By Ryan Hilligoss December 10, 2023

My father passed away at 2:30am on Monday November 13, 2023. I got the call at 3:00am, lying in that halfway place between dreamland and wakefulness. I had been tossing and turning for an hour when I heard my phone vibrating in silent mode. Maybe it’s a car warranty sale person, maybe it’s one of the kids with an emergency?? No, “Your dad is gone.” Four simple words. Four words that change your life forever. A whole universe gone with a few words in the middle of the night. For the next twelve days, I would suspend disbelief to keep him with me. Magical thinking.

Instantly, my mind and body went back to 2017 when my father called to say, “Your mom won’t wake up.” What did that mean, was she gone? was she in a coma? will I be able to see her again? On that day, 300 miles away and without definite information, I jumped in my car and headed south as fast as I could tearing down Interstate 55 towards St. Louis. So when I got the call last month, my mind and body immediately thought “I have to get there as quick as I can to see him.”

I had an hour of anguish and sorrow like I’ve never experienced before. Then my mind realized: he’s gone, you don’t have to rush there right this instant. I made phone calls to family and friends to deliver the news and to seek comfort amid my shock and disbelief. I talked with my two children about plans – who has school, who has work, can you go, when should we go? – I stayed at home for several more hours getting my affairs in order, packing a bag and finally setting out for the four-hour drive back to my childhood home.

But in hindsight, maybe I was stalling, thinking if I just stayed there and didn’t travel back home, maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t real. Maybe it was some elaborate ruse or maybe I was actually still asleep.

I arrived in my hometown Monday afternoon along with my son Graham. With my brother Kevin and his wife unfortunately stuck a thousand miles away as part of a long-ago planned trip, my first stop was to see my dad’s lady friend, his “dance partner”. I rang the doorbell, she came to the door, we looked at each other through the glass knowing exactly what the other was feeling: that spirit that lit up any room he walked into was gone. We hugged and held each other.

This was the same process that followed each time I saw a family member or friend in the next few days. The look, the catch in the throat, the tears spilling down our cheeks, the holding onto each other as if we were holding onto him. As if we held on close enough we would force him to stay here on this earthly plane.

What followed for the next 12 days was what our father taught us from a very early age: work. My dad grew up on a farm, his parents were tenement farmers in east central Illinois. He had a hard life as a child and young man, working hard on the farm, cutting broom corn on hot summer days, delivering newspapers via a bicycle, flipping hamburgers at the original Burger King in Mattoon, Il, etc.

In 1977 when I was a child, our parents bought a Browns Chicken franchise in Alton, Il. Being the hard workers they were, they opened a second franchise in a nearby town in 1980. It was a family operation with both parents and all three of us sons working at the restaurants. I earned my first paycheck in 1982 at the age of 8 and earned $165 dollars that year, all of them spent at the donut shop next door…..”165 vanilla long johns please, sir.”

(If I only I had invested half of the money I earned frying chicken and mushrooms, wiping tables and moping floors, I could be retired right now.)

Our father taught us all the value and meaning of hard work. He taught us it gives us meaning, it gives us strength and sustenance, it puts our minds at ease and our bodies in motion at the same time. He taught us to have pride in our work, done with our own two hands. He taught us life isn’t easy, but you need to do what you can to make a difference in any way we can. He taught us work is an honest man’s pillow.

But fried chicken is a far cry from the work at hand of tending and caring for the dead. Funeral arrangements, looking after the house, taking care of the cars, financial matters, visiting and speaking with friends and family, each of us trying to take care of each other as we each processed the loss of a father, a friend, a coworker, a coach, a teacher, a dance partner.

I quickly fell into a pattern of doing what Bob would have been doing or what we would have been doing together on my many visits. Coffee in the mornings with my uncle, stopping by the auto dealership he drove cars for to speak with the Jason, Mark and Will who viewed dad as a surrogate father, dropping in to see Donna Kay/Donna 2/his dance partner/his lady friend, seeing Jackson, the young man who lives next door to my dad, and his favorite – going to the Alton VFW and Grafton Winery to enjoy live music.

On day six, we held the visitation and funeral. People came through the visitation line from 10:00am until 1:15pm when the funeral director advised we needed to start the service. He said he had never seen so many people come through a service line in all the years he had been handling funerals. I was crippled with grief and cried from places I didn’t know I had. Each time I thought I had let it all out, I would see someone I’ve known for years and it would all rush out again.

My heart was and remains broken. Losing my father was a double loss for me. He was my father, my last parent, but more importantly he was one of my best friends. Nobody tells you that when your parents die you feel like you’ve become an orphan, no matter how old you are.

The following six days were a continuation of the same: coffee and meals with relatives and friends, taking care of the house, making Bob’s rounds. I found myself driving his car, wearing his jacket, as if I was standing in his place, trying my best to live as two people: myself while also processing a profound loss and life changing event, and him, walking in his shoes which are too big to fill.

On day twelve, it was time to make the long journey back to my own home, to try to re renter a life that would never be the same. As I pulled from the driveway on that day, I backed into the cul de sac, shifted into drive but kept my foot on the brake as I paused and took a long look at the house I had grown up in and spent half my life with my family in.

The house stood as it always has, lights on in the front hallway and the living room but this time nobody is home. The five of us now cast into the wind like so many seeds blowing in space and time. As I eased slowly down the street, a heavy feeling came over me: that’s the end of my whole life as I have known it up until now. My life is my own now to write out and live as best I can until I myself am no longer here on earth.

And then an even heavier feeling came over me. After having spent the last twelve days acting as my dad in some ways and taking care of him, by leaving the house I felt I was abandoning him in some way, even though I know that’s not reasonable or sensible. That’s the feeling I still carry as I write these words.

Here is the nasty truth about a sudden traumatic life event: not only are we in disbelief over what occurred, who we lost, we also delude ourselves into thinking we have learned some valuable lessons. When my brother Sean passed in 2015, I took away two things: 1. make amends with those you love because you never know when it is time and you don’t want to hold onto regret if something happens, and more tactically 2. get your will and estate plans ready so those left behind don’t have to struggle with the estate logistics.

The mistake many of us make after a loss like this is forgetting so quickly what in that moment is so clear – that life is finite and there is only so much time left. We quickly see how we want to spend the rest of our lives and commit to making changes: maybe it’s chasing long-dormant dreams, making that phone call to a long lost friend or family member, making that change in address, finding that special someone.

And then time passes and that clarity of purpose vanishes with each passing day. The focus fades and life as usual marches on until it’s too late for us as well.

As a way of reminding myself, I say this here for me and for those reading: don’t wait. Do it now. Regret is too heavy a burden to carry. Don’t let the moment pass. As Kinky Friedman once wrote, find what you love in life and ride it down until it kills you. Saddle up and ride my friends.