Stephanie Earls: A Father's Day remembrance: My dad loved a great deal

Jun. 18—On an afternoon in late June 2022, as I sat by my dad's hospital bed in Colorado Springs, trying to read a book and forget for a few moments that the only man I'd loved, and who'd loved me, for the entirety of my life was slipping away, his cellphone rang.

"Is this Ed Earls' number?" asked the voice on the other end, whose Caller ID I didn't recognize.

I said I was Ed's daughter, and explained that Dad's condition had taken a turn for the worse. We didn't know when (or if, I silently added, through gritted soul) he and Mom would be able to return to West Virginia.

The man on the phone expressed his "get well" wishes, and went on to wax nostalgic about the old days, how my dad had taken him under his wing at "the plant," the Prowler trailer manufacturing facility in Hancock, Md., where Dad was a sales manager for more than three decades before he retired.

"Ed was like a father to me," the caller said, keeping me on the line for maybe another 10 minutes to share memories about a man who — in the 51 years I'd known him — rarely did so.

It was all new to me. The tales, and the context.

A year after my dad's bio officially ended, on July 13, 2022, that part of his story — the parts I hadn't known before and the parts I'd forgotten, because I could — is still being written.

The man who'd called Dad's cell that day last summer, one of many people who reached out during that time, whose names only occasionally rang a bell, hung up. I returned to the awful reality of the hospital room, the mechanical gasps, whirrs and chirps; if anxiety has a soundtrack, this is it.

I looked at my sleeping father — this superhuman who'd swooped in to save me more times than I could count, from crises that paled in comparison to the one for which he now could offer no succor. His meringue of sugar-white hair, lips chapped and tongue raw from the oxygen mask, neck so vulnerable and pale. A vein in his throat pulsed out of time with the monitors.

I hadn't realized there were loose ends, a void heading into the void.

And here we were, too late to ask.

Dad wasn't secretive but he was taciturn, the kind of person who'd honestly answer all your questions but rarely volunteered the words that would lead to revelatory asks — unless, of course, it was regarding practical matters (yes, my tires are rotated, oil changed, and [lie] taxes done).

He was generous with his time and money, and had no expectations of quid pro quo or acknowledgment.

He was his own man, and he kept much of that man to himself.

More than 30 years into my parents' marriage, it was only well after the fact that Mom noticed he'd quit smoking, after decades of him puffing on cigarettes and then cigars, leaving the slow-smoldering nubs to burn out balanced on whatever ledge he could find outside whatever building he was about to enter.

He hadn't mentioned his smoking-cessation plan to anyone. He didn't feel the need to talk about it.

He just decided, and did.

Edward Earls was born on Dec. 15, 1940, in Sylva, N.C., and spent his early years moving around the country — and, briefly, to Mexico — with a "tunnel superintendent" father, whose many public-works projects included the Hoover Dam. He earned a history degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (the same school from which I would graduate 30 years later) and serve with the Army National Guard, before settling in Berkeley Springs, W.Va., with the college sweetheart he'd married, and their two daughters, where he continued in the career from which he would retire, at the plant.

That is part of what I covered in my dad's obituary, which ran last year in an August issue of the Morgan Messenger, the Berkeley Springs newspaper where I started my journalism career.

This is part of what I did not share in that obit:

Dad liked plain cabbage with salt, hated mac-and-cheese, and loved a great deal.

The handful of times I saw him truly seem excited, before his grandchildren (my sister's daughters) were born, was when he'd scored such a coup, regardless how tiny, pointless, and clutter-inducing.

That personality quirk was baked in long before I arrived on the scene, according to my mom.

One of her earliest memories from the salad days of married life, when she and Dad shared a "tiny" apartment in Hagerstown, Md., was, in retrospect, a resonant insight into what she'd signed up for.

"I turn around and he's got on a full wetsuit, with flippers and face goggles," said my mom. "We don't live at the beach, we're not going anywhere that has a beach, there's only a tiny swimming pool at the apartment complex ... "

Dad had purchased the ensemble solely because it was for sale at a great price. He never used it, and years later sold it through a penny-press ad.

He loved history, hated waste, and despite all his collector tendencies, was hyper-organized via his own sometimes-arcane systems.

Mom and I were going through his shaving kit after he died and found an old pill bottle repurposed for convalescing projects-to-be. The bottle held three things: a sliver of chipped tooth, the severed leg of a toy horse and a silver necklace clasp.

"I'm sure he had plans to fix all those, for the granddaughters," said my mom.

Not the tooth. Probably.

My dad was always there to fix me, too. No questions asked.

He came to see me when I was sad, after I'd moved to Portland, Ore., and was blue because nobody who really knew me was around to celebrate my birthday.

After I moved to Albany, N.Y., and when my cat died, and when a semi totaled my Honda on Interstate 81 the night before Thanksgiving, he drove for hours to be with me. I don't remember our conversations, just that he was there, a stabilizing force sans question or judgment.

He was my caravan partner, moving cross-country to Colorado Springs.

When I say he made my life possible, I don't mean it in a genetic or conceptual way.

His quips are how I talk to myself in my head. Through the movies he loved and that we bonded over, including "The Outlaw Josey Wales."

"Endeavor to persevere," Dad would counsel.

Like "As you wish," it also meant "I love you."

My parents drove from West Virginia to Colorado Springs, in June of last year, to take care of me after total hip replacement survey.

Both had contracted COVID-19 a few months before the trip, but were feeling better and had, for weeks, tested negative.

They'd most recently been in the Springs in late 2021, and none of us had any reason to believe a return trip to a high-altitude location Dad had visited half-a-dozen times would entail extra risks.

We were wrong.

On Father's Day, four days after I'd been released from the hospital post-surgery, my dad was kneeling down on my porch, fixing a broken glass door pane I'd let languish for almost a decade, when it hit him.

He couldn't stand up. And he couldn't breathe.

His blood oxygen, according to the readout from a finger monitor Mom got at Walgreens, was desperately low.

Dad was admitted into the hospital on Father's Day, and the idea he might never get out seemed absurd.

I never got to give him the mug that said "World's Greatest Dad," which I know he would have appreciated, not only for the sentiment, but the fact that I got it for 10 cents on a post-holiday sale.

I never got to show him how I followed through.

"You're going to fix that window, right?" he asked, when I was able to visit him in the hospital.

It was one of the last conversations we had.

I promised I would do as he asked, and I did.