{Hayduke and Solitaire have recently written about their respective fathers. They caused me to think about mine..}

My father was a stranger to me. Once my parents split up, I had only perfunctory and unsatisfactory contact with him. Genetically akin, we were socially far apart. He was not a successful man and my overriding emotion about him, as I grew into manhood, was to feel sorry for him.

He was not an unpleasant man. He had a wonderful sense of humor, something which I have always considered to be an essential trait in any sane and compatible human being. Overly serious individuals have always puzzled and annoyed me.

My father and grandfather had a wholesale meat business in Miami which, along with my parent’s marriage, burned to cinders while I was still in elementary school. My grandfather retired and my father went from being in charge to being somebody else’s employee, a career comeuppance from which he never recovered.

It’s not that he was a proud man; if anything, it seems to me in retrospect that his resigned slide into his fate was a bit too acquiescent. When I would see him, which wasn’t often, he always appeared harried, overly taxed by his responsibilities, and smoking more and more cigarettes.

At least he got to see my two daughters when they were small. He visited once with his third wife, at our home a half a state away. To my dismay, I found out from my girls years later that, at the time, they were never sure who he was. I now accept blame for this. It must have been a result of my feeling of estrangement that caused this to happen. Did I not say he was their grandpa?

Not too much later, the tobacco killed him. He slowly lost his ability to breathe comfortably and, finally, his heart quit on him. It is a difficult thing for a son to realize that he has lived longer than his father did. There is a vague guilt associated with it, a disquieting sense that one is cheating somehow. It occurs to me now that neither one of us put enough effort into our relationship. He was busy dealing with the way his life was going; I was busy trying to make something of my life. We had no commonality. Our relationship as father and son was a mere technicality. My secretary was closer to me than he was, and knew me better.

Perhaps this is why I value memory so, though it is often haphazard, incomplete, and untrustworthy. I am able to remember the pleasant things about my father, his laugh particularly, and I know that nothing that was unsatisfactory about him was his fault. He was a good-hearted man thrust by unfortunate circumstances into a harder life than he deserved. If he were here now, I’d have a good joke to tell him.

Comments:

Me, too, Steve. I have some wonderful early memories of my Dad, not in his later years when he changed, but when I was younger. I remember how he used to tickle me to stay awake when our family would drive cross country. Some things are good to remember.

comment by teacherwoman on Feb 18, 2008 10:45 AM ()

Without memories, we'd be empty shells. We may live in the present, but it is a present bolstered by and dependent upon the past. Thanks for your comment.

reply by looserobes on Feb 18, 2008 11:07 AM ()