My ‘Vegetable’ Dad Squeezed My Hand and Looked Me in the Eye

Last week, I read Widowish by <a href="https://medium.com/@melissagould-author" rel="noopener">Melissa Gould</a> who is also a writer here on Medium. I highly recommend her touching, shocking and full-of-love memoir. Through circumstances you’ll have to read for yourself, Melissa recounts visiting her young husband in the hospital while he lay in a coma. That’s it, that’s all you get, go buy a copy of her book ;) While reading about her experience, I was transported right back into a hospital room in Kingston, Ontario where for six weeks we visited with my still, silent dad after his car accident. No one can prepare a fourteen-year-old for visits like those. I had so much hope. After a devastating accident that had already taken the lives of three people, one of them my mother (here’s a bit of <a href="https://medium.com/the-memoirist/the-night-my-mom-died-i-laughed-til-it-hurt-902af18a4511" rel="noopener">that story</a>), my father was the only one from the accident who was still alive. Alive technically, but not really living. After our surreal, otherworldly <a href="https://medium.com/the-memoirist/our-car-accident-the-day-after-their-car-accident-dbd2c7614862" rel="noopener">initial visit</a> with him the day after the accident we knew his ICU hospital room would become a familiar place. We just didn’t know for how long. So many people hoped and prayed for his recovery. Four little people believed it was imminent. My older sister, younger brother, younger sister and I all needed him to come home. Our mom was gone so it was a no-brainer that Dad would get better. <a href="https://medium.com/the-memoirist/my-vegetable-dad-squeezed-my-hand-and-looked-me-in-the-eye-f01f13bff268">Read More</a>