November 17, 2025, will mark five years since my dad died.
My dad, Willie Leonard Edwards, Jr.—”Bill” or “Billy” as he preferred—died eight days after he had heart bypass surgery. He was 71.
The five years since his death have flown by. As we age, time seems to go by faster. But I am also continually struck by my dad’s absence. He was a constant presence in my life for the entirety of my life. And then, with very little warning, he wasn’t.
I clearly remember events from that week. I remember the surgeon at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Southaven, Mississippi, calling me after the surgery to tell me the surgery went perfectly with no complications. I remember going to see my dad eating ice chips in his room as he began his recovery, not knowing that would be the last time I would see him awake. I remember a nurse calling me to tell me he had gotten very sick, and his condition was taking a turn for the worse.
My dad was born in 1949 and grew up both in Rosedale and then in Cleveland, Mississippi. When he graduated from Cleveland High School in 1968, he didn’t have any idea of what he was going to do with his life. He wasn’t the best student, and he bounced around various colleges for the next couple of years. After his first term of service with the U.S. Army, he went out west to California to try and make it big in the powerlifting and bodybuilding world. When those dreams didn’t come to fruition, he returned to the U.S. Army.
He served with the Army for more than 20 years, and in 1990, while he was stationed in Ft. Bliss in El Paso, Texas, I was born. Only months later, he was deployed to the Middle East as part of Operation Desert Storm, America’s response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait. He always said he was fortunate that he never had to experience combat and was able to return home safely. He retired in 1995 and graduated from the University of Texas-El Paso and became a school teacher. He and I moved to Cleveland in 2000, and he spent the remainder of his teaching career at Ruleville Central Elementary School.
One story he used to tell me over and over was his first experience with the internet in the mid-1990s. He was in class at UTEP, and one of his professors told him and his fellow students they needed to “surf the web” as part of an assignment. My dad had no idea what in the world that meant.
My dad’s health declined in the years and months prior to his death. He had lived with congestive heart failure for several years, and old injuries from his football and powerlifting days made it painful for him to do normal things. By 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic was in full swing. I lost my job when The Bolivar Commercial closed down, so I was able to spend what would be the final months of my dad’s life living with him and helping him with his needs.
After a couple of health scares, my dad was given a medication regimen that aided his body in draining fluid. He went from needing a walker and being out of breath constantly to using a cane and being able to walk on his own again. Doctors found a few severe blockages in his heart and asked him to consider a heart bypass. The primary specialist warned that without the treatment, my dad’s heart would get weaker over time and put him at greater risk for a cardiac event.
Early on the morning of Nov. 9, 2020, my dad and I began our trip to Southaven. I didn’t know at the time it would be our last car ride together. As we were preparing for his surgery, one of the nurses asked who had power of attorney in the event my dad was incapacitated and unable to make decisions. I raised my hand, not thinking that this would be the time I needed to use it.
While the surgery was successful, it was traumatic on my dad’s body, and I’ve come to believe that he was too old and his health too poor to recover from it. My dad’s blood pressure never returned to normal after the surgery, and nurses began giving him vasopressors to boost his blood pressure artificially. This had the effect of constricting blood flow to his hands and feet. His organs, already in a precarious state, began to fail. I remember his surgeon telling me that my dad was in a bad state, but wanted to give him some time, as he’d seen people in his condition and worse turn things around.
Unfortunately, that did not happen.
I remember being by my dad’s bedside and touching his hand. The vasopressors had restricted blood flow and made his hands ice cold. I had never before touched a human being so cold.
My dad was more prepared for his death than I realized, and his preparation helped me make a painful decision. He always told me to let him go if he were being kept alive on machines. He didn’t want to be kept alive like that. And by that point on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020, the doctors and nurses confirmed to me that he had reached a point of no return. I decided to have him taken off life support, and he died only minutes later.
When I saw I was scheduled to write my second Editor’s Note around this time, there was no other topic I wanted to consider writing about. Parental loss is a universal human experience, even if our “parent” isn’t a mother or father. They could be an aunt, uncle, grandparent, brother or sister. I’m sure there are many reading this who can relate to what I went through, from the death of a loved one to the funeral arrangements to the funeral itself.
I wish my dad could see where I am today. I thought of him when the Mississippi Free Press hired me three months ago and how I wish I could have called him to tell him about it. I’ve thought about telling him about the numerous occasions and occasional setbacks. We weren’t the type to talk on the phone for hours at a time. Sometimes our calls would last a couple of minutes at most. But I found comfort in them.
Several months ago, I was exiting the Greenwood Walmart and heading to my car when a woman in the parking lot approached me. She was one of my dad’s Ruleville students and recognized me as “Mr. Edwards’ son.” She asked how he was doing, and I told her my dad died several years ago. She said she was sorry to hear that and that Mr. Edwards was one of the best teachers she ever had.
Time and again, through his life and after it, people would come up to me and tell me how much they liked my dad, whether through working with him or having a normal conversation. My dad is proof that a regular person can have a big impact on someone’s life, as he has on mine.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.