Remembering Dad

He’s been gone 40 years now. Had he lived, he would’ve turned 70 this year.  As it is, I’ve been on this Earth a dozen years longer than he had. I was going through old photos recently – my favourite is an old black and white of him taken at a “World’s Fair.” He was wearing a leather jacket, his hair slicked back James Dean-style, a single curl resting in the middle of his forehead, a smile on his face.  I see my face in his.  My son, who is named for him, takes after him in so many ways. His name is a daily tribute to the man I feel like I’ve never even met.

Please read on for last year’s post. It doesn’t matter how old you are, if you’ve lost a parent, you never stop missing them.

I don’t really.  Remember him, that is.  I have a handful of black and white photos, their edges starting to curl, of a man that I don’t remember but who, I’m told, loved me something fierce.  I wish I could remember his scent, the sound of his voice, the feel of my then tiny hand in his.  I have a few mementos that I’ve hung on to – his football, his wedding ring and the silver pocket watch that had been tucked safely in his jeans the night he was killed.  These things, along with the aging photos and the newspaper clippings about his death, are kept in a rather ordinary cardboard box.  In this box is an audio recording of his funeral service that I’ve never listened to.  (I’m not sure why it was recorded in the first place).

Not being able to remember him means I have to rely on others to share their stories about my dad.  And, honestly, I’m not quite sure how accurate the accounts are.  I know they are well meaning – who wants to tell a man’s only child that her father was less than perfect?  So, I try to read between the lines and look for nuances in the stories.  Over the years I’ve discovered that he was a bit different from his many brothers and sisters, a black sheep was how he’s been described, in hushed tones, by one of my aunts (he liked poker and beer in a family where both were frowned upon) but he was, unanimously, everyone’s favourite uncle.  He was brash and opinionated but had a very big heart.  I’m told I’m like him (probably mostly the opinionated part).

That there are things about me – the way I laugh, for example – that are like him.  The way I set my mouth when I’m concentrating.  I’m jealous that others know this and that I have to take their word for it. I wonder what kind of relationship we would have had he lived.  I like to imagine that we would be close, that he would have walked me down the aisle (and helped me through the divorce that followed).  That he would have held his grandchildren and told me I did good.  That we’d go to ball games and drink beer and root for the underdogs.  Anything really.  I’d take anything.