One last magical day with my dad, a huge sports fan who planned everything, even in death

BAY CITY — My 91-year-old father was curled in the fetal position, grabbing the metal railing with his left hand in a bed brought in by hospice.

The blanket tangled around his feet and I looked at his legs. Like skin and bones. He wasn’t wearing his hearing aids or his glasses.

This wasn't my dad.

Tears welled in my eyes and I turned my head so he couldn’t see. I took deep breaths, blinking hard, trying to stay composed. I handed him his glasses and found his hearing aids.

One had a red mark.

“Red in right?” I asked.

“Yes,” he mumbled.

I inserted them into his ears.

This is when you say goodbye, right?

Well, what the heck do you say?

We made small talk: The kids are doing great. Teresa’s office flooded. Emma and Brennan love their new house. Nick lost his first game — they are on the bubble of making the NCAA playoffs. Jake and Leah had an amazing time on their honeymoon — Jake loves his new job, working from home. Yeah, Astro is good.

My dad seemed to hang on every word.

Then suddenly, he wanted to use the bathroom. He tried to swing his legs out of bed but grimaced in pain. I tried to help, moving his foot about 3 inches and he gasped in pain. He had fallen about a week earlier, missing a chair and smashed his back on the corner of a table. Nothing was broken but the pain was unbearable. He was given powerful drugs but all they did was make him sleepy.

He pushed a button, calling for workers from the assisted living center where he had lived for six years.

“I tried to move him, but I’m not trained for this,” I said.

It took two of them to lift him up and put him in a chair and wheel him into the bathroom. I went to the other room to talk to my mom.

“This is his first time out of bed in a week,” she said, her eyes lighting up.

They put on his pants, wheeled him into the living room and he got a surge of adrenaline. It was like he came alive. The sparkle was back, and he was himself again.

We talked about the Detroit Lions and Michigan State Spartans — his two favorite teams this time of year. We talked about everything, like nothing was wrong.

“This is the most he’s talked in a week,” my mom said.

He hadn’t eaten in days, and I rushed to McDonald’s and bought him a shake.

“Strawberry,” he ordered his favorite.

He could barely hold the cup to his chest, barely had the energy to suck anything through the straw, but he smiled when it hit the back of his sore throat. He took only a few sips.

“Are you in pain?” my mother asked.

He shook his head and smiled — but I think he was lying. He clapped his hands in joy and gave us thumbs up. “Do that again,” I said, taking out my phone to record it. He started messing around, moving his hands like they were dancing, flipping them back and forth, smiling and messing around.

I wish that visit would have lasted forever.

But eventually, the spark left and he started to fade and fell asleep. I got up and started to leave but forgot my keys. I went back into the room and he woke.

“Psst,” he said. “Next time, bring your dog.”

Three days later, my father, Don, was gone.

The man who taught me everything

“He put my mom above everything else,” my sister, Holly, told the pastor during a meeting to set up the funeral service.

My mom looked stunned to hear it put that way. They had been together so long — 69 years of marriage — rarely more than 15 feet apart for the last 15 years. Each relying on the other so completely that it never occurred to them where one started and the other ended.

The pastor was new and we started telling him some stories.

My dad was the man in the green coat on wooden skis, who taught me to snow ski at a small resort in the middle of Michigan. He spread his skis far apart and held me up between them, snow plowing down the bunny hill. I was 3 or 4.

He was the man in the front seat of the Suburban, the one with an aluminum boat fastened to the roof, pulling a travel trailer. We drove down I-75 to Florida more times than I can remember. But we usually vacationed in Michigan, staying in campgrounds in Tawas and at Burt Lake and all over the Upper Peninsula. That’s probably why I love this state so much — every corner of it — because it was engrained at such a young age.

He was the man with the old baseball glove, who would play catch for hours in the front yard. I was a first baseman, and I would have him throw it in the grass, so I could practice scooping the ball on the bounce. Years later, when I was playing catch with my own sons, I realized how his arm must have hurt but he never said a word.

He was the man who heard someone tell a racist joke and it bothered him deeply. He was not confrontational — he was always calm and reserved but he pulled me aside and made sure that I knew it was wrong. He was shaping me.

He was the man in the green-and-white sweatshirt, who came running down the stairs as MSU played Indiana State in the 1979 NCAA championship. Magic to Kelser. The basement looked like the MSU bookstore had vomited everywhere. There were MSU cups and pendants and flags, and whenever you didn’t know what to get him for Father’s Day or a birthday, you got him MSU stuff. My father was an insanely proud, second-generation MSU alum; and on Sunday mornings, he would greet our pastor — a huge U-M fan — with constant rivalry banter. I could never quite understand it.

In my one act of teenaged defiance, there was no way I was going to either MSU or U-M. Now, I write about both of them — life is funny that way.

