No More Fighting, No Regrets

Early on the morning of Sunday, September 7, 2014, I received a call from my brother-in-law, Adam, from my dad’s home in Kailua, Oahu, Hawaii. My dad, Gary Tamotsu Nekota, had just moments earlier transitioned out of this world, a few weeks short of his 63rd birthday. No more fighting.

I had fallen asleep a handful of hours earlier in my bed in my rented Beverly, Massachusetts apartment, having just arrived the morning of Saturday, September 6 from being with Dad and family on Oahu for the preceding 17 days. My light was still on, my phone ringer still set to loud, and I was sound asleep when Adam’s call came in. I answered immediately. It was 7:18 Eastern Daylight Time on a beautiful late summer morning ushered in by a cold front that had just arrived the evening prior.

Less than 12 hours before that call, while still sitting in my vehicle with my girlfriend Meah Hearington just about to head into a movie theater to watch the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, I placed a call to Adam in response to a text he had sent a few minutes earlier notifying me that Dad’s kidneys were in failure and that the doctors had removed him from his liquid nutrition and all other inputs. Dad’s body was in the final stages of shutting down. I asked Adam to put me on speaker for Dad and, just before 9 PM Eastern on Saturday, September 6, I had what would be my last conversation with him.

“Hi Dad, I’m here with Meah…”, I began, letting him know that I had arrived safely in Boston and that I was picking up the important aspects of life right where I had left them. I relayed over the phone that even though I wasn’t present in his home, I was with him; and I produced a necessary, never-before spoken, and rather choked “I love you”. I was not sure at that point if I would ever have a chance to speak with him again and, in holding to the “no regrets” manner that we approached our trip back to be with him, I had to make it happen or risk that I’d live the rest of my life never having communicated it to him. Mission accomplished: the “I love you” exchange had been made, son to father and father to son. At the close of the conversation, there were no words I could speak, I didn’t say “goodbye”. I simply couldn’t. After a few moments of hanging silence, Adam came back on the phone like a champ and closed the loop with me. Meah was right beside me during that tender conversation (and thankful, I am that she was) and left the choice up to me whether we would proceed to enter the theater and watch the movie. We did. We enjoyed it. Dad would have smiled on that…

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From August 20 through September 5, I was with Dad nearly every day. I only missed seeing him twice – once toward the end of the first week I was there, when he was back home from a 17-day hospital stretch; and once the following week, when he was back in the hospital for several days being treated for a blood infection. Sometimes during our visits we would have brief/light conversations, other days I would just sit quietly in the same room, and on a couple occasions we shared a mutual father and son nap time (if only he knew how much of a professional napper I really am!). The idea was not to be talking to him continuously, but just to be there with him; to let him know that I was present and tuned in.

On Wednesday, September 3, the roughest night I saw him experience, when we all thought we were losing him, I got to spend 10 dedicated minutes with him just saying things I needed to say, telling him some important pieces of my story, sharing my faith with him. During that conversation, I asked him to help me make a decision on whether to postpone my return flight, scheduled for Friday, September 5, or to extend my stay. He emphatically told me not to push back my departure date, understanding that I had businesses and a significant relationship to get back to. Thankfully, he made it through the night, through a 102 fever in the early hours of the morning, and I was able to watch him come back to a somewhat stable state the next day. (Out of that overnight stay came my preceding Darkest before Dawn entry.)

Early Thursday morning, while he was recuperating from the fever, I dedicated some time to watering the plants in the back yard for him – his wife Judy and her sister Gloria had been charged with covering watering duty and had not had the time nor energy to keep up with it, so I jumped in with that small act of service, which I know made a difference to him as he loved caring for his plants. His state was somewhat stable for the next day though the discomfort was clearly increasing for him.

When I departed to return home on the afternoon of Friday September 5th, I had to be content with the possibility that as I left Dad’s bedside, we might never see each other again. We both knew that was the fact, and we were willing to accept it as such. I shook his hand once more, his handshake not any weaker than I remembered it being, and as I turned the corner toward the front door of my Dad’s home the final time I would see him in this world, I glanced over my shoulder and called out “Bye Dad!”

The trip back to Beverly, Massachusetts was happily uneventful. I struggled to sleep on and off through the 7-hour segment from Honolulu to Dallas-Forth Worth but the time seemed to pass quickly. I had a hearty breakfast during the layover and managed a nap on the 3-hour flight from Dallas to Boston. The fear of intense pain due to the sinus infection I had been recovering from after my second day at the beach turned out to be unfounded – no sinus pain. My friend of many years and business teammate Lawrence Bereiweriso graciously picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at Adam’s and my sister Kristi’s house in Lynn, Massachusetts, where my vehicle was waiting for me. A short 15-minute drive up the road and I was home, and just a couple hours away from seeing Meah again, catching a welcomed break from the drama that I had been player in for nearly three weeks; a drama that I did not know would be resumed shortly. I had arrived home with no regrets.

Darkest before Dawn

04:30 HST

The peaceful calm is intense before sunrise; the stars and their soft cloud co-stars putting together a majestic show across the dark warm Hawaii sky; the gentle ocean breezes performing a silent symphony as their accompaniment. Dad’s resting in the living room of his home in Kailua, Oahu; he seems to be sleeping peacefully. Around him in various configurations and stages of rest lie three of his granddaughters, his two dogs, and his ever-vigilant wife.

For these overnight hours, I’ve enjoyed the cool, soft breezes on the sofa out on the back patio; catching a few winks at a time while staying within earshot and a sliding screen door away should anything noteworthy occur. Conditions are perfect out here, no blanket needed. Even the mosquitoes have taken leave, almost in respect of the tentative nature of the moments passing through.

Earlier in the evening, I had the most significant conversation with Dad I’ve had as an adult; it may have been only 10 minutes; he may have spoken only 10 words between shallow breaths – three of those words “Keep the faith” with as much energy as he could muster. The words “no regrets” are finding their proper seating in a heart that is just recently attuned to the relationship between thinking and feeling.

While no vacationer would ever consider my last 16 days to have been a pleasure trip, I see in them many more gains than losses. 36 hours from scheduled departure, with full paternal release to return, I am faced with the delicate juxtaposition of all that surrounds the closing pages of one life’s book, overly shortened yet full of quality pages (his); and a full life that is just beginning to outline the chapters of significance and contribution in another (mine).

In these early morning hours he sleeps. He has made it to another day and in another hour or two may enjoy another sunrise. The hours and days beyond that are not by any means sure. The one thing we know, he and I, is that in a few short years we have given each one something to be proud of the other for – me of him and all of his achievements as my dad and in business, and he of what he knows of my life, relationships and business to date. We have spoken these words to each other. When I leave here, it will not be without having known my dad and without him knowing me…

The sky is beginning to light. The new day is upon us…

05:30 HST