AUGUST 23, 1990

My sons -- Tim and Mike -- were ecstatic; they'd finally reached the final stage of Super Mario 2 and was now fighting the evil Koopa when they were interrupted by a long, almost urgent, knock on the front door. Pausing the game, Tim, the oldest at 11, got up and opened it. My older sister, Mary, looked rushed as she stood in the doorway. "Quick -- where's your daddy?" Tim told Mike to run to the back porch, where I was working, and get me. Hearing the commotion, I was already heading back into the house, but Mike met me in the kitchen and walked with me into the living room. "What's wrong, sis?" I asked hesitantly, not wanting to know the answer. Since we'd moved next door to my parents, dad had contracted lung cancer -- and it was terminal. We feared any knock on the door, thinking that, at any time, it could be news of his death. "Come with me," she said. "We need help getting Daddy back to bed." On the way over to the house, not much was actually said between us -- we both knew it was just a matter of time now, and all mama and the rest of us were doing was trying to make him as comfortable as possible. As I entered the house and made my way toward the den in the back -- a small, sunny room that daddy had built himself back in '78 -- I could still smell the disinfectant we used to clean the house a week earlier, before he'd been released from the hospital. Entering the den, I saw mama, who'd already been up for forty-eight hours straight, trying to help daddy to his feet; Susan, the wonderful hospice worker who also doubled as Hinson family barber and hairdresser over the previous weeks, getting his oxygen tank ready, and, of course, daddy himself, clad in his favorite blue pajamas. "Okay, Chuck," Mary directed, "you get daddy under the arms and walk him backward toward the bedroom. Mama, you stay in the back and guide him there, and Susan and I will be on either side." "No," Mama corrected, "you let me by his side. I've been there for forty-five years, and I ain't budging now!" We grinned at that as I gently lifted him up. I was surprised at how light he was -- this once-strong bull of a man who could pull a 200-foot-deep well with just his bare strength and two 18-inch wrenches -- was now just eighty-five pounds. He also looked confused and scared. This man who, years before, had talked a mentally-ill woman out of stabbing him; who'd counseled so many just on the basis of his moral standing, was now looking as around helplessly as if to say, "Wha ... what's happening to me?" I back-walked him to the side of his bed and sat him down very delicately -- all the while, talking to him. After I was sure he was all right -- and knowing I had to get back to fix supper for the boys -- I had started to tell him "I love you, dad"! But, for a reason I'll never understand, "I'll miss you, dad" came out instead. He responded, ever so weakly, "I'll miss you too, son." I corrected myself and said, "Daddy, I love you." It was the last time he would ever hear me say that.

AUGUST 24, 1990

It had been an unbelievably tense day -- I had gone on to my job at a local do-it-yourself store after leaving word with my sister to call if there was any change in daddy's condition. Actually, I was saying, in a roundabout way, to call me if he passed away. Mama had begun her sixtieth hour awake, hovering over daddy and making sure he had everything he needed. She'd do everything from fluff his pillows, bring him water to sip lightly, read the get-well cards he'd gotten in the mail that day, and talk about the days when they'd first started courting. All the while, she fought back tears and a tremendous lump in her throat, for she knew she was quickly losing the man she loved so dearly since those days forty-five years earlier. Suddenly, sometime after two in the afternoon, as the hospice worker was changing his bedclothes, she saw daddy look at mama and motion to her to come closer. Then he whispered in a barely-audible voice, "Irene!" Mama rushed to his side and looked at him, lovingly but obviously worried. "What is it, Eola?" She came closer, to where he could say something to her without straining. He looked at her and whispered, with tears in his voice and his frail arms outstretched, "Let me hold you just one more time!" Mama stopped everything and gently put her arms up and slightly around his frail body, as he barely moved his near-skeletal arms around her as best he could. Tears flowed from both of them and intermingled on the pillow underneath his head. Then she gently kissed him and brushed what little hair he had from his eyes. It seemed like they had entwined themselves for an eternity, though it was but for a few minutes only. Yet, it was good they did, for about two hours later, daddy lapsed into his final coma -- the one from which he wouldn't recover.

APRIL 16, 1999

It was around four in the afternoon when I got the call from my brother, Steve: We were all being called to mama’s bedside as she only had hours to live; lung cancer had taken its toll on her, as it did with daddy almost nine years earlier. Although living in Ashland, Kentucky (eight hours away), I promised him I’d be there – my son, Tim, was shipping out for Navy basic, but, after seeing him off, I’d be coming down. Unfortunately, I was an hour late. Mama was probably already hugging Daddy again by the time I made it into Pineville. As I stood outside my sister’s house, thinking about all the years I’d spent apart from the family and living on my own with my two sons, I couldn’t help remembering how, on my last visit in 1995, I went over to mama’s house on Park Avenue and, just before leaving to return to Kentucky, reminding her of what daddy said years before. “Mama, let me hold you just one more time.” How could I have known I’d never have that opportunity again? Today, I wonder: How can any of us know when, where or even if we’ll see each other again? Maybe it’s time we took a closer look at what our spouses, our children, our friends, neighbors – our country – mean to us. In light of today’s turbulent political and socioeconomic climate – at a time when we’re faced with so many uncertainties – isn’t NOW a good time to hold those we hold dear just “one more time” … just in case? Because how do we know … we may never see them again, except on the other side of forever. We may never taste the goodness we have right now … it could be taken away in an instant. So, with that in mind, let me say: Tim and Mike, though one of you is in Iraq, the other just returned and you’re still some distance away, in my heart and through email let your dad “hold you just one more time”; brothers and sister, it’s the same thing, for you’re still “down home”. In my thoughts, “let me hold you just one more time.” Friends, readers, acquaintances from Ashland and around the world; though I may have never met you in person, “let me hold you just one more time.” AMERICA – LAND OF THE FREE AND OF OPPORTUNITY – MY HOME – “LET ME HOLD YOU JUST ONE MORE TIME.” … just in case …