I’ve written about my father quite a bit here, but there is one story about my dad that I haven’t be able to tell before. On this year’s Father’s Day, I’m going to swallow my hesitation and tell you about the miracle my father worked for me.
Frank W. Duntemann was struck by advanced oral cancer in late summer 1968. He was 56. I was 16, my sister only 12. We watched our father fight cancer and consequent pain and disfigurement for 9 years, until it finally took him on January 16, 1978. I was 25; Carol and I had married in 1976. A few weeks after my father’s funeral, I was home alone, in bed, quite sick. I was getting stabbing pains in my abdomen that grew worse over the course of the day. It was hideous; the worst pain I had ever experienced in my life at that point. What had begun as intermittent twinges became continuous, and deepened.
By mid-afternoon I had begun to fear for my life. I pondered calling an ambulance, but 911 didn’t exist back then and I had no idea who to call. (Besides, the phone was in the kitchen.) I was doubled over and crying. Religion confused me back then for reasons I may or may not go into in future entries. Faced with that pain, however, I decided to ask God for mercy. I didn’t recite the usual prayers. I asked God straight out in plain talk to take the pain away, and if not, could He at least let me live.
I then quieted my mind, hoping against hope, and…nothing. The pain continued, if anything growing worse as minutes passed. I thought of my father, who had faced horrible pain for 9 years. And on an impulse I called out to him: “Dad, please help me and take this pain away! I don’t want to die!”
Die. At that word, the pain vanished. It didn’t waver and fade away. It stopped, so sharp and so suddenly that it felt like it had been cut with a knife…or an axe. My abdominal muscles began to relax, and by that evening I was feeling reasonably good and in no pain whatsoever.
Twenty years later, I threw a kidney stone. It was that same sort of pain, if perhaps not quite so severe. Carol called 911 for an ambulance. I had a 3 AM ride to our nearest hospital, writhing as I went. The docs gave me Demerol and the pain slowly faded out, emphasis on faded. So it was possible that my pain back in 1978 was just a kidney stone making its obnoxious presence felt. My atheist friends will doubtless think of it that way. But that would be too much to be a coincidence. I called out to my father, and the pain was cut instantly.
Frank Duntemann was a fighter. He was fiercely protective of his family. If he had confronted my kidney stone from his place in The Great Upstairs, let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to have been that kidney stone, heh.
Now, why haven’t I wanted to tell this story until now? I was afraid that people would think I made it up. I didn’t. It happened, just as I described above. It boggled my mind in 1978, but it also had another, more significant effect: It took away my confusion and doubt about religion, and pointed me back toward God. And I think that on that terrible day, God took my father aside and told him that his kid was suffering, and that as my father he had the power to end that suffering.
He did. End of story. But it’s not a story. Call it what you want. I call it a miracle.
Happy Father’s Day to everyone within reading distance, for fathers here or in The Great Upstairs. Fathers matter.
