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I was born with a bilateral cleft in 1952. My parents have told me how devastated they were to learn that their tiny daughter would have to undergo so much repair. And yet I do not remember sensing any of that devastation. By the time I understood what was going on, they seemed to have everything well under control.
I grew up having surgeries one after another after another. Other kids went to camp in the summer, I went to the hospital. Eventually I would have eighteen surgeries in total. And let me tell you, cleft surgery through the '60's was no piece of cake!
Surgery for me meant people poking at me and pulling at me and straining for a "better look" at the parts of me that most people never see. Nurses and doctors talked about me as though my whole existence began and ended in my mouth. There was the humiliation of hospital insensitivity and total lack of privacy. Worst of it all for me was probably the mandatory enemas I was forced to endure before each surgery.
And then, after the surgery, when I would feel so uncomfortable and so sick, I would wake up to find my wrists bound to the bedposts to ensure that I would not put my hands in my mouth and harm the incisions. I couldn't even turn over onto my side. I just had to lay there and gag on the blood and mucous in my throat. (Ed's note: Binding a child's wrists to the bed is no longer practiced in most hospitals. They now use elbow restraints to protect the suture line, giving the child much more freedom of movement)
On one such day, after a particularly painful palate procedure, I lay flat on my back in the hospital bed and my father sat in a chair next to me. I managed to scratch out. "Daddy. my mouth hurts." And boy. did it hurt to say even that much! And then my daddy did the most wonderful thing. He reached over and untied the restraints that held my arms. Then he picked me up in his strong arms and held me close to his chest. He sat back down on the side of my bed and kissed my forehead. "Baby," he said. "If I could hurt for you, I would." I looked up at my father and I saw a single tear stream down his cheek as he sat and silently held me.
I will never forget that tear. It symbolizes for me all the strength and sensitivity and love my father had in himself to give. That day I felt safe in his strong brown arms. I slept there, knowing that he would protect me from anything that could cause me any further pain.
Thirty years later it was I who sat beside the hospital bed as my father lay bound there by tubes and wires. He had fought a long and hard battle against the cancer that had invaded his body, and we all knew that the battle was nearly over. Though we knew that he would die, I vowed that he would not die alone.
Just as he was willing to take the pain I suffered upon himself, I felt myself wishing that I could endure his suffering for him, and somehow give him one more pain-free day. But I couldn't. I could only watch and wait and love. As I held his hand, a tear fell from my cheek onto the bed sheet that covered my father to his chest. Another symbol. A symbol of my being there for him, just as he was there for me. A symbol of the deep love we shared for the path we had traveled together.
He opened his eyes and looked at me. There were a lot of drugs in him, but I am sure he knew it was me standing with him. At ten minutes after midnight, on August 10, 1993, my father passed from me and into a better world. I kissed his cheek one last time, and then I joined my mother and two brothers in our grief at the passing of a great man.
Daddy's strength had helped me to get through all the surgeries and all the teasing and all the therapies of growing up with a cleft. And I think that that strength, under those circumstances, helped to forge the bond that held us together.
I miss my daddy terribly, but his image in my heart will always remain. He will always be that big, strong man, protecting me on that hospital bed with his strong arms and that gentle tear.
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