How Dad Smoked His Last Cigarette While Driving to the Emergency Room
Grit, Grace, and DNA, Part 5
The years: 1950s—200-something
The place: Seattle, Washington
Subject: Raymond Louis Merwin
My dad was a god. A giant among men.
In old photographs, he and his siblings look endlessly hip — crew cuts and bouffants, cat-eye glasses and Ray-Ban Cats—boiling clams on the beach as the Pacific Ocean swallowed the sun.
But that wasn’t the dad I knew.
My dad was distant, five hundred miles away and not prone to emotional interchanges.
He blew in from Seattle like the weather, landing every few seasons, bringing presents, Coors beer from Idaho, and rarefied air.
Life quickened when Dad showed up at our little house on Woodford Street, where my brother, Ken, and I were being raised by our grandparents.
The aunts and uncles arrived in numbers to play cards in the living room, drink cocktails in tall juice glasses, and smoke cigarettes on the front porch. Laughter rolled through the house.
This is what glamorous people do, I thought. This is what happy, exceptional people do.
And then he’d leave. Back to Seattle in his Volkswagen Bug. And I’d tumble back to the ordinary.
But this story isn’t about my wobbly childhood.
It’s about the night my dad, at age forty-four, woke up in the wee hours with crushing chest pain. True to form, he got in that VW Bug, lit a Camel, and drove himself down Interstate 5 to the emergency room.
In gambling terms, my dad was always all in.
Fishing. Golf. Texas Hold’em. Heart attacks. Smoking salmon. Day trading.
He dug in. He learned the angles. He perfected the craft.
A few days later, Dad was recovering from a quadruple bypass at the University of Washington Medical Center, saved by world-class surgeons and stubborn will.
He was a force of independence and capacity.
That was his moxie. It was also his flaw.
Dad didn’t traffic in vulnerability. He believed in putting his head down and muscling through on his own.
Fall off the beam?
Mop up the mess and do better next time.
I inherited that beam.
I learned to grind. To muscle through. To rely on myself.
But.
Here’s the shadow side: self-reliance hardens into isolation. Focus narrows into obsession. People fall away.
I know that terrain too well.
Years later, when my dad was dying, we sat at his kitchen table sorting out the end-of-life practicalities.
And then – out of nowhere – he stepped off the beam.
“If I had to choose between going to the Olympics and having you and Ken,” he said, “I would choose you and Ken. Every time.”
Dad had been a record-breaking high school runner. Scouts. Scholarships. The whole horizon open.
Until his girlfriend – the woman who would become my mother – got pregnant. And that was the end of that.
For all of my life, I believed Ken and I were the derailment, the breakers of dreams.
That night, I learned we were the choice. Chosen. Preferred. Loved.
That was the quietest, bravest thing my dad ever said to me.
It reminds me to temper my obsessions, lay down the sword I use to cut through life, and reach for garlands of friendship instead.
If you take anything from this story, let it be this:
Moxie gets you through. Connections last.
Sensitivity is strength.
And the ace up my sleeve, just like my dad’s?
Mop up the mess, put my head down, and do better next time.
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This is Part 5 of a seven-part series, Grit, Grace, and DNA—an excavation of legacy: The brilliance, the burden, and the quiet ways we learn to live butter side up.
The saga continues next week with Part 6, “I Inherited Guts: My Brother Saved Me from a Careening Train.””
Read Part 1, “I Inherited Courage: How Lon and Cecilia Threw Themselves from a Moving Train.”
Read Part 2, “I Inherited Gumption: How Pearly Jack Merwin Walked North into Canada and Disappeared.”
Read Part 3, “I Inherited Tenacity: How Aunt Toots Fended Off the Oil Men.”
Read Part 4, “I Inherited Imagination: How Gramma Built a Woodland Retreat from a Firecracker Shack.”
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Kyla Merwin 