Let me tell you about my dad........

The earliest memory I have of my dad was when I was....I dunno - three? I either had had a nightmare or was too troubled to go to sleep. Apparently I'd watched something on TV about Martians or something, because I was gripped with fear about them invading. I said something to my dad about it and he merely shrugged and said "If they wanted to invade, don't you think they'd have been here by now?". Now that may not sound very reassuring, but to me, the logic was unassailable, and whatever my concerns might have been, they vanished like smoke.

When I was four, I tripped and fell and cut my arm on some broken glass. Dad took me to get stitches, and promised me a new squirt gun if I didn't cry. I cried. He bought me a squirt gun anyway.

Nineteen sixty seven brought a new town and a new school. The day before my first day, he walked me the four or five blocks, ostensibly to make sure I knew the way and was ok with it. On the way home, we stopped at the little dairy bar by the school and he bought me a milkshake. That was special - guess it must have been if it still sticks with me forty three years later.

At eight years old, he finally managed to cajole me into riding a two wheeler - something I'd wanted no part of prior to that. He also took me across the street to the ice rink in the winter and taught me to skate. He took me skiing.

That was my dad.

I don't have many early childhood memories about my dad - or much else, for that matter - but he just seemed to always be there, solid and dependable.

As I got older, I remember the occasional fishing trip. We fished for hours and didn't really say much more than "pass the worms", but it seemed like we didn't have to. Drove my mom nuts.

My dad was, indeed a man of few words, but when he spoke, it had weight. Whenever I fucked up, (often...) my mom's tactic was to get physical. That never worked. My dad, on the other hand, would just sit you down and talk to you. By the time he was through, you felt like a piece of shit for whatever transgression you'd committed. I'd rather have had mom take the belt to me. THAT, I knew how to deal with.

Sometimes, he was a man of less than a few words. Once, some of my genius buddies and I got busted for bombing cars with snowballs and my dad had to come to the police station and get me. He didn't say a word, all the way home - that was the longest four block car ride of my life.

I don't even ever remember him raising his voice. As a far better writer than I said: "His gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand".

When I was about fourteen or so, my dad and I were at the camp, cutting wood. Off in the distance, I heard my father call me. He'd cut himself with the chainsaw. I led him to the neighbors and we got him to the doctors and patched up, but what struck me and stuck with me, was that that was the first time I'd heard fear in my father's voice. My bulletproof dad?

Every so often, a facet of him would emerge that would surprise me - once, when my mom was away, he grabbed some burgers and stuff and a couple of people from his office and we had a picnic at Lake Delta. This was puzzling to me, because this was something we never did. Was my mom holding him back?

Then there was the time he lost his job - to keep the money coming in, he took a job as a short-order cook. My dad! My desk-bound, suit & tie dad! Funny part was, he found out he loved it. Had there been any money in it, he may have stuck with it.

I gradually grew up and stopped being such a fuck-up...at least I hope he saw it that way.

He taught me to drive. We still went to camp, and fishing occasionally, but I had a social life now. Besides, we had time.

I came home from somewhere one day and one of my buddies told me they'd taken my dad to the hospital. When you're twenty two, life isn't scary, and I assumed he'd accidentally cut himself again. Nope. Heart attack. Too many years of no exercise, high stress, too much weight and too many cigarettes.

The heart attack actually had a bright side - as part of his recovery he began riding one of my bikes, with me. Role reversal, of sorts. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately, they'd found something more ominous than the heart issues: lung cancer. I got to learn what the word "metastasized" meant. The day they confirmed that it had spread, I just remember him telling my mom and I that he loved us, as we sat in some dismal hospital room.

I still had no idea how serious it was. When you're 22, death is something that happens to other people - old people.

He started chemo and radiation - and began gobbling Tylenol, like they were M&Ms. I'd lay awake at night, and listen to him shuffling around the house - unable to sleep - and wonder "Why him?". If anyone deserved it, it was me.

I drove him to his radiation treatments - I don't think he needed me to drive, but he wanted the company...and it was a bit of a bonding time. We made small talk. Nothing serious, but it was kind of like when we went fishing - we didn't need to say anything.

He got weaker and weaker and ended up back in the VA hospital.

I still had no fucking clue.

One night, as I was leaving, he looked up at me and, for the first time in days, his pale, blue eyes weren't clouded by the drugs. He was there, all there. He smiled and waved goodbye weakly. I went home.

The next morning, I got a phone call: He was dead. He was 53, I was 23.

"I wasn't there that morning, that my father passed away".

I went home and got on my bike. It just seemed like the thing to do. It felt as though a weight had been lifted from me. I flew.

The years have rolled inexorably onward, but sometimes, 23 years just melts away and things are as fresh and as raw as 1983 - except made worse by all the things he and I missed out on in the interim.

"I didn't get to tell him, all the things I had to say".


Simple things, like:

"Meet your grandson."
"Let's go have a beer".
"I bought a house."
"See? I didn't turn out half bad..."
"Hey, let's do that backpack trip you always wanted to do..."


"I just wish I could have told him...."