My dad has never done anything half way. He truly is a force of nature. He is not fiery exactly, not earthy, certainly not airy. His energy is purely electrical. He looks and acts remarkably younger than his 74 years. True to his nature, he has been an electrical contractor for almost his entire life, before which he worked a slew of other jobs, from stock boy to delivery boy. He has worked steadily since he was young, and he has prayed since then too. Even as a child he would wake up in the dark to trudge miles to Mass every morning before breakfast and before school, like a good Irish Catholic son.

I suppose it should seem fitting then, in a sense, that tests have revealed that my father is potentially at high risk for ventricular fibrillation, which causes cardiac arrest – also known as sudden cardiac death. Cardiac arrest, I’ve learned, is different from a heart attack, which occurs when a blockage of blood vessels interrupts the flow of oxygen rich blood to the heart, causing the muscles to die; a plumbing problem of the heart, if you will. Ventricular fibrillation, on the other hand, is an electrical problem, where the signals controlling the heart become rapid and chaotic, causing the ventricles to fibrillate instead of contract so the heart can no longer push blood to the rest of the body. Death usually ensues within minutes.

The news has sent our family into its own fibrillation. My sister Christina, my mother and I have all become nervous and jittery with chaotic emotions jumping from one extreme to another. Feelings switch on, then off again, unpredictably. My eye has started twitching. It feels like we are waiting for a clear signal.

Tomorrow morning, my father will undergo a procedure called an eletrophysiology of the heart. The way I understand it, specialists will actually try to instigate, through the use of tiny electrical impulses, the potentially dangerous arrhythmias they are hoping to halt. Electrode tipped catheters pushed through his veins will detect his heart’s electrical activity and help map the area where the arrhythmia is occurring. If necessary, they will implant a defibrillator.

And when they are doing this, while I try to forge through the ordinary routine of a Wednesday morning – getting Jack and Liam up and ready for school, I will do what my father would do if it were one of us. I will pray for him, mapping and navigating my love for him through an electrophysiology of the terrain of my own beating heart.