From the time I was a child, I remember my dad drinking coffee every morning and into the afternoon. But never at the house. We never had a coffee maker in the house while my mom was alive. She didn’t drink it and she didn’t want it in the house for various reasons. Our coffee intake was relegated to the restaurant we owned for 23 years. So down to our family restaurant dad would go at 9:00am to start his first pot with our stainless steel Bunn-o-Matic industrial sized brewer which sat on the packing table next to the soda machine and iced tea container. I can still smell the aroma of fresh brewed coffee mixing with the other smells of the restaurant: industrial fly spray, the grease in the deep fry cookers, cold fried chicken in the front refrigerator, the soap used to mop the floors the night before by the closing crew.

Once the coffee was done, dad would fill up his first cup of the day using a Styrofoam cup. And off he was running with his day, a one of a kind force of nature.

When my grandparents would visit us from Phoenix every year, my grandmother Letha Hilligoss drank coffee all day. It was the first time I ever witnessed someone putting ice from the ice maker into her coffee. Knowing my grandmother was “colorful”, I just thought it was another in a long line of her idiosyncrasies. It took me a long time to realize she was cooling it off so she could start drinking faster. 

I had my first cup of coffee at the age of 18 while working for the Illinois State Board of Education in Springfield Illinois my senior year in high school. During a long, boring meeting, I found myself dozing in my chair, unable to keep my eyes open while a guest speaker droned on. Not wanting to get in trouble with our leader, I did the only thing I could think of: filling up an 8 ounce white Styrofoam cup with terrible, burnt, hours old coffee from an urn. From then on out, I was a caffeine addict and my dad had a compatriot in coffee for the rest of his life. 

We drank it all over the years. Crappy gas station coffee, well made, measured out coffee at my house, Quik Trip, Dunkin Donuts, Caribou Coffee, if in a pinch Starbucks, even though he bitched about it the whole time as being burnt and harsh. On weekends when I visited, we’d go to McDonalds to have coffee with dad’s brother, Richard Eugene, known to some as Uncle Dick, and other long time friends. 

Dad always got a 12oz. senior coffee black, which he took pride in since it was cheaper than everyone else’s. He’d exclaim, “Ryan, I just paid half of what you did!!.” If we went to another restaurant or diner, he always, and I mean always, ordered a half cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup, for two very specific reasons. One, he didn’t want to dirty up a cup under some quasi-demented idea that he was saving the environment by not having to wash a cup in the dishwasher. Somehow the fact his cup would wind up in the landfill either didn’t dawn on him or he thought that was the better of the two options. Secondly, and most importantly, he could get a refill on coffee before he left and take it with him on the road. 

The odd fact of ordering a half cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup is one of the many ways he is remembered by those who knew him. The last thing we did on the last day I saw him before he passed three years ago was have a cup of coffee at McDonalds on a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning in Godfrey, Illinois. That was the final cup of coffee I had with my dad, Robert Lee Hilligoss. 

The last cup, until recently.

A few weeks ago, while unexpectedly in the hospital, I had an “incident”. 

That’s the term an outgoing nurse used while giving the incoming nurse my updates from overnight. 

It’s amazing, and a little disconcerting, how quickly things can change. 

On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, I umpired 12 year old girls softball games. By 8:00pm that night I was having terrible pains in my upper abdomen right under my heart. 

By midnight I was in the emergency room. 

Because the pain was under my heart, and I have a family history of cardiology issues, I was more than concerned that it was serious. I even  called my daughter and asked her to come to the hospital – just in case. 

Seven hours and several tests later, I was discharged from the ER while still in severe pain and without a hard diagnosis. “Well, it could be this, could be that, we don’t know but we’re sending you home.” 

Gee, thanks a lot doc.

Throughout the next morning and afternoon, the pain remained and then slowly started to move down my right side. Knowing it was only getting worse, I went to a different, much better hospital. Walking into the second ER at midnight on Monday, I thought, “Oh, surely they won’t be that busy.” Wrong. It was packed with at least 50 people and their families waiting to get in . 

A nurse later told me it was the most patients who had ever come into their ER in an eight hour window. 

Lucky me.

Two days after the pain started, and eight hours after I arrived,  I was in an intake room at 8am. By 9:00am, they diagnosed me with gall stones and an infected gall bladder, and by 10:00am, I was admitted into the hospital. 

At 11:00am, a surgeon visited to tell me they were going to remove my gall bladder. 

