A Father's Hands by Dr. Tarek Abdelhalim

This past May, the Department of Medicine’s Culture & Inclusion portfolio hosted its sixth annual Story Slam. These events celebrate storytelling by allowing participants to share brief stories with an audience. This year’s theme was ‘What’s On Your Mind?’

Below is the transcript for the story that internist Dr. Tarek Abdelhalim shared at the event, entitled A Father's Hands:

I want everyone to think back to when you were six years old. Picture yourself walking through a park, holding your father’s hand. I can vividly picture my father’s hands.

They were darker than mine. More pigmented because he was born in Alexandria, Egypt. They were large; bear paws.

He wore a grey engineering ring on his pinky, something that was supposed to remind engineers to work with integrity. His gold wedding ring sat on his ring finger; a symbol of the vows he made to my mom, Beverly, when they met in graduate school at the University of Toronto in the 70s.

His hands were not rough from manual labor. My dad was a professor, not particularly "handy."

I remember walking through that park, feeling safe. With my father’s hand wrapped around mine, I knew no monster could tear me away.

It saddens me that I cannot pinpoint the exact day we stopped holding hands. It is one of those quiet, unmarked moments in a child’s life. The kind that passes without celebration. One day, you are holding hands, and the next, you are not. My guess is it happened around middle school, when I was starting to find my own sense of independence.

I can vividly remember the day we held hands again.

I remember the phone call telling me my father had suffered a cardiac arrest.

I do not remember the drive to Ottawa, but I do remember walking into his ICU room before the Family Day long weekend. There were tubes everywhere: a Swan-Ganz catheter, a pulse oximeter. He was intubated and sedated.

I remember the ICU doctor trying to explain my father’s imaging, his blood work. 

I told him, “I’m here to hold my fathers’ hand. I do not want to be his doctor. I want to be his son.”

My father’s hands were cold. They were no longer the warm, reassuring hands that had once made me feel safe. Now, they were dry and swollen from congestive heart failure. The rings were still there, but everything about his hands had changed.

I squeezed his hand. There was no response. Nevertheless, I held it, every time I visited him in the ICU.

A lot has happened since then: my father passed away, I got married, and my first son, Malcolm, was born during a time of great upheaval, as the pandemic swept through the world.

I can vividly remember the first time I held my youngest son Milo’s hand.

Milo was born in the summer, and from the first moment he came into this world, I could immediately tell something was off.

He was grunting, struggling to breathe. The respiratory therapist was suctioning his nose, trying to clear his airways.

He was whisked away to the NICU for acute respiratory distress.

When I walked into that room, my heart was racing. There he was; monitors beeping, alarms flashing, an IV in one arm, an oxygen mask on his face.

I remember asking the nurse if I could hold his hand. I wanted him to know I was there.

If you asked Milo what my hand felt like that day, he might tell you it was trembling, or that it was wet from sweat and wiping away tears.

I am not sure who needed comfort more that day, him or me.

As a father of two young boys, one of my greatest joys is holding their hands. I cherish every walk in the park, every moment when our hands are intertwined.

I understand now that when my father held my hand, it was not just to make me feel safe. It also brought him a deep sense of joy.

I think of all the fathers in this hospital, right now, holding their children’s hands in the NICU. I think of the sons in this very hospital, in the wards and ICUs, who are squeezing their father’s hands in hope and love.

Our hands tell a story not just of fear, but also of love and connection. I carry my father’s story with me in my hands, as I hope my sons will carry mine.