I went to my fathers grave today, like I try to do every year on November 11th. It’s been 18 years since he’s passed and today I felt exactly like I did 18 years ago – like a young, lost boy that just realized that superman was dead. I think back over my life and all I can do is hope that in someway my father is proud of me. I’m not as successful as he had hoped. To be honest, I don’t think I ever could have been as successful as he wanted me to be.
He was a mechanic. He fixed things. He made lumps of metal have meaning and purpose and he made me promises him that I’d never do that for a living. He wanted me to be a thinker – to not have to rely on my hands to provide for my family. The last couple years I’ve looked at myself and realized that I do the same thing. I fix computers, printers, and ATM machines. They all have moving parts and they all can become useless lumps of metal and plastic. It’s very satisfying to take something broken and make it work. I understand why my father loved his job. He didn’t want me to be a mechanic because he wanted better for me - wanted me to be rich, successful and have “soft hands”. I hope I didn’t disappoint him to badly that in my own way, I followed in his footsteps and take the same joy in what made him happy.
I hope that if my dad saw me today he would see the sense of right and wrong he instilled in me. Dad saw the world in black and white. There was no question about what was the right thing to do was and what wasn’t. There was no wiggle room and no grey area. Sure, you could argue the finer point of an issue, but when he looked into you eyes – you knew if you were in the right or in the wrong. Dad use to umpire for Little League baseball games. It was a major community event back then. The whole town would show up and cheer, hoop and holler for the teams. I remember two events that define who my father was for me and they both involved baseball. The first one… He threw one of his best friends out of a game. His friend was coaching one of the teams and was quite vocal to one of his kids. His friend was caught up in the game and yelled at a 11-13 year old boy something along the lines of “How could you not hit that! Your letting your team and your father down swinging at that crap!”. I’ll never forget the look on my fathers face. He was a huge, around 6 foot 5, 380 lb man, but extremely gentle and quiet man. His face turned red, eyes narrowed – dad was one of the most pissed off I had ever seen him in my life. God knows I had done some things that deserved that look - but I had never seen it before. It was, for lack of a better term, intimidating. He threw his friend out of the game. His friend stormed over to the plate and started yelling at my dad. Dad simply looked him in the eyes. You could see the fire and the passion leave dads’ friend. He realized what he had done and felt sorry for it. Dad never said a word to the man – he just left and felt guilty about what he had done. Blessed be the righteous man. The second thing that I think truly speaks of what kind of man my father was, well, he struck me out. I can remember being so mad at him - the righteous indignation of an 11 year old that knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was a ball, and not a strike. I wouldn’t talk to my father after the game. He bought me an ice cream cone… sure, I took it, but.. I was still disappointed and angry. He was my father, after all! How could he have called that a strike, thus striking me out, with the pitch being that close?! No one would have questioned it if he said it was a ball. No one would have even had a second thought about it. I told my father this and he looked at me with kind, sympathetic, and slightly sad. He knew I wasn’t man enough to understand yet, and told me so. “Someday, you’ll understand. You’d have known it was a strike and I’d have known. Even if nobody else caught it, we’d have known the truth. I’d have had to lie. His word is all man has in this world. You’re the only one that can ruin it. No one else can make you do something you know isn’t right. Sometimes doing what you want to do, the easy thing to do, isn’t the right thing to do.” That’s stuck with me through the years and it’s a philosophy I’ve tried to live my life by.
Recently I had the opportunity to more or less mentor a young guy. He’s 9 and sometimes I see my eyes at that age looking back at me. I noticed him mimicking me, doing what I do and saying what I say. The truly odd part is that I hear my dads’ voice sometimes in mine when I talk to him. I’ll say something to him and later it dawns on me that my father had had that exact talk with me. I’ve gained a huge amount of respect for my dad though this. Passing what he taught me on has truly let me gain an insight into who my father was down deep. I wish I had known him long enough to tell him, man to man, how much I loved and respected him with both the unconditional love of a child to a father, but from one man to another.
I miss you, big guy, and I hope that at least in a small way I’ve made you proud.