Along the way, every person I encountered –  from the admissions clerk, to the nurses, to the doctors – were kind, professional, efficient and warm. 

Around dinner time, I was finally wheeled down to surgery. 

A pleasant looking, older anesthesiologist came to introduce herself and guide me through what was going to happen. 

Her last question to me was, “If something happens, is there someone I can call?”

I answered, “My son, Graham, who is 22.” 

She dutifully nodded and wrote on her notepad. She then said she was giving me some dye to work into my system to help the robotic assisted part of the surgery. 

That’s the last thing I remember happening. Lights out.

The next morning, I am lying in a hospital room with more wires connected to me than I can keep track of, machines beeping, voices out in the hallway. I hear someone talking to another close by. 

“There was an incident last night after his surgery. It was very serious. He stopped breathing for a bit.” 

I lie there half baked by anesthesia and exhaustion. 

“Are they in my room? Are they talking about me? I’m sorry, can you repeat that? An incident?? What the hell does that mean??”

 Then I remembered a moment somewhere in the back recess of my mind. I’m in the operating room. I hear a male voice loudly commanding, “Ryan!!! Wake up!! Cough!!! Ryan!!!!” 

I coughed several times.  

Did that really happen or am I imagining this?

With the quiet sounds of someone flipping my chart and feet padding on the concrete, I wake to the sun streaming through the window to my right. A series of doctors come to check on me and look over my incisions. I am cleared to eat and walk around the wing later. 

An hour later, a nurse moves me  to a reclining chair where I am allowed to sit up and drink water for the first time. 

Then I see a gentle older woman’s face to my left. “Hey, I remember you, you are my anesthesiologist.” 

“Yes, that was me. I came to make sure you are OK and in fact, that you are here today.” 

Oh. 

She tells me what had happened in the OR. 

The surgery was quick and successful. They were preparing me to go back to recovery when I gasped for air, stopped breathing, and my tongue rolled back in my mouth. 

“Things did not look good, and I said to myself, ‘Oh please God don’t let anything happen to this man. The last thing he said to me was if something happened to call his son, and I didn’t want to have to be the to make that call.’ ” 

Just like that, I could have been dead. 

My life could have ended in the operating room surrounded by trained, experienced professionals and the best equipment in modern medicine. 

It’s as simple as that. Life or death on the flip of a coin. 

As easily as I am typing these words, my kids could have been without me, sorting through my personal items left behind, sifting through the practical side of my affairs. My brother could be the last man standing out of the five members of our nuclear family. 

I later asked the nurse if it was normal for the anesthesiologist to check on patients the next day. She looked stunned at the question. 

“No,” she said, “that’s not normal.” 

That compassionate woman had come to check on me out of the goodness of her heart, knowing how close it had been. 

She wanted me to know that even though she was doing her job as a highly skilled medical professional, in the end we are all just humans looking out for one another. 

My nurse, several months pregnant but still doing her job in an incredibly professional, warm manner, put a menu down in front of me and said I could order anything I wanted. 

“Wait a minute, I just had my gall bladder out,” I said. 

Anything I asked? That menu is specific to your surgery you silly goose, if it’s on there you can have it. 

I ordered scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. 

Oh how badly I needed coffee since I hadn’t had any in 2 days. 

Thirty minutes later an older lady brings me a tray of food, sets it down in front of me and touches my arm gently. She calls me “baby,” and asks if I need anything else. 

“No, ma’am, this is perfect. It’s probably terrible hospital food, but given how hungry I am, it tastes nearly perfect.” 

I take the lid off my coffee, add sugar and cream and stir it with my spoon clanking on the side. 

As I raise the cup to my lips I quietly think, “If dad were still alive, he would have been here with me this whole time.”

He would have driven up once he knew I was in the hospital. 

He would have sat with me asking the doctors and nurses questions, pestering anyone he could. 

He would have seen me off to the operating room and been there when I woke up. 

He would have demanded I order two cups of coffee – one for me and one for him. One more cup of coffee with Bob. 

As I set the cup down and looked around, I could feel his presence as clear as day, just as he next to me in the car on one of our many road trips. 

He was there with me in the hospital room. 

He – and my mom – were  with me in the operating room, looking over me. 

That’s why I was here in this room drinking coffee on another sunny day. 

They made sure of it.

Sorry pop, they don’t have any Styrofoam cups, just the real deal. 

One more cup of coffee with Bob. How about a refill?