A Scene From The River

My father was hospitalized in 1981 for an operation. His heart had stopped on the operating table, and he had been resurrected. The prognosis was not good as he was refusing to eat and he was eighty-three years old. My cousin who lived in the same city as where the hospital was located called me and invited me to stay at her place. She would drive me to the hospital in the morning when she went to work and pick me up after her day was finished.
I took her up on her kind offer. Our children were out on their own and Lanny could handle the work of his construction company and write any checks that needed to be sent. The airplane tickets were ordered and I packed winter clothes for returning to Iowa at the end of October. I knew how cold it could be.
What a surprise. The Indian Summer was fantastic. That was the warmest fall they had in years. The fall colors were incredible and the black squirrels that reside in Council Bluffs were still scurrying about gathering food for the winter.
The weather stayed decent and one of Papa’s brothers and wife were able to visit. By this time it was drawing nearer to Thanksgiving and the leaden skies and colder weather arrived. One day in the hospital cafeteria I heard a commotion over by the huge window that looked out on the Missouri River and glanced up. The sky was totally black, but the black was moving in waves. Like the others, I hurried over to the windows. The dreary, clouded day was still light enough to show the huge mass or ducks soaring upward and leaving for warmer realms in the South. It was an unbelievable sighting that seemed to embed itself in my memory. I could only imagine what it must have looked like a century earlier. Thanksgiving was with my cousin, her husband and at a friend of theirs home.
The hospital called in a Psychologist to evaluate Papa. I explained that he had been watching his friends die for over forty years, and none were living. I also told him that Mama had passed away two years and six months ago just two months before their sixtieth anniversary. He took one look at Papa and said, “He’s watched all of his friends pass away and his wife of almost sixty years is gone, and they think he is crazy?” With that he turned on his heel and left. Of course, he charged Medicare also.
I called my brothers to tell them Papa was dying. Norman could not risk returning to Iowa in the winter as he had had pneumonia three times while living there. My oldest brother, Rein and wife Edna were able to get off from their jobs and head for Iowa. They called our other relatives. One cousin and his wife from Waterloo made it there the same day as my brother and wife. Within two days, Papa had left this Earth.
My brother Rein, wife Edna, and myself arranged for Papa’s funeral in the small town where he lived. Papa’s usual bad luck arrived. There was a horrific ice storm and many of his relatives could not risk the perilous journey on icy roads. We did discover that Papa had meant for operation to end things on Earth as he had been to the Pastor of the Lutheran church and arranged for all the hymns and passages for his funeral. Afterwards we closed up the house and Rein and Edna took me back to Council Bluffs where I caught a plane for home in Washington, but the sight of those ducks would fit perfectly into one of my stories.
In Gather The Children, LouElla has taken Mina on an outing in the middle of November. They stop on the green around the Missouri river and while they are eating the lead, gray sky becomes dark with the migrating ducks.
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