The following is an essay I wrote back when our daughter was just a toddler. I hope you find its message just as relevant today as I did when I wrote it – and still do.
Early this past Father’s Day morning, just after 6:30, our two year old daughter came bounding into our bedroom and onto our bed. As she is beginning to talk, she delights in naming people and things at every opportunity.
“Mama!” she squeals as she pats my semi-conscious wife.
“Yes, sweetie – Mama,” my wife drowsily responds.
“Papa!” comes the next eager announcement, as she points to me while partly crawling, partly falling over my wife.
“That’s right, sweets – Papa,” I manage to croak.
The little one sits up between us, “Gran’ma?” she asks.
I hear my mother in the kitchen making coffee. “Grandma’s in the kitchen, sweetie.”
“Gran’pa?” she asks.
This is a new word for her; one I’ve not heard from her before. I hesitated. I thought of calling my dad and telling him that his grand-daughter has just said “Grandpa” for the first time. Then I remember that I can’t do that.
You see, just this past May, after knowing him for over thirty four years, my father did something I never expected him to do – he died.
I knew this Father’s Day would be different, but until the moment the cheerfully inquisitive “Gran’pa” came out of our two year old’s mouth, I didn’t quite grasp just how difficult it would be. For the first time in my life, I faced Father’s Day without a father.
I know that I am not the first person to find himself in this situation. It is a club with millions of members, not one of us wishing membership.
For those of you who did not know my father, I’m sorry you didn’t. He was quite a guy.
He went to work on a milk wagon when he was eight. Shortly after that, he was run-over by a car, breaking his leg so badly that the doctors wanted to amputate it. My grandfather refused to allow it. At best, he wasn’t expected to walk again… but he did.
He learned to paint and repair cars. He worked on the docks. He drove trucks. He was a soldier and a veteran, a small business owner and a commercial fisherman, a husband and a father. Most of all, he was an honest, decent, hard working man.
Stalwart, a bit stoic, tough as a keg of nails, and sharp as the edge of the crew cut he wore throughout his life, he was proud to be an American but he never forgot Finland, from which his father came at the age of twelve, alone.
Some of you may be very close to your fathers. Others may be estranged, distant; perhaps you haven’t spoken in years. For the latter, a word of advice – patch things up now. Tell him how much you’ve learned from him. Don’t wait. You don’t want the only time that you tell your father how much you love him to be in the intensive care unit wondering how many hours he has left.
Whether he is close or estranged, affectionate or distant, you only get one father. However you have lived your lives together, you will never understand how much it hurts to lose him until it’s too late.
