Rest in Peace, Dad

Ernest Hemingway once said that you can tell a story in six words.  "For sale, baby shoes.  Never worn."  I'm no Hemingway, but I want to tell some stories about my father, and what he meant to me.  Because I'm no Hemingway, I need seven words to tell these stories.

Dad came to all my track meets.

Dad was a professor, and must have arranged his class schedule so that he was free after 3:00 in the spring semesters.  This meant that he could come to my High School track meets.  Rain or shine - or sometimes snow - he was always up in the stands watching the meet.  Whether I finished first or last, he was there cheering me on.  I never had to wonder who my Number One Fan was.

He didn't have to do this, and I certainly never asked him to.  He did it because he wanted to. When my boys were in Little League or Pop Warner, they never asked me to come to their practices or games.  I did it because I wanted to, and felt the joy of the event - watching your sons strive for excellence - that I hope he felt.

Dad gave me career advice I needed.

Dad taught history, and along the way I picked up a love for it, too.  I majored in it back at State U, in the department where he was Professor.  One day, he took me aside, and told me that it was a fine thing to pursue a study for the love of the material.  He said that things had changed since he entered the field, and suggested that I also study a subject that hedged my career bets.

This was the best advice I ever got.  I continued with my love affair with history, but also majored in engineering.  This opened doors in my professional life that otherwise would have remain shut, bolted, and locked.  It must have been strange for him to warn me off the field where he had had such a fine career himself, but he was right - the field was changing.  He didn't let ego get in his way, but just called it like he saw it.  As was usual, he called it right.

Dad wore his cap & gown to my graduation.

One of the pleasures of going to school where your father teaches is that he was able to wear his Cap and Gown at my graduation.  One of my most prized photographs is of him and me, me in my Cap and Gown, he in his.  Most people have a picture of a proud father watching their graduation; I'm one of the luck few who had a proud father participate in mine.

My best friend joked that Dad just was making sure that tuition payments would indeed be over, but the look of pride on his face in that picture tells the real story.  Not just pride at my accomplishment, but pride that he was able to share in it.

I wouldn't play Trivial Pursuit with him.

My friends sometimes refer to me as a "wickid smaht bahstid".  But if I'm so smart, why did I always lose to Dad at Trivial Pursuit?  He'd ace the History questions, as you'd expect.  But obscure sports trivia?  Science?  He'd pull completely unexpected answers out of his memory, to the point that I at least got so frustrated that I stopped playing the game with him.

When I was dating the girl who was to become my lovely wife, we went to visit Mom and Dad.  After watching us play a game, she said to me, "Now I see where you get it."  That apple didn't fall very far from the tree - not that it ever did me any good in Trivial Pursuit.

I started talking to him again.

This last is the only one of my stories that can approach Hemingway's.  There's grief, and loss, and regret, all packaged up and compressed into six words.  In a dark time of my life, in a fit of madness, I cut myself off from my parents.  There's a whole school of Country Music about what comes from Foolish Pride, but I guess I had to go find it out for myself, up close and personal.  Those lost years are something that I bitterly regret today.

But the Prodigal Son returned, and was welcomed back with open arms.  A phone call was answered.  The last years have been a blessing, made more sweet by what came before.  And this is perhaps the final lesson I take away from Dad.  That life can always begin again. 

One of my two favorite sayings goes The longest journey a man will ever take is the eighteen inches from his head to his heart.  I can attest to the truth of that, and say that St. Christopher doesn't watch over that particular journey.  But my Dad did.

The other of my favorite sayings also relates to that journey.  If you found out you were going to die soon, and could only make one phone call, who would you call, and what would you say?

And why are you waiting?

Rest in Peace, Dad.  1928 - 2011.