Five years ago this week, my father had a traffic accident.
A fender bender that caused far more damage than anyone initially realized. He had to be resuscitated twice at the scene.
I was a five-hour drive away. My husband was on his way home from a two-week work shift in Alberta when the call came.
Everything in me wanted to get on the road. But waiting a few hours meant my mother and stepfather wouldn’t have to worry about me driving at night. And it meant getting a hug from my husband before I left.
The kind of hug that puts all your parts back together.
That day became the first of 347 days my father would spend between hospitals and rehabilitation facilities.
A spinal cord injury had left him needing help with almost everything. But he had one goal: to get back home to his apartment.
My brother and my dad’s siblings were an incredible support, but often, I was the person sitting in front of the doctors when they asked, “This is the situation. What do you want to do?”
Just before his accident, I had started an empowerment course with a psychic medium. We were exploring limiting beliefs, the stories we carry, and what it means to trust something bigger than ourselves.
Learning that we have agency, but we don’t have control over everything.
The timing of signing up for it is not lost on me.
Those lessons helped me support my father through that year and the years that followed. They also helped me understand that I could walk beside him and still continue on my own path.
My father was deeply skeptical of all of it. It wasn’t something we could easily talk about.
And then something happened.
He was offered spinal decompression surgery. There were no promises, but he wanted every possible chance to improve his condition.
Two days before his surgery, an older woman with a broken hip moved into the bed beside him.
They became friends over country music. Dad had a voice-activated Google speaker so he could listen without needing his hands, and they enjoyed the music together.
While preparing her for surgery, someone asked her date of birth.
October 14, 1942.
The very day my father’s grandmother died aboard the Caribou, sailing to Newfoundland during the war.
When Dad told me, we both cried.
To him, that connection meant he was going to get through his surgery. And for the first time, we shared a belief in something neither of us could explain.
I will always cherish that moment.
He did get through surgery. And after months of rehabilitation, he returned to his apartment, living on his own with home care.
He got home.
Somewhere in those months, through the conversations, the difficult decisions, and the days spent together, our relationship deepened. Dad and I came to know each other in ways we might never have otherwise.
Dad is no longer with us, but I see his determination in my brother, in myself, and in my daughter. That willingness to find a way around an obstacle when the way through it isn’t available.
Five years later, I’m thinking about everything we couldn’t have known that day.
The 347 days ahead. The difficult decisions. The friendships formed over country music. And a moment of shared belief that I’ll always hold close.
I wish he hadn’t had to go through any of it. But I’m forever grateful for how we came to know each other because we went through it together. 🤍