cost me nothing but time. AND there is the red sled of my childhood, painted by my dad by the tree as a part of the Christmas 2007 at my house. Thank you.

Mark O’Keith Hammel
Born August 3, 1924
Died May 10, 2007
CoachHammelDies
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Merry Christmas Dad!

Sandra Hammel
Born April 2, 1949
Not dead yet
My dad's nickname for me was Whistle Bait. I know it may sound disgusting, but he meant it in the nicest way, I am sure.