To The Dad I Once Knew

* Note My dad passed away today, a little over seven months since my mom passed. After a thirty year estrangement my dad and I reconciled when mom died. I figured I'd write this today, while everything is raw, otherwise I'll never write it. In some ways, it is the story of my life. Small children see their dads as gods of a sort, for better or worse. In my case, I was lucky enough that it was for the better. Supporting five kids on a Rate Auditor's salary had to be tough, but we never went without the basics. You were quite the athlete in your day. You taught me all the sports; basketball (my fave), baseball, football, golf (I still suck), ping-pong, bowling and more. I still remember how proud you were when I made the all-star team playing CYO basketball for St. Matthew's. You always came to my games, even when it wasn't terribly convenient. You were the neighborhood dad, playing all the sports with me and my buds. And they liked you, teasingly calling you Geezer (ironic and hilarious since at the time you were only in your late thirties, and as I write this I am now sixty-two). My siblings tell me I was your favorite and I believe it, though I'm not sure I ever merited it. Maybe it was because I was your firstborn and a son? Anyway, things got a little funky later on. It was the seventies and long hair and heavy metal were all the rage and little Tommy grew up quick. Black Sabbath, Uriah Heep (a band you absolutely hated and always called Dung Heep), beer, girls, cigarettes, funny smokes and hanging with the wrong crowd. Oh, sure, we were likable enough, but were unholy demons at night, terrorizing the locals. Why? Bored teens who loved the thrill of running from the cops through the back yards and streets of a little town called... But teens eventually move on and so at twenty-one I got married to a girl with a kid and within a year had one of my own. I learned what it meant to be poor and it was rough, but you made sure I lived with my choice to become a man, probably (no, definitely) before I was ready. And then at twenty-three things changed. I changed. I stopped smoking, drinking, cheating, cursing, dropped heavy metal like a lead balloon and embraced the Bible and a new religion. But instead of being happy for me you hated it, so much so that within a short time you cut me out of your life entirely and kept my mother from me as well. Fast-forward thirty plus years. Mom dies and you have an epiphany. Suddenly you want to reconcile. Sure. Why not? Holding grudges is for the unkind and punitive, right? So, we did. Last night as I watched you laying in that hospital bed in the throes of death, mouth opened wide like the near dead always do, unconscious and breathing erratically, I gazed intently at you and felt... nothing. And when I heard of your death today shortly after noon, I felt nothing. They say the heart dies a slow death and it's true. It becomes cold, hard, numb. I'm sure there will be a price to pay. One day it will hit me when I least expect it. Maybe I'll be reading a Bible passage and Boom! Or I'll be watching some sappy television show and the tears will start to flow, for no apparent reason. Or maybe everything will stay bottled up inside and one day my heart will just pop, like a balloon that has held stale air for too long. Or maybe, just maybe I'll be okay. Time will tell. See ya dad. I'll choose to remember you for what you once were, since I have no idea really who you became after my fall from your graces. Such is life. Me