Mom and Dad put away the dishes in separate ways. Mom likes the physical and mechanical motion of applying the soap and water, washing the plates in the sink. Dad is more practical, putting them away in the dishwasher and letting the machine do all of the work. After a sweet tune starts playing, he opens the dishwasher and steam pours out, warming his face and hands.

But right now, resting on a thin bed in the ICU, Dad’s face is slack and his hands are cold. The type of cold that means his blood will no longer circulate through his veins, up to his brain and into his heart. The type of cold that means future winters will become that much more brutal.

The type of cold that junior Taylor Brooks has endured for nine years of her life.

Nine years since the dishwasher has been emptied. 

Nine years since her dad passed away. 

“That was his job,” Taylor said. “We never touched the dishwasher after that.” 

Until last year. While doing some spring cleaning, Taylor wondered what was in the dishwasher and unintentionally opened up a time capsule of lost memories.

“I was curious because my mom was saying, oh, we haven’t touched this thing in years. I wonder how it’s holding up in there,” Taylor said. “So I opened it and there were all these dishes that I haven’t seen in eight years.”

One minute

Taylor was eight and her little brother was four when their father passed away from a deteriorating condition caused by having scarlet fever as a baby. His mother took him to a doctor when his temperature had spiked to 106 degrees, but by that point, it had been too late. The damage was irreparable. 

“[His heart] started failing and his kidneys were kind of failing on him, too,” Taylor said. “And it really caused problems whenever he met my mom later in life.”

The last day that Brooks spent with him, he drove her to school — and had a heart attack on the way back home.

“The paramedics actually found him unconscious in the driveway of our front door,” Taylor said. “He was gonna go take himself to the hospital, but he didn’t get the chance to.”

The paramedics rushed him to the ICU where he would spend the night hooked up to machines that were trying their hardest to keep a husband and father of two young children alive. 

But throughout the night, he suffered from three more heart attacks and his body knew he wouldn’t be able to win this fight. 

“I ended up finding out because a minute after I woke up, I heard the code blue,” Taylor said. “You hear that in the hospital a lot, but code blue is whenever they need extra help. It’s because their heart’s failing. They’re dying. There’s no pulse.”

When Taylor had woken up the following morning, something unusual – possibly miraculous – had occurred.  

“I found out the time he died — it was the same time I had woken up,” Taylor said.

Her and her brother had been sleeping in the waiting room when it happened, as the ICU didn’t let younger kids inside. It had been one minute. One minute between waking up and the sound of his heartbeat flatlining. 

The moment Taylor opened her eyes was the last time her father would ever open his again. 

“[My mom] came out a few minutes after I’d woken up and she took me to another side of the waiting room,” Taylor said. “She kind of sat me down and she was like, Taylor, God needed another angel.”

The room started spinning. 

A heavy weight began to press down on her chest, breathing was now a laborious task. Vision went blurry. They’ve been to the hospital so many times, this can’t be the day. 

Nothing is real.

It’s not real — until she looks up and sees her mother’s eyes.  

Those tears are real.

Her mom took Taylor’s hand and led her to see her father.

But when she peered up to look at who was lying on the hospital bed, all she saw was the shell of a man she once knew. 

He felt…stiff.

Hooked up to wires around his neck. IV needles taped to his arm. Tubes coming through his nose and mouth.

And his hands.

They were so, so, so…cold. 

“You try and hold their hand and it’s like, there’s nothing. There’s nothing there,” Taylor said. 

This wasn’t the person that had raised Taylor her whole life. 

This wasn’t the man she had seen yesterday.

This wasn’t the father that had taken her to school that morning. 

Returning home

Once they returned back home, the dishwasher wasn’t the only thing left untouched.

“The morning of, we saw crumbs on the table from the bar because he used to eat all his meals at the bar,” Taylor said. “And all the blinds were wide open, because he used to like to open the blinds all the way. And we never touched them for a while.”

Weeks passed before they cleaned up his crumbs and closed the blinds once again. Taylor described it as wrinkles he had left behind. 

“You don’t want to crease what has been done,” Taylor said. “So we didn’t want to crease what he had done to our house. That was really important to us because we felt like that was what we had left of him.”

In the safety of their home, they could process his death in whichever way they wished. But, Taylor had to go to school the following week. 

How would she bring this up?

When would she tell her friends?

After a test? At lunch? During their recess period?

