She arrived on one of the coldest nights of the year, in the middle of the night, bawling her little eyes out. I couldn’t be happier.
We’d waited years for this moment, her mother and I, more than five years, in fact. I thought I’d learned a lot in the years since her brother was born, like don’t take a woman in labor to the hospital too soon. I’d made that mistake once, driving 10 miles to our base hospital in California with a screaming wife at my side only to be sent back home. It’s not time yet, they said. When our first child was actually delivered a day or so later, I vowed to do better next time. So, 65 months later, I waited. I waited so long that our second child was born before a doctor could arrive, before the paperwork was done but, gratefully, after I’d parked the car.
Suddenly, there she was, all 8 pounds, 4 ounces of her, 21 inches of howling independence, at 1:30 a.m. on a frigid Iowa winter day. My wife, Linda, and I were scared witless. How do you raise a daughter? We only had brothers while growing up, so, obviously to me at least, Linda would be taking the lead here.
Let’s start with her name.
Linda had already settled on Meghan, a fairly uncommon name in 1977. Linda insists that she was influenced only by her Hayes family roots and the pleasant way the name rolled off the tongue. What we hadn’t counted on, though, was the wildly popular Australian novel, “The Thorn Birds,” and its equally popular lead character, Meghann "Meggie" Cleary, which doomed our daughter to future classrooms rife with Meagens, Megans and Meaghans.
I, on the other hand, proposed a uniquely clever middle name, Vesceji (pronounced va-shay).
“What kind of name is that?” Linda said, clearly exercising her spousal veto rights.
We settled on my second choice, a more mainstream Lurene, as in Lurene Tuttle the modest Hollywood acting success who once played opposite Howard Duff as Effie, the smart-as-a-tack secretary who was always saving his bacon on the radio show, “The Adventures of Sam Spade.”
Now that we had a boy and a girl, it was obvious that our small two-bedroom home on the west side of Council Bluffs, Iowa, wouldn’t do for our expanding family, so we went house-hunting. We found a nifty two-story, three-bedroom older home on the other side of town and moved in around the same time Meghan Lurene Lehmer was baptized.
Besides the beautifully wallpapered walls, the off-kitchen pantry, dual mudrooms, professionally landscaped and terraced back yard and safe encased in concrete in a basement wall, the new home featured a laundry chute, running from the second-floor bedroom area all the way to the basement laundry room. To keep people from stepping into the chute, it was covered by a grate, which was held in place by a carpet-covered brick.
Within days of her first crawl, Meghan removed the brick and grate and casually tossed the brick down the chute, demolishing the wallboard at the other end which was more accustomed to the gentle arrival of shirts, slacks, underwear and the occasional bedding. The message was clear: Meghan needed watching.
Watching Meghan was a joy. She was a cute little charmer from the start. She finger painted with gusto, conscientiously dyed Easter eggs and smeared her face with the flavor of the day, whether marinara or chocolate sauce. She banged out tunes on her Pianosaurus, carefully dressed her Barbies and ran gleefully with neighbor kids through the front yard sprinkler on steamy days.
She could look adorable in pinafores, impish in hand-me-down tees from her brother or rowdy in a cowgirl outfit. When she was around three, she was the center of attention in high school gyms across Council Bluffs as I towed her along to basketball games I covered as a sportswriter. She loved it.
She was still a preschooler when the family moved to Des Moines in 1981, but she was now a middle child. Fortunately, she got along with both her brothers, shared their adventurous spirit and remained as opinionated as ever, deservedly earning every timeout she was assessed.
Elementary school was mostly a breeze for Meghan. She was whip-smart, learned quickly and was blessed (or, perhaps, cursed) with a photographic memory. In many ways, she was a typical Iowa girl. She had Strawberry Shortcake bedding and Cabbage Patch dolls. She followed her older brother on the soccer pitch, where she usually trailed the throng chasing the ball, this way then that way, but always with s smile on her face.
She was a Bluebird first, then a Brownie, initiating a memorable (for me, at least) father-daughter weekend at Camp Hantesa near Boone. She had chicken pox (at the same time as her brothers), was a bone-gnawing devotee of fried chicken and looked positively angelic for her first communion. She was a Smurf at Halloween, made her television debut on “The Floppy Show” and once sported “Annie hair.”
Although she wasn’t actually accident-prone, when she got hurt she did it in a big way. One time she was a bit too adventurous on the monkey bars on her school playground, ripping a big gash under her chin when her head scraped the gravel. I picked her up at school and headed to her doctor’s office, even though I wasn’t quite sure where it was. It knew it was in one of two office buildings in West Des Moines. So I carried her in my arms into the lobby of one of the buildings before I was redirected to the right one. We were both pretty shook up after I drove her home, 19 stitches later.
