Robin

 Gifford R. Hicks, 11.28.1912-11.30.1985

When our Dad died in a horrific crash, hit by a salt-water truck on an ice-covered highway intersection during the “Ice Bowl,” November 30, 1985, it is assumed he was killed instantly. The day was themed “Ice Bowl,” as University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University competed in the annual adversarial football phenomenon during a very heavy ice and snow-event. 

G. Rae, our sister, had fed Dad hot soup and scalding coffee (his favorites), and begged him to stay at her house overnight in Stillwater. He declined, got in his big yellow car, and drove away. 

After leaving our sister’s home in Stillwater, Oklahoma, Dad headed east on Highway 51 toward Tulsa, but then turned south on Highway 18 into Cushing. Being a man of few communications, we can only surmise that he might have been driving to his sister Deloris’ house in Cushing, one of his contacts in that area. Dad’s pet name for Deloris was “Diddle” or “Dot.” Or maybe he was just taking the route that would take him back home. 

And that was that. 

Dad’s grueling, instantaneous death is one for which I am now grateful, in that he didn’t lie suffering for days on end, in a hospital bed. He had indeed gone home. 

Dad’s pet name for me was, “Sugar.” That let me know he loved me even though I cannot recall a time when he said those “love” words in his, “Don’t cry!” world of existence.  

I did cry endlessly after his death was announced. He was not there in body to tell me not to cry. In fact, it seemed he cried with me in many of the years thereafter when I could often feel his presence in the big red/orange robin that flies in and lands from time to time on our back fence. (The meaning of seeing a robin: hope, courage, renewal.) 

—S. E. Killingworth

11.30.2023

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