None of it felt right, so Taylor began hiding this piece of herself. She told her friends that her dad was on a business trip. Always on a business trip. 

“It turned into like a year ago…two years ago…he passed away five years ago,” Taylor said. “I never liked to bring that up because I didn’t know how to take ‘I’m sorry,’ because I knew my friends couldn’t say anything else.”

Taylor was on the playground in fifth grade when she finally decided it was time. It had been around three years since his passing. She told them that she had a dream about her dad, and her friends all giggled in a why-would-you-dream-about-your-dad kind of way. But once she told them the truth, all of the nervous laughter stopped. 

The dream

Ding. Floor 1.

Ding. Floor 2. 

Ding. Floor 3.

Her mom and brother get off on this floor.

Only Taylor remains in the elevator. 

Ding.

Ding.

Ding — the metal doors slide open. 

And there he is.

Dad. Standing again, no wires, no tubes, no IV.

He looks strong, healthy. And then he smiles. A smile that says everything will be okay. A smile that means he will never be truly gone. A smile that confirms he’ll appear in more dreams down the line. 

And with that, the doors slowly close again.

And she wakes up. 

—————

Yes, everyone went around and said their expected ‘sorrys’. But after a moment of silence, one of her friends spoke up about how her parents were divorced.

“And I was like, but I thought that everyone had two parents. I just thought that’s how it worked. And they were like, it doesn’t always end that way. Everyone has a mom and dad. It just doesn’t — just doesn’t end the way you want it to sometimes,” Taylor said. “And that kind of was what changed me.”

After that, conversations became easier.

The weight on her shoulders felt a little lighter.

She no longer had to hide this secret.

And though it didn’t erase the pain, it helped ease it. Made it slightly more manageable.

The Lesson

Taylor is now 17 years old. And though nine years have passed, she carries the memories and important lessons that her father taught her before he passed away. One of her favorite memories with her dad was when they would drop off her little brother at preschool and spend the day playing in the neighborhood parks. 

“Longwood was my favorite park ever because I remember he used to push me on their swing set,” Taylor said. “I think that’s where I get my love of being outside.”

Being outside on those days meant her and her dad shared something; these were moments that Taylor can now look back on and remember. And the one thing that stands out the most from these moments was the way they were always able to understand each other.  

“My dad was a very quiet, patient person, and I think he taught me to have patience because we couldn’t communicate in the sense that everyone else does,” Taylor said.

Throughout his life, Taylor’s dad’s hearing worsened to the point where having a regular conversation was almost impossible. And since her father didn’t know sign language, they had to create a different form of expression, a quieter, mutual understanding of the situation at hand. So every minute they spent together, they shared the most simplest type of emotion — a laugh. 

“You just — you smile, you laugh, and you know you’re there,” Taylor said. “That was our language.”

That was why that first dream that Taylor had, her father had been smiling at her. And it is also the reason why Taylor keeps on smiling to this day. When she has a hard time communicating with someone, she reminds herself to take a moment to understand where the other person is coming from.

“It’s body language, it’s eye contact, it’s everything that they’re not saying,” Taylor said. “My dad was the one who taught me to have patience. In people, in their kindness, in their personality. It’s important to just have patience with them.”

Her father left her one last memento of him after he passed; one last life lesson Taylor could carry with her after he’d be gone. 

“He wrote us a will. But it was not formal, it was like a letter,” Taylor said. 

In December following his passing, her mom put that letter up on the Christmas tree, and when the day arrived, they opened up the letter and read what was inside. There was a separate section for each of them.

“And he said, Taylor, I just want you to keep smiling,” Taylor said. “Keep showing everyone how happy of a person you can be.”

Taylor is in the Clinicals Practicum program and plans to take Pre-med in college to become a doctor. She says that she wants to help others the way that she knows her dad would if he was still here. 

“It’s hard to put on a brave face because you know he can’t see things like me getting married or graduating from college,” Taylor said. “He can’t see me doing clinicals now or getting my pharmacy technician license because he was a pharmacist too.”

She knows that the medical field takes enormous amounts of empathy and patience, but these are traits her father already taught her before he left. And though the dishwasher still hasn’t been emptied, it serves as a reminder of just one of the many pieces of her father that Taylor still carries with her throughout life.

“I want him to know that I’m helping people in his name,” Taylor said. “And that’s what I’ve been wanting to do for the rest of my life.”