Not long after that, Meghan won a state-of-the-art Pee Wee Herman scooter, complete with hand brakes. She soon earned another trip to the doctor, this time for multiple contusions and a cast on her arm.
Meghan hit a growth spurt as she approached her middle school years. She tried volleyball and basketball, but eventually opted for another side of sports: as a cheerleader at St. Pius X in Urbandale. Those were awkward years, bouncing from braces to Glamour Shots, Guess sweats and Z Cavaricci jeans. Meghan tried babysitting for a time; cigarettes, too. There were family quarrels over her messy room, but we adults backed down, declaring her room off limits to all but her and the family dog, Bud, who found his own refuge under her bed most nights.
Bud was a great comfort to Meghan whenever she appeared down, like when she had her wisdom teeth pulled. She repaid Bud’s kindness many times over. When Bud’s kidneys failed and we decided to help end his misery, Meghan insisted that I pick her up at school and take her to the vets for the sad occasion. Her hands were on Bud as he took his final shuddering breath.
Meghan’s brother, Aaron, and I rode on the Register’s Great Bicycle Ride across Iowa for five years and Meghan spent several of those years with my parents in our support camper, driving ahead of the riders to the next overnight towns. Meghan spoke often of those days, especially mornings spent with her Grandpa and Grandma Lehmer eating donuts and meeting locals in small town Iowa coffee shops. She even tried riding one RAGBRAI when she was 12 years old.
Meghan found that as she entered her high school years, those boys who teased her at the pool and followed her around at the mall were just as eager to take her to a dance or a movie and she often obliged. She took a job at Bonanza Steakhouse, where she described her duties as “keeping the kale on the salad bar clean,” to save some money for her college years. A bonus was that her bilingual co-workers allowed her to put into practice what she was learning in Spanish class.
When she turned 16, she got her first car, a hand-me-down Chevy from her old man, which she managed to total within weeks in an Interstate rollover accident that she and her passenger miraculously survived with just a few scrapes and bruises.
Linda and I were upset when Meghan unilaterally spent her college savings on a replacement car, but Meghan vowed she’d manage to get to college on her own anyway. And she did.
She got in a work-study program her senior year of high school that paved the way for her to work and attend junior college after graduation. After completing junior college, she enrolled at Iowa State, even pledging a sorority at first. She eventually moved to a dorm and stayed in Ames for just one semester, before finding another job in Des Moines that would help pay for night classes at Simpson, which she did until earning a Bachelor’s degree.
Meghan wasted no time putting her degree to work, beginning a string of jobs that took her from insurance to banking, from Principal to Wells Fargo, each job better than the last. Her work at Wells Fargo earned her a transfer to San Francisco, bringing her closer to her brother, Aaron, who had relocated to the West Coast years earlier.
Although she counted novelist Danielle Steele among her neighbors, Meghan soon decided Des Moines was a better fit, so she returned. It was there that she met Paul Rowe, a fellow worker at the Iowa Foundation for Medical Care. By the time they wed, Meghan had moved on to Pioneer Hi-Bred International where she worked as a Senior Business Analyst.
For Fathers Day 2010, Meghan and Paul treated their Dads (both named Larry) to a day at Iowa Speedway in Newton for the Iowa Corn 250 Indy Car race. The day included prerace passes to the garage area, where Meghan was nearly knocked over by driver Danica Patrick on her bicycle, an incident Meghan recounted with glee for years afterward.
Meghan and Paul soon gave us our first grandchild, Evan Jack Rowe, whose middle name honored my Dad, Walter B. “Jack” Lehmer, whom Meghan adored. Meghan became a full-time mother after that, taking her role as mother as seriously as any job she ever held. A second son, Liam, followed two years later.
Motherhood kept Meghan busy, but not so busy that she didn’t have time for others. She loved animals and just being outside in nature. At one time, her household included a cat, a dog and some fish. She usually had a pet of at least one kind around and sometimes they weren’t even hers, as she and Paul were frequent foster dog caretakers.
They often took their boys on road trips around Iowa, especially to organic farms, where they could stock up on locally grown products and the boys could cavort with the animals. Meghan shared freely from the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) boxes they regularly received.
Family was important to Meghan. She made frequent trips to the Omaha-Council Bluffs area to visit Grandma Rose, Cousin Jennie or Uncle Dave. The watermelon water she brought to one family gathering was the talk of the reunion. She never forgot a birthday or anniversary, but didn’t need a special occasion to spread her kindness. She frequently showed up unexpectedly at our door, bearing gifts.
“We were out somewhere, when I saw this,” she’d say, handing over a package of some kind. “I knew you liked it, so here it is.”
