#adiemtocarpe

Me: Happy birthday!

Her: Not so happy.

Me: What happened?

Her: Dad fell this morning and Mom and I couldn't get him back up, so we had to call the ambulance. 

Me: Is he up and okay now?  (This was the point that my kids stopped arguing over who would start the singing and went dead silent.  I'm not sure if it was because the first tear had just hit my cheek or maybe it was the slight shaking that had started with the hand holding the phone, then again it could have been the catch in my voice, who knows?) 

Her: They're loading him up to go to the hospital now.  His oxygen level's only 88 and 95 is the bare minimum as low as it should go.

Me: Um, I should tell you, I've got a classroom full of kids sitting here waiting to sing you happy birthday.

Her: Oh, I didn't know you were in class.

Me: I'm putting you on speaker phone so they can sing to you.  (*class sings* the saddest version of happy birthday ever)

Her (waits a heartbeat): Tell 'em they just made my day.

That's how I found out about my dad this morning.  Thankfully, I'm in the middle of a documentary about the elements with my first period class and I've seen it before, so I kind of tuned it out and got a bunch of stuff ready for 2nd and 3rd periods while they watched.  My 2nd period kids apparently could tell it looked like I may have been crying; when I treated class like business as usual they decided that maybe I'd had an allergic reaction or something (according to one of my players).  3rd period was too busy fretting over their exam to notice.  4th and 5th period are my middle schoolers and they didn't pick up on any hint that something might have been off.  I fell apart all over again during my prep period 6th before going back to business as usual with my 7th period kids.

After school I got a brief update from my sister.  She had dropped by the hospital during the middle of her workday (I'm sitting here jealous of her ability to do that when I'm stuck almost 400 miles away) and found him cranky and complaining of hunger, thirst, and the fact that people kept coming in and out of the room to poke and prod him.  She said his oxygen level still hadn't risen to where it needed to be and that he'd have to stay overnight.  Then she said out loud the phrase we'd both been too freaked out to say on the phone earlier but had both been thinking, "I'm just really freaked out about it happening on my birthday, because people in our family have a bad habit of dying on big occasions."  (Our grandmother died on her 9th birthday.)

Then I had to coach a volleyball game.  I let my assistant know during the varsity warm up (she didn't need that on her mind during the JV game) and did my best to act like everything was normal.  I made it to the last game before my voice broke in a time out and they knew something was up.  After the game, I apologized to them, because I felt like I let them down in our loss tonight and told them why.  Even they don't hear that much about my family or my life outside of school and coaching, and every one of my varsity girls had tears in their eyes watching me cry.  Despite the fact that I'm not really a religious person, I let them pray for him before they dispersed for the night.  A few of my girls came to give me hugs and I let them even though I'm a notoriously anti-hug person because they wanted to be able to do something and I really needed it.

Some of my friends came and sat with me in the locker room and alternately consoled me and tried to make me laugh while my assistant took care of getting stats to the reporter and giving a statement about the way we played.  Then they spent 20 minutes or so trying to convince me to take tomorrow off from school and practice.  I told them I can't do that.  I've got people counting on me and I've got to keep busy so I don't crumble.

When I got home, I called for an update.  My information is second hand through Mom, but she said the doctor told her that he has fluid on his lungs (thank you to the Navy for that asbestos coating on his lungs), water adema in his legs and he's apparently been in heart failure at some point in the last few months (something his regular doctors at the VA missed in his frequent visits).  She said there's a possibility that he'll be in the hospital until early next week, which means he'll have gone into the hospital on my sister's birthday and probably miss Mom's birthday (Sunday) while he's there.  She also told me to pull myself together because my students and players are counting on me (god, do we ever sound alike, sometimes).