Daddy Bill Didn't Come for Coffee Today in the Clarion Newspaper
December 5 2007

Full-Text of article published in the Style section of The Clarion on 5 Dec. 2007

(TEXT ONLY PROVIDED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE)

Book provides emotional release for English’s Krisanne Roll
Roll hopes others find comfort in her journey

By LEE CABLE
Staff Writer

Krisanne Roll of English never dreamed that she’d write a book. She never thought that what she had learned and felt would be interesting or meaningful to anyone other than family and friends. But she just kept writing it all down, one page at a time, one day at a time, and the end product was “Daddy Bill Didn’t Come For Coffee Today.”

“Daddy Bill” was William K. (Bill) Smith, Roll’s father, who stopped by Roll’s house every morning for coffee and a visit before starting his day. Itbecame a ritual through the years, a pattern of life that was meaningful to both father and daughter. When that ritual stopped, the change was tremendous. The cycle of the whole family was disrupted, and the importance of one man within that family was so profound it was obvious that things that were once considered routine would become cherished memories.

Roll’s book begins with a focus on the small town of English — the history of the town — and the day-to-day lives of some of the people there. Then, Chapter 2 tells the story of Daddy Bill’s childhood and some of his escapades. There’s a story about how he took a candy bar from a local store without paying for it and how the owner followed him out to the sidewalk when he left and told him, “Billy, you be sure and tell your daddy about taking that candy bar, hear? Cause if you don’t tell him, I most surely and pleasurably will.” The debt was repaid by sweeping the sidewalk in front of the store for several weeks.

There’s a story about how he would carry his sister, Maxine, across the creek on his back — but would drop her in the water just for fun. And thereare stories about the floods that devastated the little town through the years — catastrophes that brought the community together, neighbor helping neighbor, doing their best to minimize the damage and get on with their lives.

But Chapter 7 was where the book actually took root. That was when Daddy Bill, who had experienced heart problems, was taken to the hospital due to difficulty breathing. That was when Daddy Bill didn’t come for coffee anymore. And that was when Roll began sending e-mails to friends and family, updating them on Daddy Bill’s condition. She kept writing, almost daily, sometimes just as a form of conversation with herself, to relieve the anxiety and vent her feelings and frustrations with the doctors, hospitals and her father’s well-being while in control of others.

“I was actually sending e-mails to about 15 friends and family members,” Roll said. “I would do an update on my dad almost every day and send it out. Some of the people who got my e-mails passed them on to others. I really didn’t mean for a lot of people to read what I wrote. Some days I would be angry about the care he was getting at the hospital, sometimes I would be more positive when it seemed that he was doing better. There were days when I was even angry with God.”

As the days wore on, Daddy Bill’s condition didn’t improve much. He went through surgery and dialysis. The family, when they took him to the hospital that June morning, never imagined that they wouldn’t be bringing him back home. Roll’s mother, Norma Lee (MeMe to the grandchildren), practically lived at the hospital. Roll and her sister, Deborah, were at the hospital almost every day, and there were times that the grandchildren were allowed to visit him. These visits almost always brightened his mood.

There are chapters in the book that are much like a journal, clicking off the days of Daddy Bill’s hospitalization, the treatments and the worry. Roll’s e-mails, the raw material for the book, is testimony to the emotion the family experienced day to day. It was a time that drew them all together as if combining all the hope would make it more powerful, or if the faith of many would be better than the faith of a few.

But after 51 days at the hospital, Daddy Bill lost the battle. He would never go home again. The worry, anguish and fatigue of the hospital stay was suddenly replaced with grief.

But Roll kept writing. She explained the family’s grief, and her own battle with a loss that would take a long time to diminish.
“After about six months, I was going to quit writing,” Roll said. “But friends and family members kept telling me to keep going. A lot of them had kept the e-mails and my best friend, Suzy Bennett, told me, ‘I think this would make a good book.’ Other people began saying the same thing. People would tell me that they felt the same way about a loss, but couldn’t put it into words. And some told me, ‘I didn’t know it was normal to think those things.’ ”

Roll finally contacted a book editor who she had met years earlier and submitted a sample of her work. The editor, Eileen Wilmoth, liked what she read , encouraged Roll to keep going, and helped her with ideas about the layout and content. She told Roll, “You saw your dad every day — most people don’t do that” and “People who read this will wish they had their own small town.”

The book materialized over a period of several months, with information and ideas going back and forth between Roll and Wilmoth. It finally went to press and was released recently at a book signing at Hillview Christian Church in Marengo.
“This is not a ‘How to cope with grief’ book,” Roll said. “It’s just a book about the grief myself and my family suffered due to the loss of a loved one.”

But grief is not the only topic. There’s a chapter where Roll talks about the doctors who were nice, respectful and helpful, and those who weren’t. There’s a chapter where, after Daddy Bill passed away that day, the nurses brought warm blankets to cover him so the family could be with him just a little longer. There’s a part about how MeMe and Daddy Bill fell in love all over again at the hospital. And another chapter explains the grief that the grandchildren went through.

“My dad never talked to us about dying,” Roll said, “but he worried that the young ones wouldn’t remember him. If nothing else, the grandchildren will know him through this book.”

The book can be purchased at the Crawford County Public Library in English or from Krisanne at 338-2115 (she will sign the book). The book will also be available on her Web site, www.daddybillpublishing.com.