The morning started like most mornings.
Coffee. Quiet time. Make breakfast. Work out.
Except breakfast didn't sound good.
I stood in the kitchen making it anyway because that's what I did every morning.
Then even my coffee didn't sound good. That's when I knew I really didn't feel well. But I wasn't worried.
I was tired and felt crummy. Tired enough that I thought I should go lie down for a while, which wasn't normal for me.
With the encouragement of my wife, I took a nap. The next eight-plus hours are mostly missing.
I know what happened because Kara and the kids have told me. I remember pieces.
Kara says I woke up confused.
Iylee was the first person to see me when I walked out of the bedroom.
Whatever she saw scared her.
I don't remember that. What I do remember is standing in Kara's office.
I needed to use the bathroom.
But I couldn't find it.
I was standing in my own house and couldn't figure out where the bathroom was.
The weirdest part? I was too confused to understand that I should be scared.
Instead, I was annoyed with Kara. Why wouldn't she just point me toward the bathroom?
Eventually, she physically led me there. I could tell her concern was growing into fear. She didn't know what was happening to me.
At some point, we got into the car. Kara was talking to someone from the hospital on the phone.
They told her to ask me a simple question: “Do you know my name?”
Of course I knew my wife's name. “Yeah, I know your name. It's...it's...”
Nothing.
I couldn't say it. Kara didn't panic. She just said into the phone: “He can't say my name.”
I remember sitting in the passenger seat of my car… Then nothing. I don't remember urgent care. I don't remember being transferred from urgent care to the ER. I don't remember the ambulance ride that took me there.
Eventually, pieces start coming back.
An ER. People talking to me. Finding out things had already happened that I had absolutely no memory of.
Then I was told I was going for another ambulance ride. This time to the University of Iowa Hospital.
My liver transplant team wanted me there. Twenty-three years earlier, I'd received a liver transplant.
For most of those twenty-three years, life had been remarkably normal. Normal enough that my transplant had become something that happened to me a long time ago.
Now my transplant team wanted me transferred to them. Even then, I don't think I understood how serious everything was. That came slowly.
I realized I wasn't going home. The doctors weren't sure what was happening.
Then my kids came to the hospital a couple of days later. And that's when it became about more than me. Because I knew this hospital. I had walked these halls before. Not as the patient.
As the son.
This was the hospital where my dad had died. Now my kids were walking through those same doors to see their dad in a hospital bed.
They were happy to see us at first. Then they each reacted differently.
London wanted to go home. She wanted her friends. I think more than anything, she just wanted all of us home together again.
Iylee wanted to stay close. She wanted to stay at a hotel and come see me again the next day.
She had been the first one to see me confused at home.
Shep went back and forth.
And I watched my three kids try to make sense of something I was still trying to understand myself.
The significance of where we were didn't hit me all at once.
It slowly sank in.
Not long before, I had been the kid coming to this hospital because my dad was sick.
Now my kids were coming because I was.
I knew what it felt like to be the kid on the other side of the hospital bed. I didn't want that for them.
I wanted to be there for them. I wanted more time.
But there was something else I had to admit. I wanted another chance. Not just another chance to live.
Another chance to be their dad. To be more present. To be the dad they needed me to be in ways I knew I hadn't always lived up to.
Through tears, I told Kara: “I just want to be the dad they need me to be.”
She looked at me. “Then be that dad.”
That was it. She didn't try to make me feel better… Just, “be that dad.”
I've thought about those words a lot since.