Wednesday will mark four weeks since I had foot surgery to repair a damaged plantar fascia in my right foot with the hopes that I will again be able to walk…and maybe run…without heel pain. Time will tell as the healing process is three months for someone who doesn’t average 11,000 steps a day for work. “Yours will take longer,” my doctor reminded me.
And it is. In fact, this past week has seen me grimacing with each step from pain in my LEFT foot, instead of the right, which is likely a result of the overcompensation I’m doing from having the protective boot on the right foot and the corresponding limped I’m forced into from having one leg longer than the other by an inch.
During this time, I have done my job and walked quite a lot, but only ridden the bike twice…the only form of formal exercise. I’ve lost a lot and am looking forward to the day (today) when I stop wearing the boot and attempt my comeback.
The real reason I left the sidelines to join the game again though, was to write something about the passing of my father-in-law, Bill Heckler. He died this past Friday of congestive heart failure after a two-month battle with the same and pneumonia.
I met my father-in-law to be during the summer of 1973 on a visit I made to their house to pick up a couple of matching shirts Holly and I were going to wear to work the seafood buffet at Hospitality Motor Inn. We began to date that winter…she was still in high school and I was in my first year at Cleveland State…and so I began to know and appreciate the man he was. It didn’t take long, either. His absolute goodness, his hard working nature, his honest and straight-forward approach to any and all issues made him an open book. He quite simply began to be the most influential man in my life as he invited me into his family and his world.
Over the years we would grow very close. We had very similar interests and we shared a common love of family…which were the same people. When my children were born, he embraced them as grandparents do, but with a love that exceeded anything I’d seen before or since. As the years passed and I had longer and more time to share in his company, it was plain to see that there was no close second to the love he gave to his and my children. In the end, he lived for them and to see them settled in to secure and happy lives. His compassion for them will be his legacy and what will affect all that they do and the interactions they have with their own children and grandchildren as the years pass for them. His impact will be never-ending.
I was fortunate enough to have been with him to discuss the Indians, Donald Trump and Hillary, how wonderful his grandchildren were, and how special his daughter and son were only two hours before he died. When he saw me walking, with pain, into his ICU space on that day, his first comment and one he would repeat several times before I left for the night was, “you need to take a couple of days off and let your feet get better.” In keeping with the man he was, as he was dying, he was thinking of someone else and their well-being. As much as anyone can, he made me ‘feel’ love. His actions overshadowed his words.
I will miss him terribly. I will continue on my life’s journey though, a better man for having known him. I will remember how he treated others and how he lived his life and draw inspiration from it and try to emulate, where I am capable, what he would have done in a situation. I will be proud if someday my children, and others who knew us both, think I was half the man he was
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