Despite the distance from her brothers (Aaron lives in Oakland, California; Bret lives in Fayateville, Arkansas), Meghan was close to her siblings. They got together often, including for one strenuous hike up Mount Whitney in California, the tallest mountain in the U.S. (outside Alaska).
Knowing that her own family would be constantly evolving, Meghan wisely decided to have photos taken professionally from time to time, capturing whatever her family was up to at that particular time. Photo shoots with Meghan became a regular thing for photographer Amy Allen, who became a family friend over the years and also shot a series for our 50th wedding anniversary during the Coronavirus pandemic.
As the pandemic wound down, Meghan started feeling worse. She’d had digestive issues for years, was already eating only organic foods so she tried other dietary changes – going gluten-free, limiting sugar and dairy. Nothing seemed to help much.
Over the past year or so, there were countless visits to doctors, urgent care centers and emergency rooms, from Omaha to Iowa City and a couple of hospitalizations. Meghan tried several treatment options, from drugs to feeding tubes, yet none offered lasting relief. Linda and I started including walks with Meghan into our daily routine, outside when weather permitted, at the mall when it didn’t.
Meghan and Linda continued walking this spring as I recovered from knee surgery, but by May, Meghan asked Linda to stop dropping by. She just wasn’t up to it anymore. By June, she had asked for a hospice evaluation, which was granted. Meghan made a list of places she wanted to see. Most included flowers, butterflies or waterfalls. Paul drove her. To Decorah. Mason City. Reiman Gardens in Ames.
On one such trip, to see a lavender farm in the Loess Hills near where my brother, Dave, lives, Dave hastily organized a family gathering where cousins drove from as far as the Twin Cities in Minnesota to see Meghan while Linda and I were in the Bay Area for Aaron’s wedding.
By the end of June, Meghan’s world was mostly limited to her bedroom, though Paul still managed weekend trips to places like Floral Sunset Farm near Dexter. Her brothers arrived in mid-July to offer comfort. On one hot Iowa day, they all went to Gray’s Lake Park where Paul pushed Meghan in a wheelchair the 1.9 miles around the lake.
As Meghan’s condition worsened, Linda and I visited Meghan more often. Paul had taped photos from Meghan’s life all around the bedroom. There was a poster board full of drawings Meghan had made, a skill she only realized when she was seriously ill. She made a drawing for me as I recovered from the knee surgery depicting moments she remembered from our relationship. The incident with Danica Patrick in Newton was there, of course, but there were other things I barely remember or forgot altogether. RAGBRAI training rides and pizza from Casey’s. Shopping for Moon Pies. The times I took her to weekend shows where I was selling records. She also brought her version of Girl Scout Samoa cookies “to represent father-daughter nights in Brownies.”
For the first few weeks, a hospice nurse made weekly visits and Meghan was getting around a bit using a cane. By the time she needed a walker, she was too weak to use it. It was painful to watch. After one visit, while Linda was giving Meghan a goodbye hug, I tried to sneak away so my daughter wouldn’t see me tearing up.
“Goodbye, Dad,” she said, peeking over Linda’s shoulder. I vowed to never try to sneak away again.
By August 3, Meghan found it difficult to speak and spent our entire visit lying on her side or stomach. Still, she tried to carry on a conversation. She talked to Linda about tomatoes.
“Paul won’t let me have a tomato,” she said.
It made no sense to us, but we let it slide.
A few moments later, I heard her mumble something that sounded like “hotel.”
I walked over to her bedside and leaned close. “What did you say?”
“Ro-Tel,” she said clearly.
“The tomato and pepper stuff that I use to make salsa?” I asked.
She nodded yes.
“Do you want me to make you some salsa?”
She nodded no.
The next time we saw Meghan, she was in a hospital bed that had been placed next to her regular bed. Standing nearly 6 feet tall, Meghan was always slender, but now her weight had dropped precipitously. As Linda and I sat tearfully watching our daughter gasping for breath and struggling to lift her frail arms, it was obvious that Meghan had, as the hospice nurse told Paul, “turned a corner.”
One hour after we left, Meghan died, as peacefully as possible and at home, as she wished.
I’ll admit that I’d sometimes envisioned a deathbed scene, where I’m dying in bed, family at my side, sharing life’s wonderful moments, like out of a 1930s Hollywood movie. But I never foresaw a scene where a child of mine was the one dying. And I never thought my last conversation with my daughter would be about tomatoes, of all things. But that’s how life is. Messy and fucked up. Forty-six is too young to be ticking off items from a bucket list.
In her final weeks, Meghan often talked about her concern about leaving her husband and children behind. She even considered abandoning her dying-at-home plan in favor of a hospice facility to spare her children the agony of seeing their mother slowly dying.
“I don’t want to die,” she said at one point. “It’s not fair.”
Damn straight.
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