He was the man who went to work in a suit and tie — his “glad rags,” as he called them. He worked for 42 years as a district court probation and parole officer supervisor. He protected us from the “Crime Shop” as he called it, never talking about his work. Never talking about the evil in the world.

He was the man who loved working in the yard every night, as long as he had a transistor radio hanging from his belt. He smoked his pipe, pulling weeds and tending to the flower garden, while listening to Ernie Harwell. Once a year, we went to Tiger Stadium — the greatest day of the summer. I remember walking through the dingy concourse and up that walkway and seeing the infield grass, the most beautiful, amazing thing I’d ever seen in my life.

He was the man who went deer hunting every November on my uncle’s property near Rose City. My dad brought me along before I was old enough to hunt legally, and I sat with him, carrying a harmless BB gun. He drilled me with gun safety, teaching me how to hold a gun, how to walk safely together down the path, pointing the gun the other way, and I found myself teaching my own son the same things.

He was the man with the loud booming voice who sat in the stands, watching me play high school football. “Decent, decent, decent!” he’d scream, repeating the words of the cheerleaders. I don’t think he ever missed a game.

He was the man who could take a block of wood and carve it into a frozen moment – a pitcher in the stretch, a golfer in the backswing, a man holding a fish; and every Christmas, he’d hand them out as presents.

He was the man who followed the Lions religiously, reading every article in the Bay City Times, watching every game, lamenting every loss. But here’s the crazy thing — I don’t believe he ever saw them in person.

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He was the man who was ahead of his time, recording everything long before cell phones. He used an 8 mm camera, and he stood to the side, filming me throw the javelin at Grand Valley State. It was his first college track meet. He didn’t know a dang thing about the javelin. But no matter what I did, he was beaming with pride.

He was the man who had served in the Army and would playfully salute someone as a show of thanks or honor.

He was the man who had a thick, full head of hair until the day he died — yeah, I didn’t exactly get that gene.

He was the man who would try to help my mother walk — always the gentleman — even though he needed a walker. “Dad, stop it!” I’d beg. “You are gonna take both of you down.”

He was the man with the khaki pants, who made it to my son Jake’s wedding this summer. It took some amazing work by my sister just to get him there, traveling from Bay City to Charlevoix, but he made it. I pushed him in his wheelchair to the edge of the dance floor to watch the first dance; and for weeks, he talked about how beautiful it was.

But more than anything, my dad was a planner.

He bought cemetery plots years ago for him and my mom — side by side, of course — and put money aside for the dinner after the service. He was prepared to a fault. He’d pack rain gear on a sunny day, just in case the weather flipped. He’d take extra fishing reels, just in case one broke down. And to this day, I pack like my father. Prepared for anything.

But nothing ever really prepared me for this.

Angels from hospice

The people who work in hospice are angels among us, and we can never thank them enough.

Earlier this summer, Cardinal Hospice of Bay City set up the most amazing day. My parents loved to golf and the staff wanted to take them to one last outing, even if they couldn’t actually golf. It was almost like a Make-A-Wish event, and it was all thrown together last minute.

I rode in the cart with my father, my sister rode with my mom and my brother came with his son, Max. All we did was laugh and crack jokes and had an amazing time.

The first hole took about 45 minutes — thankfully, the course was empty.

“Hey, you finally got it past my tee,” Holly teased my brother, Dave.

I had my dad alone, and we were making a video to show at my son’s wedding. I took out my cell phone and asked him a question, recording him.

“After nearly 70 years of marriage, what advice do you have for Jake and Leah?” I asked.

“Never go to bed angry,” he said.

No surprise, my mom said the same thing.

On the second hole, I wanted my father to at least putt, to feel the club in his hands one more time. I pulled the cart onto the edge of the green and helped him out. He was weak and wobbly. I stood behind him, holding him up, just like he had stood behind me teaching me to ski.

“I got you,” I said, my arms wrapped around him, grabbing his waist.

He lined up the putt, growing frustrated that he couldn’t adjust his feet. He took a swing and missed it.

He jerked in disgust. Even at 91, even though he hadn’t even touched a club in years, he was ticked at himself for missing a 15-footer — I have no idea where I get my competitiveness.

I helped him move closer to the hole for another shot, and he drained it.

The hospice staff then put together an amazing meal near the clubhouse, and after the day was done, my father called them together.

And he saluted them.

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Nothing will ever be the same

“Next time, bring your dog.”

When he said it, I thought he just wanted to see my dog, Astro — he loved that dog.

But after he passed, his words took a different meaning. Maybe, he was thinking about my mother — at least, that’s what I’d like to believe.

So on Sunday morning, I went to Bay City to their place, which suddenly felt so different, and I took my dog.

My mom’s face lit up. “Come here, Astro,” she said, petting him.

That was my dad. Everything was planned.

Always four steps ahead of the rest of us.

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Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @seideljeff. To read his recent columns, go to www.freep.com/sports/jeff-seidel.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Jeff Seidel's last, magical day with his father