Providence

PROVIDENCE

It was on a Wednesday they moved my Mom from UPMC Medical Center where she was

being treated for the stroke she had suffered two weeks earlier. Complications had set in and diabetes

became a problem. She would be going to Providence Nursing Center in Beaver Falls. There she would receive physical therapy and soon return home. It used to be Providence Hospital. I was born there. On visiting my mom the next day, I was inundated with feelings I could not put into words. Just feelings, senses, more wonder than anything else. The turn into the parking lot, the half-moon drive curving in and back out back out onto Third Avenue evoked a feeling of déjà vu. I looked at the old Providence Hospital sign carved into the stone above the entrance. The place felt so familiar. The wide steps lead into the main entrance, the foyer. Hauntingly, it was the unevenness of the floor that I remembered. I went directly to her room and visited for a while.

            I mentioned I had not been here since the day I was born. Mom said, “I don’t suppose I’ve been here since then either, “Maybe because I was her last child, or maybe like me, she had forgotten her history with the building. On leaving the day, I tried to figure out what it was that haunted me about this place. Nothing really came to me until I reached the entrance: before going out, I noticed the way the hallway curved to the right. It sloped downward about three hundred feet to a door with an exit sign above it. As a young man in junior high school, Id volunteered as a Candy Striper. That is what they called the volunteers. It was a Catholic Hospital run by nuns.

            I remember caring for patients, helping any way I could. I would escort patients around to different places. I was pleased with this memory probably because I had almost forgotten. I thought, that must be it. That’s why I have these strange feelings. The Emergency Room was at the end of that hall to the right. The lab too, I remembered. I was trained to wheel the patients out into the hall, turn around and go down the grade backwards. I must not have understand the importance of that instruction because I did not listen. I took my first patient out and turned down the hall with the patient in front of me. It was then that I realized the merit of going backwards. The rubber grip handles on the wheelchair slipped off and the chair took off on its own, patient and all. I caught up quickly and regained control, but it was a scary moment. We had a good laugh, and I did not make that mistake again.

            I thought of these things as I walked outside. I was drawn to the far left of the building. I walked around and was struck again by more feelings, more curiosity. This was the old emergency entrance. This felt very familiar, but why?

            It came to me as I showered that evening. It came to me and was shockingly visual. My Dad died there! I had forgotten but now it all came flooding back. It happened in just two days some thirty-four years earlier in nineteen sixty-eight. I was sixteen years old. Dad and I were going to load the H-D9 Caterpillar hi-lift onto the lowboy and move it to a job site in South Beaver. I was to follow him and bring him back as he intended to leave the truck and trailer there and do the actual work at a later time. He was not well; he rubbed his arms and told me they hurt. He did not like to waste time. He always pushed himself. Not that day. He was concerned I could tell. Being sixteen and because it was early in the morning, I did not realize how bad the situation was. He said, “lets go”, those words were all it took for me to get moving. He did not like to repeat himself. After loading the machine, we began our trek. He drove the tractor and trailer; I followed closely in his maroon colored nineteen sixty two-ford fairlane. I was to follow closely so that any police would not notice that the license plates on the back of the trailer were not legal. We made it about half way to our destination when he pulled over. The day before he had put a new emergency brake cable on the tractor. It was too tight and caught fire. He pulled the truck off the road in front of Whimpy’s Bar and into the parking lot, It had rained the night before and the potholes were filled with water. My dad jumped out of the truck and, with a rag in hand, used the puddles to wet the rag and vigorously beat the fire out under the truck. It all happened so fast that I was unable to help. The fire out, we finished moving the machine and I drove him back home. All the time I could tell that he was not himself.

            Back at the house, he waited a while and then called my Mother who had opened her beauty parlor in downtown Beaver Falls, the “Klip & Kurl”.

            My mom immediately called an ambulance and came home. She got there just in time to see him being loaded into the ambulance. She climbed in with him. I followed them to the hospital, parked and walked inside the emergency entrance. They had my Dad on a gurney. Someone was taking everything out of his pockets. They handed some to Mom, and handed me the ten-dollar watch and watch fob he had purchased at the 5&10. He would often tell people about his ten-dollar watch and how it kept better time than any of the expensive watches he had ever bought. I put it in my pocket. They said they would take him and we should wait.

            I did not get to see him until that evening and ether he was in an oxygen tent that covered his head completely. There were no smoking signs everywhere. He spoke to me, but I do not remember his words. I was sixteen and had never seen anyone in an oxygen tent before. I felt the seriousness of it. Dad looked scared, I had never seen fear on his face before. He looked helpless too, and I had never seen him not in total control. He looked at me as if to say, I love you. Though I had never heard those words from his mouth, I had often seen them in his eyes. All those feelings were with me, but I still thought him to be invincible, and I was certain he would be okay. The next morning I awakened to the sound of crying and my brother Stanley saying Dad had died. He died at eight am. I turned in my bed to my nightstand. There was Dad’s good ten-dollar watch that had never let him down and always worked better than any good watch he had bought. I took it into my hand and began to cry.  Dad’s watch had stopped exactly at eight am.

            It never ran again.