Eighty-Two Today

My father would have been 82 today. 

  I suspect I’ll continue this phantom count for the rest of my days. Like it or not, I identify with my time; the places and the people I grew familiar with are arranged in an emotional/mental picture.  When one of them departs, as surely they must, there remains a gaping hole in the well constructed, intricate and carefully created picture.  Life smudges my recall of how we were, where everyone occupied a designated place, right next to the fireplace.  As I prevail, mine will be a canvas with glaring dark patches where my condition had once been.

   He was born in the wake of what has since been deemed the GREAT Depression; like most of his generation, it shaped his sense of security for his entire life.  He was startled out of his youth being drafted to fight in the Korean War.  Whisked away from everything he knew; his family; his wife and new baby; his life, to the other side of the United States in preparations for combat.  Mercifully, the armistice was signed and he was released to grow his family in California. The best of him was being born with a glad heart.  I got to witness his mirth growing up; he loved to laugh, and he adored company who enjoyed finding humor in life.  Sure, he had his contradictions, because he too was human; contrary to my boyhood belief that he was the fount of all wisdom. I outgrew my need for my father, so I got to experience liking him as a person.  That’s a difficult thing for many; it is too bad when a child never gets the chance to accept their parent as a fellow human being.  Without it, I think, there’s a persisting bitterness and judgment over the quality of their efforts forming us to meet life head-on, a dubious worthiness for them as respectable oft doesn’t come to fruition without time to compare our own adult gaffs with tending children.

   But as I’ve written, I lived long enough to embrace my father as an individual. The evidence for me concluded that my father spent himself in life trying to be ethical and a good friend to others.  He loved his family; sought to always do the right thing; and strove to be a good man.  That’s four hundred words to say he was a success.