20 Years Later

This post is not going to be funny. It may be sappy, sad, self-indulgent and downright melancholy, so if you're looking for funny, you should probably just go on to the next blog. As I've done once or twice before, I'm writing this more for me than for you, so don't blame me if you continue reading beyond this point. Quite frankly, I'm sort of glad that no one can see me as I type this.

You see, today is the 20th anniversary of the death of my father. I remember a time when I couldn't name anything in my life that had happened 20 years ago.

Dad was born in 1920 in the hills of north Georgia. He was raised on a small farm that made most of its income from a large apple orchard and a few dairy cows. His parents gave him a very unusual name, which he never really liked, so that in his adult years he went almost exclusively by his initials. Only his close friends knew his middle (preferred) name, and most people had no idea what his first name was. Only my mother could get away with calling him by name, and that was usually an indication that she was peeved with him about something. If she used both names, we knew there was trouble.

He was not a tall man, by most standards, standing about 5'6" ("soaking wet" as he used to say). My brother and I both towered over him. He had wiry dark hair that never went completely gray, and a deep complexion and brown eyes that displayed his Cherokee roots. He had a booming bass voice that lent itself weekly to the church choir.

For my entire lifetime, he was a deacon at the Baptist church in our town, which he literally helped to build with his own hands. He knew his Bible inside and out, as well as being familiar with The Koran, The Book of Mormon, most apocryphal Christian writings, and other religious texts. He encouraged all of his children toward Christianity, but unlike other Southern Baptists I knew at the time, he also encouraged us to think about things, to question things we didn't understand, to struggle with our beliefs. He didn't develop his own opinions or beliefs lightly. I learned early on that if I went to him with a difference of opinion about something religion-related, then I'd better have done my homework. He had come to his beliefs through years of study, questioning, and consultations with elders, and he could instantly point you to any number of (sometimes obscure) references to back up his opinions. I know that he was disappointed when he saw that my study and questioning of beliefs started to lead me in a direction that was pretty much the opposite of the one he would have liked.

Part of his service to his church was teaching Sunday School to 9-year old boys. He was good at it. He would give quizzes that forced them to do research ("Among the 12 apostles, there were three sets of 2 brothers and one set of 3 brothers, who were they?") and he would occasionally put things out there just to make them think, even if there was no "right" answer ("If young David had so much faith in God when going up against Goliath, why does the Bible tell us explicitly that he picked up five smooth stones?"). I no longer know the answers to those questions, although it seems that I did at one time.

In his non-church life, he was a salesman. He travelled around the city all day every day, calling on clients to whom he sold packaging products. His specialty was the moving industry. Anyone who moved in northern Georgia from the late '60s to the early '80s probably had their things packed in cartons sold by my father. He didn't make a great living, and I would classify my family through most of those years as "lower middle class", but he was able to buy a small house, raise 3 children and have the resources to get us all to college. There was enough for an annual vacation to Florida, and for my brother and I to get clunker cars when we were old enough to drive (my sister wasn't all that interested in driving at the time).

He desperately loved my mother for the 44 years or so that they were married. He spoiled her as best he was able. She kept house, cooked and raised us kids as a good '40s and '50s housewife did. For as long as he lived, they would hold hands when walking together. He kissed her as he left every morning and again on returning home. Their wedding anniversary was always one of the high points of the year for them.

He had a rather unusual sense of humor, delighting in plays on words. He would often tease those closest to him, to the point that my mother would say that he had gone too far and never knew when to stop. He knew a little bit about a lot of things. He was able to chat with me about the sciences when I was majoring in them, and at the same time he could tune up the car with my mechanically-inclined brother. He explained to me the wonders of various plants while strolling in the woods. When the pine borers destroyed all the trees in our back yard, Dad made lemonade from those lemons by grinding the stumps down and planting rose beds where all the trees had been.

He was a very patient man, but he had one or two "hot buttons". When I was a little boy, I once complained that there was nothing on the dinner table that I liked. He pulled me right out of my chair and told me that if I didn't like the food, then I didn't have to eat it, but I was not to complain about it either. It was so uncharacteristic of him that it left me in tears. My older brother later explained to me that, during the Great Depression, there were times when my dad's family of 7 simply didn't have enough to eat and therefore all food was to be appreciated. He would also tolerate nothing below "good" conduct in school. "If you aren't interested in learning, then shut up so you don't bother those who are."

Aside from those two occasions, my father rarely showed any emotion other than happiness. In my entire life, I saw him cry twice: once when his father died and once when he took my brother to the Army induction center at the height of the Vietnam War.

He was a lifelong smoker, starting when he was a young man before everyone realized the dangers. In his late 50s, he had a heart attack that was so minor that he didn't even recognize it for what it was until his next checkup when his doctor detected scar tissue. As time went on, he developed a condition in which his blood vessels began to constrict. The immediate and most noticeable result of this was that not enough blood got to his lungs and he would become winded easily. In December of 1988, he developed a case of bronchitis which constricted his lungs, causing him even more breathing difficulty, and he was hospitalized. He was on the road to recovery and was expected to be home for Christmas when he suddenly took a turn for the worse and, on December 17, 1988, he passed away. I find it somewhat sobering when I realize that I am now only 17 years younger than my father was when he died.

Despite his stature, the minister referred to my father as a "giant" in his eulogy. He was a charter member of the church, a lifelong supporter both financially and personally, well respected, scrupulously honest, highly knowledgeable, and well liked. There were hundreds of church members, coworkers, customers, neighbors, family and friends at his funeral.

In the few years after his death, I began to realize that I had placed my dad on a pretty high pedestal. As I began to notice a bit of tarnish on the image I had constructed in my mind, it made me somewhat uncomfortable. He made mistakes. He was wrong about some things. He could have done some things much better than he did. I struggled with this for some time, until I realized that it was me who wasn't being fair here. I had to allow my father to be the human being that he was, warts and all. He wasn't superhuman. He was a good man, and that's all anyone should really expect of a man. Finally recognizing that fact doesn't mean that I love him any less.

It's been 20 years since I got the phone call. That's almost 40% of my life that I've spent without my father. After 20 years I still think about Dad often.

And it has taken me 20 years to finally arrive at the realization that I will miss him for the rest of my life.